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Majors, Believe, BMG, Concord, HYBE and more propose chart eligibility rules for AI music
A coalition of major and independent music companies — including Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Believe, BMG, Concord and HYBE Corp. — has proposed a set of principles governing when AI-assisted recordings can qualify for official music charts. Announced on 29 July 2026, the framework aims to draw a clear line between…
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Major Record Labels Call to Disqualify AI Slop Songs From Global Charts
Nearly a dozen major record companies, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, have called on global music chart organisations to introduce rules disqualifying much of the so-called “AI slop” flooding streaming services. The proposed principles would only allow AI-generated tracks onto charts if the AI use is authorised and lawful, the…
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Encore AI raises $30M to build AI agents that learn from customer calls
Encore AI, a startup that builds AI voice agents trained on companies’ own customer interactions, has raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Team8. The funding matters because it reflects growing investor appetite for AI agents that don’t just automate generic customer service scripts, but learn from a specific organisation’s most successful…
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“Let’s Not Allow Our Own Demise”: Willie Nelson Sounds Alarm Over Threat to Rural America
Country music legend Willie Nelson, approaching his 93rd birthday, has spoken out against plans to build an artificial intelligence data centre in his hometown of Abbott, Texas. Rather than focusing on AI’s ability to mimic musicians’ voices and styles, Nelson centred his objection on the environmental and social toll such facilities take on small rural…
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Is AI facing a big financial reckoning?
Sharp falls in the share prices of major chip makers have fuelled investor concern that enthusiasm for artificial intelligence-related stocks is cooling. Korean firms SK Hynix and Samsung have dropped 46% and 35% respectively over the past month, with US chip giants Micron and Intel also falling sharply, as investors question whether demand for AI…
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What happens when you put AI to work deciphering lost languages?
An AI engineer’s claimed breakthrough in decoding Linear A, the undeciphered Bronze Age script of Minoan Crete, illustrates both the promise and the limits of using artificial intelligence to tackle ancient languages. Unlike previously deciphered scripts, Linear A and Etruscan lack a “bilingual anchor” such as the Rosetta Stone or a confirmed relative language, making…
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AI storage boom is keeping Seagate’s hard drives spinning
Seagate says the AI infrastructure boom is driving unprecedented demand for its high-capacity hard drives, as cloud providers race to buy mass-storage hardware to cope with data generated and retained by AI applications. The company reports that datacentre customers now account for around 90 percent of its exabyte shipments, and long-term supply agreements have already…
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Willie Nelson Lashes Out at AI Data Center Construction in Texas: ‘Loud, Water-Thieving, Light Polluting’
Country music legend Willie Nelson has publicly criticised plans to build a large AI data centre near his hometown of Abbott, Texas, warning it would harm the local community and environment. In an open letter posted to X, the 93-year-old singer, who owns a home and farmland in the area, described such facilities as “loud,…
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AI insiders ask Uncle Sam to help slow the race they started
More than 1,200 employees from leading AI companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta, have signed a petition urging the US government to help develop tools that could deliberately slow the pace of automated AI research if it begins to outstrip industry’s ability to understand or control it. Senior figures such as Anthropic’s Dario…
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Artists are lawyering up against AI slop, and some are even winning
A growing wave of writers, illustrators and musicians is taking artificial intelligence companies to court over the unauthorised use of their work to train AI models, with several lawsuits progressing and some artists claiming early wins. The Verge profiles a number of these cases, including that of author Kirk Wallace Johnson, who discovered his books…