Nilay Patel

The US Copyright Office spent a good chunk of last year soliciting comments from the public about AI and intellectual property, and it’s out today with the first part of the resulting report. The takeaway? Digital replicas and deepfakes of people are a big problem, and the patchwork of existing IP laws won’t be enough to solve it.

Here’s Guide to Computing, a loving collection of photos of giant computers from 1945 to 1990 by James Ball, who publishes as Docubyte. Sounds like a book is in the works; sign me up.

One thing about having the idea of AI clones attending meetings in Zoom presented to you for the first time in a conversation with the CEO on your podcast is that other people get to react to said idea in a much funnier way, like Angela Collier does here.

Wired editor-in-chief (and notable Verge alum!) Katie Drummond flags this incredible stack of sourcing and disclosure notes in Semafor’s piece about Perplexity’s new revenue-sharing agreements with publishers. Well done, all around.

Splice got itself in some trouble a couple weeks ago when it issued a YouTube copyright strike against Krystle Delgado, a music attorney who showed one of the company’s sample licenses on screen. Splice wised up and retracted the strike last week, CEO Kakul Srivastava tell me. “We fundamentally support the rights of creators to express themselves – even if we disagree,” she wrote in an email to Delgado.

Can’t think of the last time I opened an app to an apology for how buggy the app is!

Here’s an incredible WSJ piece about zoo visitors connecting with gorillas by showing them videos of themselves, and zoo officials trying to push back: