Midjourney’s Rough Waters

PRESENTED BY HOMEBUDDY

Happy Thursday, Future Party. As Congress is poised to pass a 10-year moratorium on AI regulation under any circumstances, a former OpenAI researcher claims that ChatGPT is now robust and intelligent enough to subvert humans’ attempts to shut it down in “life-threatening scenarios.” That might be a good thing, but it kind of depends on whose life we’re talking about.

NBCUniversal and Disney have filed suit against the generative-AI platform Midjourney for committing copyright infringement on a mass scale.

The Subtitles: This move marks the first major legal action taken by Hollywood studios against a generative-AI company. Previous lawsuits have mostly been restricted to individuals trying to preserve ownership of their name, image, and likeness — and usually, they were negotiating with studios. Unlike them, Disney and NBCU have enough power and money to make serious problems for generative AI.

The Establishing Shot: In a suit jointly filed in California, NBCU and Disney alleged that Midjourney committed direct and secondary copyright infringement by training their AI models on studio IP.

Following suit: With two of the largest IP libraries in Hollywood, Disney and NBCU have brought the full force of corporate power into the courtroom. This lawsuit resembles the action taken by major news networks, who joined forces to sue AI platform Cohere earlier this year. While both suits are ongoing, the sheer size of the plaintiffs might be enough to stop generative AI in its tracks — and could spell trouble for other AI companies focused on animation.

Prediction: Going forward, expect studios to target the platforms behind generative AI — not the users — as they work to establish legal precedent around copyright violations.

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Dropping out of college has long been glamorized by Silicon Valley. But now, Big Tech has grown so hostile to academia that Gen Z hopefuls are seeking to avoid it entirely.

Why It Hits: Big Tech is increasingly enticing young men to forgo college — which some consider wasteful and dogmatic — in favor of lucrative vocational programs with syllabi of their own. While their critiques of higher education have merit, these young technocrats might miss out on alternative perspectives, career paths, and even future earnings.

Manning Down: Between 2011 and 2023, college enrollment among 18-to-24-year-olds dropped by 1.2 million (1 million of them men), according to the Pew Research Center.

Hitting the Books: Financially speaking, the data suggests that college graduates still make 75% to 80% more money than dropouts do, making it more than worth the cost of attending. More broadly, the value of a university education is hard to quantify, but alternative syllabi like Palantir’s may have their own agenda and possibly a narrower focus than colleges do.

Prediction: This critique echoes views from the manosphere and devalues most career paths, especially women-dominated ones like social work, teaching, and care work. If this trend continues, expect Gen Z’s male-female political divide to grow even wider.

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77.9% of you voted No in yesterday’s poll: Do you enjoy soap opera-esque content?

“Life itself has more than enough ‘soap opera content.’ :)”

“Soapy story arcs are, typically, generations-long without resolution. Even three-hour movies, and life itself, have an ending.”

“Periodically when real life causes me to escape.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

🤖 Despite — or perhaps because of — the enormous popularity of AI tools, very few design job listings care about expertise in them.

🧬 15% of 23andMe’s customers have asked the company to delete their genetic data following the massive breach that helped bankrupt the company.

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