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Speaker 1: Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and

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Speaker 1: analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Tuesday, September ninth, twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co

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Speaker 1: editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in

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Speaker 1: LA He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around

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Speaker 1: the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk with business editor Todd Spangler and senior media

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Speaker 1: writer Gene Mattis about the latest in Hollywood's legal fight

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Speaker 1: with big AI firms. And we'll hear from reporter Ethan

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Speaker 1: Schanfeld on the comings and goings at Saturday Night Live.

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Speaker 1: But before we get to that, here are a few

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Speaker 1: headlines just in this morning that you need to know.

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Speaker 1: Wendy McMahon, the former head of CBS News and Stations,

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Speaker 1: has joined Beehive as a consultant and advisor to Tyler Dink.

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Speaker 1: Dink is the founder of the publishing platform for inde

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Speaker 1: pennant journalists. Netflix has ordered a new series from Black

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Speaker 1: Mirror creator Charlie Brooker. It's an untitled four part crime

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Speaker 1: thriller starring Patty Considine, Georgina Campbell, and Lena Heady. According

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Speaker 1: to Netflix, a quote contains blood and frowning end quote

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Speaker 1: from Elizabeth Banks to Catherine Zada Jones. A whole host

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Speaker 1: of starry names are lined up as presenters for Sunday's

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Speaker 1: seventy seventh Emmy Awards. The early reviews are in. People

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Speaker 1: seem to be loving Leonardo DiCaprio's latest from director Paul

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Speaker 1: Thomas Anderson Warrier Brothers, One Battle After Another, opens on

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Speaker 1: September twenty sixth. You can find all of these stories

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Speaker 1: and so much more on Variety dot com. Right now now,

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Speaker 1: it's time for conversations with Variety journalists about news and

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Speaker 1: trends in show business. Today we're talking to Todd Spangler

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Speaker 1: and Gene Mattis about two big developments in AI litigation

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Speaker 1: involving the firms Anthropic and mid Journey. We discuss what

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Speaker 1: it all means for copyright protection and showbiz. Gene Mattison,

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Speaker 1: Todd Spangler, thank you for joining me here today, Helo,

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Speaker 1: and we've had a couple of interesting court rulings and

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Speaker 1: some movement. The time has come to talk big picture

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Speaker 1: about AI and the state of the litigation that is

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Speaker 1: going on within the entertainment industry. There's a lot going on.

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Speaker 1: Rulings are coming in from various quarters. There's been there's

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Speaker 1: two big cases that have really been getting a lot

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Speaker 1: of attention in Hollywood. One is involving a company called

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Speaker 1: Anthropic based in San Francisco, one of the one of

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Speaker 1: the bigger AI firms, and a firm that is really

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Speaker 1: trying to position itself as friendly to creative industries, friendly

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Speaker 1: to copyright based industries. And then on the other spectrum,

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Speaker 1: there's a company called mid Journey, which has really animated

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Speaker 1: the biggest Hollywood studios Disney, NBC, Universal and now Warner Brothers.

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Speaker 1: Last week, Warner Brothers Discovery joined the lawsuit against mid Journey.

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Speaker 1: The studios are accusing Mid Journey of just the latant

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Speaker 1: copyright infringement. Let me start with Todd as somebody who

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Speaker 1: covered YouTube and so many other things over the years.

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Speaker 1: What do you think is going on here?

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Speaker 2: You know, the wheels of justice grind slowly, and technology

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Speaker 2: famously always is ahead of where the legal standards are.

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Speaker 2: But there is a parallel to what YouTube went through.

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Speaker 2: They put in their copyright flagging system in order to

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Speaker 2: make peace with the copyright holders.

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Speaker 3: The big question on that people have been trying to

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Speaker 3: understand is is AI training itself copyright infringement And there

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Speaker 3: are a lot of people, certainly in Hollywood unions, who

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Speaker 3: think that it is. And there's something called the Human

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Speaker 3: Artistry Campaign, which is sort of a coalition of a

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Speaker 3: lot of creative people, including the unions, that are sort

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Speaker 3: of pushed for you know, if you're going to train

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Speaker 3: on our work, then you need to pay us. And

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Speaker 3: the legal cases that we've seen so far have not

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Speaker 3: supported that point of view. There were two federal cases

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Speaker 3: in June, both of which is held that fundamentally AI

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Speaker 3: training is transformative and therefore it's fair use. And that's

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Speaker 3: not an absolute license to go do whatever you want

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Speaker 3: to do, but it is a pretty strong indication that

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Speaker 3: courts are looking at this as a transformative use that

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Speaker 3: is not inherently copyright protected.

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Speaker 1: The keyword there is transformative. So let's talk specifically about

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Speaker 1: what happened with Anthropic again, one of the biggest AI

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Speaker 1: companies based in San Francisco. A big week for the

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Speaker 1: company last week they settled this lawsuit. They also announced

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Speaker 1: that they'd raise thirteen billion dollars in investment money, which

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Speaker 1: brings the company's valuation to one hundred and eighty three

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Speaker 1: billion one eight three billion. That is astounding but also

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Speaker 1: indicative of the moment that we're in for AI. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if you could cash that in the bank.

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Speaker 1: They're a private company, but that's the valuation. So Anthropic

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Speaker 1: took the step. They reached a settlement paying one point

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Speaker 1: five billion to a group of authors after a legal

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Speaker 1: case found that they did in fact illegally download a

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Speaker 1: bunch of books early on when they were training in

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Speaker 1: their AI service with the cuddly name of Claude Gene.

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Speaker 1: You've followed this case, tell us what's significant about the

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Speaker 1: settlement and what else has been significant about the litigation

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Speaker 1: around and trop.

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Speaker 3: Well, the dollar figure is pretty significant. The one point

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Speaker 3: five billion figure the PLANETFF lawyers were touting as the

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Speaker 3: largest ever copyright recovery and so you know, I've had

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Speaker 3: larger verdicts, but that they actually collect on it, and

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Speaker 3: they're going to actually collect on this one point five billion,

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Speaker 3: So that's significant. And we mentioned the ruling in June

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Speaker 3: where the judge had said basically training is fair use. Well,

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Speaker 3: he also said at the same time that doesn't mean

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Speaker 3: you can just go ahead and download pirated books from

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Speaker 3: shady websites on the dark web or whatever, which is

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Speaker 3: what they were doing initially. They don't do that anymore.

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Speaker 3: The way they get books now is they buy paper

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Speaker 3: copies of used books and then have them scanned. And

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Speaker 3: the judge basically said, if you do that, then that's legal,

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Speaker 3: and you can go and scan them and use them

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Speaker 3: to train Claude, and that's all fine, and that's fair use.

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Speaker 3: But if you illegally downloaded these books in the first place,

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Speaker 3: then that's infringement in the same way that if you

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Speaker 3: illegally download a movie, that's infringement. So that was what

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Speaker 3: they were paying for. That's the one point five billion.

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Speaker 3: And I think there's an open question of how many

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Speaker 3: others may have done this in the sort of early

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Speaker 3: days of AI training, and maybe they'll be on the

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Speaker 3: hook too. But going forward, they should know well enough

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Speaker 3: to do this in the legal way and not in

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Speaker 3: the illegal way and avoid this kind of judgment.

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Speaker 1: But now let me ask you both. If I understand this,

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Speaker 1: If I go to a garage sale and I buy

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Speaker 1: ten books for fifty cents, and then then I then

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Speaker 1: take those books, scan them and to put them into

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Speaker 1: my digital large language model. That's okay because I did

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Speaker 1: acquire those books legally.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And basically the argument is when you're making a

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Speaker 3: large language model, that's a transformative use, and you're not

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Speaker 3: going out and selling a duplicate of the books that

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Speaker 3: you bought, which would be copyright infringement. You're creating something new,

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Speaker 3: and that's what copyright is there to incentivize, is creating

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Speaker 3: something new. It goes to the point of fair use

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Speaker 3: being a very complicated. Yeah, the factor test, there's like

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Speaker 3: four different factors, and transformative transformativeness is one of the factors.

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Speaker 3: But there's also a question of market harm.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about mid Journey, which is they've got they've

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Speaker 1: got the big guns of Hollywood. They've got Disney, NBC, Universal,

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Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, Discovery. You know, that's a lot of corporate

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Speaker 1: studio firepower saying hey, you're using the line of copyright.

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Speaker 1: What do you think it is about mid Journey. There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of companies out there, But what is it

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Speaker 1: about mid Journey that you think has attracted so much

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Speaker 1: attention from the studios?

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Speaker 3: I mean, I think mid Journey is big enough to

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Speaker 3: be significant, but small enough that it's something they can

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Speaker 3: prevail a cast. They're not going after Meta, They're not

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Speaker 3: going after Google. They're going after a relatively small, bootstrapped

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Speaker 3: company that is nevertheless quite popular, quite successful. So the

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Speaker 3: feeling is that, you know, if they can win here,

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Speaker 3: they make a point, and then everybody else has to

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Speaker 3: kind of fall into line.

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Speaker 2: And then the other point about it is that mid

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Speaker 2: Journey is actually they have a business model that's set

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Speaker 2: up to profit from this activity where they're charging people

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Speaker 2: to use the system, whereas right now Google and Meta

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Speaker 2: are not per se charging people to use it.

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Speaker 1: So mid Journey you pay a subscription fee to mid

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Speaker 1: Journey to be able to use their large language model

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Speaker 1: and create create things out of their AI database, which

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Speaker 1: the studios and others are saying is rife with copyrighted

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Speaker 1: material that they have no right to use.

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Speaker 3: It's not argue that there's a copyrighted material in the

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Speaker 3: training data. It's that the what the users are able

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Speaker 3: to generate is copyrighted material. Right, So if you prompt

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Speaker 3: it to say, can you show me Superman fighting with Batman?

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Speaker 3: It will show you Superman fighting with Batman. And it's

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Speaker 3: pretty much identical to the you know, copyrighted versions of

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Speaker 3: those images, right if it would be a different conversation

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Speaker 3: if you know that if mid Journey had guardrails that

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Speaker 3: didn't allow you to do that. But nevertheless, Superman and

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Speaker 3: Batman are still in the training data. But what Disney

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Speaker 3: and Warner Brothers and a Universal are all saying is like,

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Speaker 3: whatever you're doing, it's generating copies of our work and

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Speaker 3: you're charging people for it, and you can't do that.

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Speaker 3: And whether it's AI or a photocopy er, you're not

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Speaker 3: allowed to do that.

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Speaker 2: The studios want to be able to use generator YI

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Speaker 2: if and when it makes sense for that, and so

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Speaker 2: by drawing these lines around this particular case, they don't

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Speaker 2: to tie their own hands so.

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Speaker 1: Much to follow. Thank you both for pouring through complaints

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Speaker 1: and rulings. I so appreciate the two of you talking

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Speaker 1: us through this in very simple terms. Really appreciate it,

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Speaker 1: and certainly more to come.

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Speaker 3: Thank you, yep, thank you.

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Speaker 1: Now we turn to Ethan Shanfeld. He describes the rush

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Speaker 1: over the past few weeks in the comedy world as

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Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michael's settled on the final

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Speaker 1: cast lineup. For season fifty one. It's a mad dash

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Speaker 1: for sure. Ethan Shanfeld, intrepid reporter in New York. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for joining me.

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Speaker 4: Thanks for having me, Cynthia.

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Speaker 1: Ethan. You've been reporting in the last couple of weeks

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Speaker 1: on all of the comings and goings at Saturday Night Live.

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Speaker 1: It's an annual late summer ritual. There is cast turnover

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Speaker 1: at the show that, remarkably, after fifty one season, still

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Speaker 1: holds a special place in pop culture. You've written a

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Speaker 1: number of stories about this. What are you hearing out

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Speaker 1: there from people in the comedy world.

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Speaker 4: The main thing is that this type of turnover in

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Speaker 4: the cast happens every few years. We've had one major

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Speaker 4: player leave the show, which is Heidi Gardner. She was

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Speaker 4: on the show for eight years. And then aside from Heidi,

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Speaker 4: we had Devin Walker, Emil Wakim, Michael Longfellow. They've left,

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Speaker 4: and Please Don't Destroy, which is the comedy trio that

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Speaker 4: did a lot of the digital shorts. They've been split

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Speaker 4: up by the show. Ben Marshall has been up to

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Speaker 4: be in the main cast. John Higgins has left the show,

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Speaker 4: and then Martin Harley he will stay on as a writer. Well,

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Speaker 4: you know, they've become known for these sort of oddball

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Speaker 4: digital shorts, sort of reminiscent of the Lonely Island that

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Speaker 4: have featured Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny, a lot of

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Speaker 4: the celebrity hosts.

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Speaker 1: Right, the things that extend the SNL to be talked

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Speaker 1: about throughout the rest of the week, right.

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Speaker 4: And in the last season, their sketches have noticeably been

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Speaker 4: on less than they were in the past, so you

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Speaker 4: could see the trajectory there.

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Speaker 1: Tell us about the newcomers who made the cut this.

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Speaker 4: Year, absolutely, so, there's five new cast members. The cast

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Speaker 4: of the show just keeps growing and growing, which could

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Speaker 4: be a problem for some of these new members as

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Speaker 4: it's harder to break through. So the new faces are

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Speaker 4: Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Colhayne, Cam Patterson, and Veronica Slowakowska. I

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Speaker 4: hope I'm pronouncing that last one right. Some of them

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Speaker 4: have risen online on Instagram and TikTok doing these sort

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Speaker 4: of short videos that have gone viral. Especially Veronica has

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Speaker 4: broken out as one of those new voices in internet comedy,

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Speaker 4: and Cam Patterson, I think is notable because he's a

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Speaker 4: stand up who's mostly known as a frequent guest of

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Speaker 4: the Kill Tony podcast, and kill Tony is definitely a

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Speaker 4: little bit more raunchy, a little edgier than where a

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Speaker 4: lot of the SNL cast comes from. A lot of

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Speaker 4: the SNL cast comes from more of the old comedy scene,

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Speaker 4: more of the improv scene. So Cam comes from from

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Speaker 4: sort of a more club atmosphere where you know, you

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Speaker 4: can't say some of the things that he says on

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Speaker 4: stage on network television. I think that hiring Cam points to,

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Speaker 4: you know, Lauren wanting to get more of the bro

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Speaker 4: comedy audience watching maybe a little bit more of the

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Speaker 4: centrist or even more conservative audience, not to speak of

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Speaker 4: Cam's politics, but just as far as the audience that

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Speaker 4: watches Kill Tony, I was.

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Speaker 1: Wondering if the podcast world would start to seep in there.

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Speaker 1: What's interesting now is, of course people can come up

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Speaker 1: through TikTok, through YouTube. There are so many avenues to

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Speaker 1: get your comedy out. Is doing doing this incredible show

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Speaker 1: and getting this showcase? Is it going to be limiting

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Speaker 1: to other things? What do you hear on this from

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Speaker 1: talking to professionals and talent managers in the comedy world.

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Speaker 4: So I've also talked to agents and managers who have

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Speaker 4: had clients that have turned down SNL, have been offered

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Speaker 4: to be a part of the cast and have decided

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Speaker 4: that it would be better for their careers not to

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Speaker 4: be in SNL. We are in an era where fewer

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Speaker 4: comedy movies and fewer comedy TV shows are being produced

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Speaker 4: than they were ten years ago, and so I still

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Speaker 4: believe that SNL is one of those comedy institutions that

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Speaker 4: people will tune in for every week. So it's really

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Speaker 4: just you have to weigh all of these things. With

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Speaker 4: the Internet being an instant distribution channel for all these people.

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Speaker 4: You know, you can film yourself on your iPhone and

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Speaker 4: go to directly to your audience on TikTok. SNL has

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Speaker 4: to compete with not only other studios, but they have

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Speaker 4: to compete with TikTok and Instagram and every funny person

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Speaker 4: their bedroom.

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Speaker 1: I got to believe that these last couple of weeks

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Speaker 1: for people in the comedy business, this is just like

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Speaker 1: the mad Dash of the year because the decision they

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Speaker 1: have domino effects for other people. Is this the type

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Speaker 1: of year where people are just have the phones glued

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Speaker 1: to their ears and their thumbs.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I think because this year more cast members left

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Speaker 4: than in years prior. There was certainly more of an

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Speaker 4: opening for people. And I know that during the audition

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Speaker 4: process a lot of agents and managers were eagerly waiting

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Speaker 4: to hear about how their clients did, even just texts

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Speaker 4: that went around the town, like oh, Lauren was in

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Speaker 4: the room today, It's still a big deal you hear

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Speaker 4: these almost mythical stories about the SNL audition process.

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Speaker 1: Ethan, thank you for being one of now generations of

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Speaker 1: Variety reporters to cover SNL.

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Speaker 4: Pretty cool, Thanks, Cynthia.

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Speaker 1: As we close out today's episodisode, here's a few things

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Speaker 1: we're watching for. The Murdochs announced the settlement of the

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Speaker 1: big family fight over the family fortune. At first glance,

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Speaker 1: it looks like Lachlan Murdoch one and his siblings are

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Speaker 1: in retreat. Jesse Armstrong was so right. The family dynamics

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Speaker 1: here are the stuff of great drama. Before we go,

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Speaker 1: congrats to Christine Mana. She's joined indie film studio Bleeker

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Speaker 1: Street as executive vice president of Home Entertainment. She's previously

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Speaker 1: worked for Newline Cinema, Relativity, and STX. Thanks for listening.

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Speaker 1: This episode was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton,

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Speaker 1: with contributions from Todd Spangler, Gene Mattis, and Ethan Schanfeld.

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Speaker 1: It was edited by Aaron Greenwald. Stick Snack's hick Picks.

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Speaker 1: Please leave us a review at the podcast platform of

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Speaker 1: your choice, and please tune in tomorrow for another episode

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Speaker 1: of Daily Variety