Latest news with #NoFakesAct
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
MusiCares Executive Director Laura Segura Leaves Post in Sudden Departure
Laura Segura, executive director of MusiCares, the Recording Academy's charity-focused partner organization, has departed from her post after five years in the role, according to the Recording Academy's website and an email sent to staff by CEO Harvey Mason Jr. The abruptness, wording and timing of the announcement, which was sent to staff over the Memorial Day holiday — a common time for burying news — and the Academy's lack of response to press inquiries suggests a less-than-smooth departure. The memo announced a 'key leadership transition' and stated that Segura is 'no longer with MusiCares.' It continued that Theresa Wolters, who is the organization's head of health and human services, 'is stepping into the role of interim executive director.' The change is reflected in the MusiCares website, which no longer includes Segura's name and lists Wolters as 'interim' executive director. Reps for the Recording Academy did not respond to Variety's requests for further information over the weekend; Billboard first reported the news on Saturday. More from Variety No Fakes Act Reintroduced in Congress With Support From Google, RIAA, More Music Industry Moves: Kendrick Lamar Collaborator MTech Inks Deal With Sony Music Publishing Grateful Dead's MusiCares Salute Is Heavy on Gratitude, as All-Star Cast Shares the Lovefest With Bob Weir and Mickey Hart MusiCares, which was founded in 1989 an independent 501(c)(3) charity, has paid out well over $100 million in relief to musicians and music executives over the years, including more than $30 million in COVID relief to the music community during the pandemic and $10 million in Los Angeles wildfire relief earlier this year. Additionally, $16 million was raised by MusiCares and the Recording Academy during Grammy weekend via its Fire Relief campaign and its annual Persons of the Year gala, which honored the Grateful Dead. Segura spoke of the organization's efforts at the event. However, along with its admirable service to the music community, the organization's top role has been troubled in recent years. Segura's predecessor, Dana Tomarken, was abruptly fired in April of 2018 after 25 years with the Academy, resulting in her filing a wrongful-termination lawsuit against the Academy. The lawsuit included a withering 4,500-word letter Tomarken wrote to the Academy's Board of Trustees that essentially said she was being blamed for the financial losses the Academy took in holding the Grammy Awards in New York that year, rather than its usual home base of Los Angeles. She accused former chairman/president Neil Portnow of brokering a deal without her knowledge to hold the organization's annual Person of the Year event at a venue that left the charity with a significant loss in its fundraising efforts, after she had made arrangements to hold the event at a competing venue. The Grammy Awards were held in New York that year for the first time since 2003, leading to a $5 million shortfall for the show, which Tomarken claimed Portnow attempted to cover by steering funds away from MusiCares. She also accused Portnow of running a 'boys' club' and said she was terminated 'after a painful year of trying to protect MusiCares from being exploited, enduring ongoing instances of workplace abuse and harassment' from two male coworkers whom she named in the letter. Portnow and the Academy denied any wrongdoing; the lawsuit was settled out of court in November of 2019. Her departure left MusiCares without an official leader when the pandemic began just four months later, but Mason and MusiCares chair/Amazon Music chief Steve Boom took the reins and began distributing relief money almost immediately. Segura was named executive director in May of 2020; she had been the Recording Academy's vice president of membership and industry relations for the previous seven years. Variety will have more on the situation as it develops. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Hollywood Gets a Major Boost From a Republican Senator in the Fight Over AI Copyright
Media and entertainment personalities worried that their work is being unlawfully fed into AI copyright models gained a prominent ally Wednesday when Missouri Senator Josh Hawley went after a YouTube executive for how Google trains its models in a tense Capitol Hill session. 'That seems like a big problem to me,' Hawley said in a Judiciary subcommittee hearing after the executive, Music Policy chief Suzana Carlos, had explained that videos uploaded to the site are used to train Gemini and other Google AI products for any user agreeing to the terms of service, a requirement for uploading. 'That seems like a huge, huge problem to me. And the fact that YouTube is monetizing these kinds of videos seems like a huge problem to me.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Streaming Hits Another High in April, Cable and Broadcast Rise Too YouTube Stars Make the Case for Why Their Shows Are Emmy-Worthy: "That's the Future" YouTube Closes TV's Upfront Week With Creators, Confidence and Lady Gaga Hawley said that Congress and tech companies needed to find ways to 'give individuals powerful enforceable rights and their image and their property and their lives back again.' The Republican lawmaker was speaking at a hearing for the No Fakes Act, where earlier in the session Carlos, country star Martina McBride and RIAA chief executive Mitch Glazier had been among those testifying on behalf of the bill, which aims to impose limits on how users might create AI versions of an artist or other person's face or voice. The previous two iterations of the bill had not gained enough support to pass, but backers hope YouTube coming aboard, as it recently did, could spell the difference. But it was Hawley's remarks on an only partly-related issue that were among the most notable at the hearing. AI copyright has been a key battle area between media and tech companies, with The New York Times currently suing OpenAI over how models are trained on its articles in a closely watched case for anyone who creates or holds intellectual property. Tech companies need the content company's material to build their models, which rely on tens of thousands of news stories, images, videos, songs and other content to generate their output. Trump's removal of the head of the U.S. Copyright Office earlier this month after she expressed hesitation that what OpenAI and others were doing is legal has further stirred concern that copyrighted material is being used unlawfully without artists' and companies' consent. Hawley has previously positioned himself as an anti Big Tech-populist, going after Meta for a host of alleged missteps and, more specifically on AI, urging the Labor Department to protect workers in the wake of AI shifts and criticizing OpenAI for its accelerationism. But Wednesday marks some of his strongest public words yet on the copyright issue, and makes the Republican lawmaker something of a strange bedfellow to SAG-AFTRA, Justine Bateman, Hollywood artist Reid Southen, The New York Times and others in creative fields who have raised alarm bells that a business is being built on the backs of others' work without compensation. 'We've got to do more. YouTube is I'm sure making billions of dollars off this,' Hawley said Wednesday. 'The people losing are the artists and creators and the teenagers whose lives are upended.' (The last point was a reference to deepfakes involving bullying and non-consensual images, which Hawley also said YouTube needs to police harder.) For the most part tech companies have said the material they train their models on is allowed under laws of fair use. Carlos repeated several times during Hawley's questioning that Google trains its models on videos uploaded to YouTube. 'We do share data in accordance with our agreements,' she said. Hawley said he believed that none of the major tech companies have sufficiently explained how they're protecting a creator's copyright and that more of them need to answer for their training actions. Hawley criticized those firms too. 'I'm glad you're here today,' he told Carlos. 'I wish there were more tech companies here today.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Martina McBride invokes 'Independence Day' in plea before Senate committee to stop AI fraud, deepfakes. Watch
On May 21, country singer Martina McBride appeared before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law at a hearing to speak out against AI-generated deepfakes. The "This One's for the Girls" and "A Broken Wing" singer testified in support of the No Fakes Act, a bill that would federally protect an individual's voice and likeness against unauthorized AI deepfakes and vocal clones. "I think it's important because as artists, we hopefully want to speak the truth," McBride said. "We want to build a relationship with our fans in which they trust us — they believe what we say." Getting it right: U.S. lawmakers, Nashville music industry members discuss AI McBride, appearing alongside RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier, told the subcommittee that when celebrity deepfakes are used to endorse a product, it can be harmful to the trust between fans and their audience. "I just realized sitting here that I bought a product, a collagen supplement, off of Instagram the other day, because it had LeAnn Rimes and a couple of other people," she said. "I'm sitting here thinking, 'Oh my goodness. I don't even know if that was really them.'" "We had a situation, personally, where one of my fans believed they were talking to me, ended up selling their house and funneling the money to someone who they thought was me," McBride continued. "That is so devastating to me to realize that somebody who trusts me could be duped like that." McBride added that someone who has been impacted by a deepfake could also become angry enough to someday seek retribution against these public figures. "We're on stages in front of thousands of people," she said. "We're in public places. So it's a danger to the artist as well." The subcommittee — which includes Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. and Senator Chris Coons, D-Del — also saw testimony from witnesses including Consumer Reports Director of Technology Policy Justin Brookman, YouTube Head of Music Policy Suzana Carlos, and National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) Senior Legal Counsel Christen Price. Deepfakes? Revenge porn? Trump signs bi-partisan Take It Down Act to combat fake intimate images Audrey Gibbs is a music journalist at The Tennessean. You can reach her at agibbs@ This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Martina McBride invokes 'Independence Day' to stop deepfake fraud
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Hollywood Gets a Major Boost From a Republican Senator in the Fight Over AI Copyright
Media and entertainment personalities worried that their work is being unlawfully fed into AI copyright models gained a prominent ally Wednesday when Missouri Senator Josh Hawley went after a YouTube executive for how Google trains its models in a tense Capitol Hill session. 'That seems like a big problem to me,' Hawley said in a Judiciary subcommittee hearing after the executive, Music Policy chief Suzana Carlos, had explained that videos uploaded to the site are used to train Gemini and other Google AI products for any user agreeing to the terms of service, a requirement for uploading. 'That seems like a huge, huge problem to me. And the fact that YouTube is monetizing these kinds of videos seems like a huge problem to me.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Streaming Hits Another High in April, Cable and Broadcast Rise Too YouTube Stars Make the Case for Why Their Shows Are Emmy-Worthy: "That's the Future" YouTube Closes TV's Upfront Week With Creators, Confidence and Lady Gaga Hawley said that Congress and tech companies needed to find ways to 'give individuals powerful enforceable rights and their image and their property and their lives back again.' The Republican lawmaker was speaking at a hearing for the No Fakes Act, where earlier in the session Carlos, country star Martina McBride and RIAA chief executive Mitch Glazier had been among those testifying on behalf of the bill, which aims to impose limits on how users might create AI versions of an artist or other person's face or voice. The previous two iterations of the bill had not gained enough support to pass, but backers hope YouTube coming aboard, as it recently did, could spell the difference. But it was Hawley's remarks on an only partly-related issue that were among the most notable at the hearing. AI copyright has been a key battle area between media and tech companies, with The New York Times currently suing OpenAI over how models are trained on its articles in a closely watched case for anyone who creates or holds intellectual property. Tech companies need the content company's material to build their models, which rely on tens of thousands of news stories, images, videos, songs and other content to generate their output. Trump's removal of the head of the U.S. Copyright Office earlier this month after she expressed hesitation that what OpenAI and others were doing is legal has further stirred concern that copyrighted material is being used unlawfully without artists' and companies' consent. Hawley has previously positioned himself as an anti Big Tech-populist, going after Meta for a host of alleged missteps and, more specifically on AI, urging the Labor Department to protect workers in the wake of AI shifts and criticizing OpenAI for its accelerationism. But Wednesday marks some of his strongest public words yet on the copyright issue, and makes the Republican lawmaker something of a strange bedfellow to SAG-AFTRA, Justine Bateman, Hollywood artist Reid Southen, The New York Times and others in creative fields who have raised alarm bells that a business is being built on the backs of others' work without compensation. 'We've got to do more. YouTube is I'm sure making billions of dollars off this,' Hawley said Wednesday. 'The people losing are the artists and creators and the teenagers whose lives are upended.' (The last point was a reference to deepfakes involving bullying and non-consensual images, which Hawley also said YouTube needs to police harder.) For the most part tech companies have said the material they train their models on is allowed under laws of fair use. Carlos repeated several times during Hawley's questioning that Google trains its models on videos uploaded to YouTube. 'We do share data in accordance with our agreements,' she said. Hawley said he believed that none of the major tech companies have sufficiently explained how they're protecting a creator's copyright and that more of them need to answer for their training actions. Hawley criticized those firms too. 'I'm glad you're here today,' he told Carlos. 'I wish there were more tech companies here today.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More
Washington Post
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Industry leaders urge Senate to protect against AI deepfakes with No Fakes Act
Tech and music industry leaders testified about the dangers of deepfakes made with artificial intelligence on Wednesday, urging lawmakers to pass legislation that would protect people's voices and likenesses from being replicated without consent, while allowing use of the tech responsibly. Speaking to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee's panel on privacy, technology, and the law, executives from YouTube and Recording Industry Association of America as well as country music singer Martina McBride, championed the bipartisan No Fakes Act, which seeks to create federal protections for artists' voice, likeness and image from unauthorized AI-generated deepfakes.
