Fighting IP theft with AI and Hollywood dealmaking – Business News
Mike Ovitz has spent a long time watching Hollywood lose billions to piracy. Now, armed with artificial intelligence and a few telephone calls to the world’s largest music executives, the legendary energy participant thinks he’s lastly discovered a strategy to struggle back.
“The entertainment and media business has been on the defensive on IP theft from day one,” Ovitz informed me. “For the first time in history, we are on the offense not the defense.”
The Hollywood insider, 78, has been within the mental property trenches for many years. He co-founded Creative Artists Agency in 1975 and served as its chairman for 20 years. It was the period of tremendous brokers, and Ovitz was one of probably the most notable within the business, repping high expertise like Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg. He left CAA in 1995 and joined Disney as president, however he clashed with CEO Michael Eisner and departed after 16 months — with a hefty severance package deal. He then shifted his focus to Silicon Valley, the place he started investing in and advising high corporations like Palantir and GoodRx in addition to companies like Andreessen Horowitz.
Mike Ovitz spent a long time as a tremendous agent in Hollywood earlier than embracing technology and making investments in corporations like Palantir and GoodRx. Courtesy of Mike Ovitz
Now, working with AI professional Walter De Brouwer, Ovitz has launched Sound Patrol, a analysis lab that may detect piracy, forgery and copyright infringement. They consider they’ve discovered a resolution to IP theft in music — with plans to develop past audio.
“I don’t think that what Walter’s team came up with was doable 12 months ago,” he mentioned. “The power of AI is beyond comprehension.”
Sound Patrol depends on neural fingerprinting — an superior audio technology that offers totally different sounds fingerprints to establish them — which has been personalized by De Brouwer.
Mike Ovitz spoke on the All-In Summit final 12 months about tech, Hollywood, and the long run of media. All-In Podcast/ YouTube
Unlike Shazam, which solely matches precise copies, Sound Patrol can detect distorted variations, manipulated audio, and AI-generated tracks that incorporate fragments from copyrighted works. The system operates as what the company calls a large-scale “24/7 surveillance system” monitoring for unlicensed exercise in actual time.
It’s a downside that has plagued the leisure industry for ages, and Ovitz is combating it in a method befitting a Hollywood veteran — dialing for {dollars} and making offers.
“I picked up the phone and called my longtime friend Lucian Grainge who runs Universal Music,” Ovitz mentioned. “We both agreed that piracy has been the bane of the existence of IP holders for as long as anyone can remember. The minute I told him what it was about … he said I’m in.”
Mike Ovitz, pictured talking during The Museum of Modern Art Film Benefit, has an in depth artwork assortment and is a trustee at MoMA. Getty Images for Museum of Modern Art
He struck a comparable deal with Sony after talking with high executives Rob Stringer and Dennis Kooker; Warner has but to signal on.
Sony and Universal are allowed to deploy the technology nevertheless they need — whether or not which means sending warnings to infringers, issuing takedown calls for by their legal departments or selecting to take no motion in any respect.
De Brouwer additionally helps music labels reaching licensing agreements with AI corporations, believing regulation will help distinguish official use from “unfair and criminal” purposes of the technology.
Top Stanford scientist Walter De Brouwer is behind the Sound Patrol’s AI technology. Courtesy of Walter de Brouwer
But music is simply the place to begin. The founders see their neural fingerprinting technology as relevant to any kind of media — and past.
The technology works throughout what De Brouwer calls the “four modalities” of human communication: sound, voice, textual content, and imaginative and prescient. That means it may finally detect manipulated videos, deep pretend voices, fraudulent promoting and misinformation throughout any social media platform.
“Music is actually the hardest part to get into,” De Brouwer defined. “Once you can do it in music, you can do it in the rest of the entertainment [industry].”
Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, has embraced Sound Patrol. Getty Images
Crucially, the system can hint content material back to its source — figuring out if one thing was created by AI, which model model was used and how it was distributed. The company has already introduced plans to develop into video and sports activities content material safety.
Sound Patrol operates on a subscription-based model, with main labels like Universal and Sony paying for entry to its monitoring technology and real-time dashboards. This enterprise-focused strategy, reasonably than concentrating on particular person artists, has allowed Sound Patrol to shortly scale and place itself as industry infrastructure.
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Ovitz sees IP safety as only the start. “The power of the algorithms that Walter and his team have created, the policing of IP protection is the tip of the iceberg for what this can do,” he mentioned. “We’re going to use what we’ve developed for every conceivable kind of theft or untruth.”
Their ambitions lengthen to combating deepfakes in political promoting, fraudulent medical claims on social media, and artificial content material designed to deceive. Both founders emphasised that the power to differentiate actual from pretend content material is important not only for leisure, however for democracy and public health.
“We’re on the one-inch line, but we are an inch further than anybody else,” Ovitz mentioned.
Mike Ovitz, pictured with Tamara Mellon, is bringing his Hollywood dealmaking abilities to his new tech company. Getty Images for MoMA
Of course, avoiding a world that doesn’t mirror the dystopian plot of “Mountainhead” — through which a social media platform’s deep-fake video instruments spark international chaos, riots, and assassinations — appears not possible to do with out some type of authorities help.
When I requested whether or not Sound Patrol has the power to resolve this on its own, Ovitz mentioned he sees a need for a company like his to work with the federal government, however not depend upon it to encourage innovation.
“A public-private partnership that has to take place,” he informed me. “I do believe that the private technology community has got to take a leadership position here.”
And Ovitz, who has seen the problem of copyright and IP theft threaten Hollywood from the period of VHS tapes to CDs to Napster, mentioned he has by no means been more optimistic about how AI can clear up this myriad of issues.
“The fact that technology today, for the first time ever, has allowed us to police these issues … it’s fantastic.”
