Houston startup Persona AI inks agreement with world's largest shipbuilder for humanoid welding robots
A non-moving mockup of Persona AI's humanoid robot worker. The company signed its first agreement with subsidiaries of the Korean industrial powerhouse HD Hyundai Co. Ltd.
Jishnu Nair/HBJ
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4 hours ago
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Instructure's Canvas LMS Enters South Korea to Strengthen Universities' Global Competitiveness
SEOUL, South Korea, June 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Instructure, the leading learning ecosystem and creator of Canvas, one of the most used learning management systems worldwide, today announced its entry into the South Korean market. This expansion marks a significant milestone in the company's mission to empower educators and learners worldwide with a secure, scalable, and modern learning management system. The launch in South Korea is made possible through a strategic partnership with Linus, the authorized partner of Canvas in the country, with over 10 years of experience in the Korean education market. Through this collaboration, educational institutions across the country will gain access to Canvas' full suite of tools and services through locally based employees, localized marketing presence, and enhanced language capability. "With Canvas LMS, learners in South Korea will gain access to world-class, student-centered learning experiences that unlock personalized and self-paced education," said Harrison Kelly, Managing Director of Asia Pacific at Instructure. "More importantly, Canvas by Instructure empowers institutions to bridge the gap between academic theory and real-world application, helping them deliver job-aligned content and credentials that prepare students for a rapidly evolving workforce. We're excited to bring all the fully featured LMS capabilities built in Canvas by Instructure to institutions in the country, supported by Linus's local expertise." Built to Scale, Secure by Design Unlike open-source LMS platforms that often rely on custom development and ongoing maintenance, Canvas by Instructure is engineered with a secure, enterprise-grade architecture that ensures long-term agility. With 99.9% annual uptime and hands-free updates, institutions can scale confidently while minimizing operational risks. Open Architecture for Seamless Integration Canvas is designed for extensibility. Through robust APIs and full support for Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standards, it integrates effortlessly with leading edtech tools, enabling institutions to build flexible, personalized learning ecosystems. Reliability, Resilience, and Risk Management Canvas provides built-in business continuity features, including automatic updates, disaster recovery, vulnerability patching, and rigorous security protocols—all of which support a reliable and safe learning experience for students and faculty alike. AI That Empowers Educators Canvas is also at the forefront of AI innovation in education. With AI-powered tools that support learner engagement and predictive analytics to help identify at-risk students, Canvas enables educators to personalize learning at scale and enhance student outcomes. "It is a great honor for Linus to become Instructure's first authorized partner in Korea," said Nah Suk Gyu, CEO of Linus. "Through this strong partnership with Instructure, a global leader in education technology, we are now able to contribute to enhancing the global competitiveness of Korean educational institutions with the world-class Canvas LMS." About Instructure Instructure powers the delivery of education globally and reimagines the technologies that turn teaching and learning into opportunities. Today, the Instructure ecosystem of products connects the dots for educators and institutions by improving educational experiences at every age, every stage and every transitional moment — across K-12, higher education and the workforce. We encourage you to discover more at Logo - View original content: SOURCE Instructure - Makers of Canvas LMS Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
10 hours ago
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Disney, Universal Launch AI Legal Battle, Sue Midjourney Over Copyright Claims
In the next chapter of Big Entertainment vs. Big Tech, Disney and Universal have filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Midjourney over tools that allow users to create images and videos that can manipulate famous characters at the click of a prompt. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday by Disney Enterprises, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century, Universal City Studios Productions and DreamWorks Animation, describes the David Holz-run generative AI firm Midjourney as a 'bottomless pit of plagiarism.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Bob Iger Says Disney Unlikely to Follow Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery In Exiting the TV Channel Business 'Oldboy' Screenwriter Sets Streaming Debut With Disney+ Korean Crime Series 'Gold Land' Disney's House of Mouse Global Tour Debuts New Mickey & Friends Collabs and Disneyland Anniversary Merch in L.A. (Exclusive) The legal salvo marks the first major foray from Hollywood against tech giants that are hoping to reorient consumer habits with personalized entertainment and information by vacuuming up data on the internet and spitting it out in the form of chatbot copy or images. So far, Wall Street has bet big that AI will be a major economic driver in the future and AI companies have raised tens of billions of dollars to realize that vision. Notably, major film and TV studios have not yet inked significant deals with AI companies to license their IP to these tech giants' tools that are now used by millions of users. That marks a different tack from major media companies, which have largely decided to take checks to license content to companies like OpenAI versus spend millions fighting in court. (The New York Times is an exception, and it has spent $10 million-plus fighting OpenAI so far.) The complaint from Disney and Universal details how Midjourney's tools easily allow users to create image-based works based on the intellectual property of Disney and Universal — think: Darth Vader or Shrek at the beach, etc. This is commonly called 'AI Slop,' and many likely already see it in their social media feeds. 'If a Midjourney subscriber submits a simple text prompt requesting an image of the character Darth Vader in a particular setting or doing a particular action, Midjourney obliges by generating and displaying a high quality, downloadable image featuring Disney's copyrighted Darth Vader character,' the complaint reads. The complaint offers AI-generated images of Vader, Wall-E, Stormtroopers, How to Train Your Dragon characters, Minions and Shrek and many more as evidence of copyright infringement perpetuated by Midjourney. And it singles out Star Wars character Yoda with a side-by-side comparison: The Hollywood studios go on to allege that Midjourney is able to provide such outputs because its tools have already ingested copyrighted intellectual property across the web as training data. 'Midjourney downloaded from the internet, and other sources, content using tools variously described as bots, scrapers, streamrippers, video downloaders, and web crawlers,' the complaint says, alleging that the AI company's CEO David Holz 'admitted that to collect the training data, Midjourney 'pulls off all the data it can, all the text it can, all the images it can.'' The studios also claim that Midjourney then 'cleaned' and converted digital files of copyrighted intellectual property to use in its training data so that its tools could then provide outputs allowing users to create things like personalized Yoda, Vader or Shrek images. 'When a subscriber enters a prompt for an image of Spider-Man, Minions, Iron Man, or any of Plaintiffs' countless copyrighted characters, Midjourney creates yet another copy of that character which it publicly displays and/or distributes via download,' the complaint reads. The lawsuit highlights that not only does Midjourney allow the creation of these works based on Disney and Universal's copyrighted characters, the AI company goes further by having them displayed in its 'Explore' section of its website — a sign that, the studios say, Midjourney is fully aware of what its product does and is capitalizing on the plagiarism. 'Midjourney's publication and curation of infringing images on the Explore page show that Midjourney knows that its platform regularly reproduces Plaintiffs' Copyrighted Works, and that the Explore page is intended to advertise Midjourney's ability to infringe the Copyrighted Works,' the complaint reads. And the complaint goes on to alleged that Midjourney has the tools in place to prevent outputs that run afoul of copyrighted intellectual property, but it choose to not enact them. 'Midjourney controls, and has the ability to control, generative outputs through readily available technical protection measures,' the studios argue. 'Despite having the ability to do so, Midjourney has affirmatively chosen not to use copyright protection measures to limit the infringement.' The top legal officer of Disney put it more simply in a strongly-worded statement accompanying the lawsuit: 'Piracy is piracy.' Using that phrasing frames the fight against Midjourney in familiar language to the studios' lobbying group, the Motion Picture Association, which also talks up its fight against piracy. But the MPA, so far, has mostly gone after websites that show unauthorized movies and TV shows, not AI companies, despite the prevalence of users flocking to AI-powered tools. 'Our world-class IP is built on decades of financial investment, creativity and innovation—investments only made possible by the incentives embodied in copyright law that give creators the exclusive right to profit from their works,' stated Disney general counsel Horacio Gutierrez. 'We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity. But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it's done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.' The full complaint is below:Best of The Hollywood Reporter How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started Meet the World Builders: Hollywood's Top Physical Production Executives of 2023 Men in Blazers, Hollywood's Favorite Soccer Podcast, Aims for a Global Empire
Yahoo
12 hours ago
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Trump's Next Deal for Rare Minerals Should Be with North Korea
The Trump administration's recent completion of a 'minerals for security' deal with Ukraine raises a question: Are there other countries where we could ink a similar agreement? However improbable it might seem, I believe North Korea, which is likely home to large rare earth mineral deposits, should be next. In addition to supplying the United States with critical minerals, a deal with North Korea could halt the growing threat of Pyongyang's nuclear-tipped missiles, reduce the danger of a regional conflict and put South and North Korea on a path to ending the Cold War on the Korean peninsula. Tensions have mounted in northeast Asia since President Donald Trump met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in 2019. Pyongyang's steady buildup of long-range nuclear-armed missiles has ignited a dangerous regional arms race that also threatens the continental United States. In fact, two respected experts believe North Korea is preparing for a fight. The danger of a second Korean war is real. The two Koreas came close to blows three times, in 2010, 2015 and 2017, a conflict that could also involve the United States and China. The next crisis will be even more dangerous as North Korea's defense alliance with Russia deepens and the Kremlin shares advanced military technology. A retired American general has warned that the countries in the region are one bad decision away from a nuclear war. Cooperation in developing North Korea's minerals could be the centerpiece of an agreement intended to head that danger off. The United States and North Korea could reach a deal to develop those resources, especially rare earth elements that have important applications in a wide range of modern technologies. The resulting income stream, which would benefit North Korea, could be funneled into a fund used to modernize its economy. None of this would be possible without taking steps to build a better relationship between Washington and Pyongyang. Those steps would include establishing diplomatic relations and lifting sanctions that prevent economic cooperation. But no agreement could get off the ground if tensions remain high. An economic deal would have to also address Washington's security concerns, the threat posed to its allies and the danger of a regional conflagration. At this point, denuclearization might be off the table, especially with the size of Kim's arsenal. However, an agreement would have to, at the very least, bring North Korea's WMD programs under control and start a process of confidence building between countries in northeast Asia. Trump is well-positioned to reignite his first-term bromance with Kim. A minerals-for-security deal could appeal to a transactional president who had made helping Pyongyang develop its economy an important part of his past engagement with Kim. Moreover, the global pursuit of rare earth minerals is a key objective for Trump and his administration. And to Trump's luck, the next president of South Korea is Lee Jae-myung, who has long been an advocate for warmer ties with North Korea. The timing is impeccable: Former President Suk Yeol, who was permanently removed from office in April after declaring martial law, was a North Korea hawk who likely would have been against an economic deal with Pyongyang. Lee could be a close partner to Trump in this deal, similarly to how former President Moon Jae-in helped organize the first summit between Kim and Trump. Moreover, South and North have cooperated in the past in developing Pyongyang's mineral resources. However, Lee will have a tough road to hoe, since relations between the two Koreas plummeted under his predecessor. North Korea also seems open for business. Estimates of the size of its rare earth mineral deposits vary but they appear to be substantial. Moreover, Kim understands that North Korea's rare and other significant mineral deposits play an important part in developing his country's economy; Pyongyang proposed a $2.5 billion deal with the Chinese in 2018 to exchange rare earth minerals for an investment in solar panels. Still, Kim may be in no mood to reengage Trump, despite their past summits — their two meetings in 2019 ended in failure — and North Korea's foreign policy tilt towards Russia and China, Washington's two main protagonists. However, if the U.S.-China trade war subsides and a positive Putin-Trump relationship grows, Moscow and Beijing could end up tacitly backing a deal. Lowering tensions in the region would also serve their interests. Kim's nuclear weapons arsenal will present a challenge for renewed talks. Since Washington's past priority, requiring him to give them up, is no longer feasible, the United States should emphasize reducing the danger of a nuclear war. One possible step which Kim had agreed to in the past would be a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests that would both lessen tensions and at least begin a process of denuclearization. Third, the devil will be in the detail of any new deal. Given Russia's close relationship with North Korea and its recent agreement with Pyongyang to jointly develop its mineral deposits, Moscow may need to be part of an agreement. So may China, which will have to prioritize reducing regional tensions since an agreement could undercut its domination of the global rare earth mineral market. South Korea will probably also want to participate in view of its strong interest in the future of the peninsula. While a multilateral deal may be necessary, it would certainly be more complicated to implement. Just as with the U.S.-Ukraine agreement, a U.S.-DPRK deal could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take as long as 10 years of surveys and building infrastructure before Pyongyang's deposits can be exploited. Getting off the ground quicker may mean initially monetizing North Korea's more accessible deposits of iron, copper, gold and graphite, which are already being mined. Finally, while diplomats may negotiate a deal and leaders may clinch an agreement, implementation will prove challenging. The Trump administration will need to carefully prepare to move forward. That will require exercising leadership in building cooperation between all the participants to finance and supervise the agreement's implementation. Admittedly, a minerals-for-security deal with North Korea would be a bold but difficult undertaking. However, a bold initiative may be the only way out of an increasingly dangerous situation that could well result in a devastating nuclear war.
