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Hollywood Bot Trouble, Trump’s A.I. Gatekeeper, Art World Gen Z
Agita
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Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to Puck’s best new reporting.
Here’s what you need to know, and stick around for more on Hollywood’s bot-fraud nightmare… |
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What I’m Hearing: A fraudster named Michael Smith used A.I. to churn out thousands of fake songs, deployed up to 10,000 bots to stream them, and pocketed $14 million in royalties—before landing an 18-month prison sentence this week. Eriq Gardner dissects the landmark streaming-fraud case, and whether platforms like Spotify and YouTube could face criminal
exposure of their own. [Read More]
- The Hidden Layer: An underfunded and understaffed federal agency called CAISSI has quietly become the government’s gatekeeper for vetting and releasing frontier A.I. models.
Ian Krietzberg gets the inside story on the agency’s improbable rise and its “completely opaque” model-review process. [Read More]
- The Varsity: While the NCAA begs Congress to rescue it from an apparent
existential crisis, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas argues that the “chaos” is entirely self-inflicted. John Ourand chats with the former Duke standout about his gripes with the Protect College Sports Act—and the NCAA business model as a whole. [Read More]
- Wall Power: Art economist Clare McAndrew’s latest annual survey on collecting habits caused a stir when it noted that Gen Z collectors, on average, outspent every other age cohort on art over the past year. Marion Maneker sorts through the findings, and explains why the freakout missed the point. [Read More]
- Line Sheet: Victoria’s Secret C.E.O. Hillary Super has engineered a stunning turnaround at the brand, tripling profits and reviving the brand’s early-aughts cultural clout ahead of next week’s revamped fashion show. Malique Morris runs the numbers and reveals why the rebound may
ultimately stir new ownership questions. [Read More]
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The Town: Matt Belloni and former New York Times journalist Kyle Buchanan chew over the biggest narratives heading into Hollywood’s awards season. [Listen Here]
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The Powers That Be: Peter Hamby and Ian discuss Anthropic’s rogue A.I. agents and the tech overlords falling in line with Trump’s “super intelligence” rebrand. [Listen Here or
Watch Here]
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And now, a little more on Hollywood’s future bot problem… |
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For a brief moment in April 2023, a guy named Michael Smith outstreamed Taylor
Swift on YouTube Music by a factor of nearly nine. It was, of course, a fraud. Smith had used A.I. to generate a flood of songs, attributed them to fictitious musicians, and fed them to an army of bots across as many as 10,000 accounts, collecting more than $14 million in royalties. This past week, a New York judge sentenced him to 18 months in prison.
But, as Eriq reports, buried in the seemingly open-and-shut case is an uncomfortable question: Could... |
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Can’t see the full story? You’re receiving the free version of The Daily Courant
at dupa@niepodam.pl. For full access to Puck, subscribe today. |
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| Ian Krietzberg
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The U.S. agency tasked with testing frontier A.I. models is understaffed and underfunded, and its evaluation process is
“completely opaque.” Can the Trump administration and its new “Super Intelligence Force” stop CAISSI from “pacing the frontier” by default? |
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| John Ourand
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The commentator argues that college sports is financially healthy and competitively strong—not chaotic—and that the
turmoil stems largely from the NCAA’s own policies. |
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| Malique Morris
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Victoria’s Secret is converting renewed cultural relevance into profitable growth under C.E.O. Hillary Super—and building
excitement for next week’s fashion show in L.A. But sustaining the turnaround will require more than nostalgia. |
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| Marion Maneker
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