Reuters World News - What to expect from Trump's arraignment and who owns AI art?

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Who owns the rights to AI-generated art? We dive into a legal grey area with billions of dollars at stake. New York awaits Donald Trump’s arraignment. What Jack Ma’s return means for China. Los Angeles’ property millionaires make a quick buck. OPEC and its allies surprise markets. Plus the latest from Bakhmut, St Peter’s Square and the Midwest’s devastating tornadoes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, who owns what comes out of an AI engine? We delve into the multi-billion dollar question bedeviling the world of AI-generated art. Plus, OPEC and Allies surprise markets, what Jack Ma's return means for China, and all the latest from Bahmoud, the Middle East and the Midwest's devastating tornadoes. It's Monday, April 3rd. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines. 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vinal in London. We start in New York, where the arraignment of Donald Trump looms over the city. Police have erected barricades and blocked roads in advance of any protests.

The former president is expected to fly in Monday and stay the night in Trump Tower before his court appearance on Tuesday afternoon. Trump will be fingerprinted and photographed at the Manhattan courthouse. But don't expect handcuffs or a perp walk. His lawyers say, that's unlikely because of the security risk. After the arraignment, Trump will head back to Florida to give a prime time address. His supporters have already been gathering outside his Mar-a-Lago compound.

Thank you, President. A Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump in a case involving a hush money payment to Porn Star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to his 2016 election. He says he's completely innocent, accusing Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, Democrat of trying to hurt his re-election race against Joe Biden.

Now, for the rest of the news making headlines around the world. Russian authorities have launched a murder probe after well-known military blogger Vlardin Tatarsky was killed in a bomb blast in a St. Petersburg cafe. Yvgeny Pregotsen, the founder of the Wagner Mercenary Group, said that the cafe previously belonged to him. He said he had given the cafe to patriotic activists who had been holding meetings there. Separately, Progotson is claiming that his forces have taken the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, but there's been no confirmation from Ukrainian officials of its fall.

Israel is moving forward with plans to create a national guard and a major victory for right-wing security chief Itemar Bingavir. Bingavir wants the unit to focus on Arab unrest. Political rivals say it will be used as a sectarian militia. The form and leadership of the new unit have yet to be determined. Former Kosovo president Hashem Thachi is on trial in the Hague, accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges stem from an insurgency in the late 1990s

that eventually brought about the country's independence from Serbia. Thachi and three co-defendants, all former members of the guerrilla-Cosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, pleaded not guilty. The cleanup has begun across the Midwest and South after a violent storm system tore through several states. At least 32 people were killed in the tornadoes. You didn't really, you had no idea it was doing this much damage out here. It was so fast.

Jane Smith picks through the pieces of her splintered home and win, Arkansas. I guess that's our roof. More storms are expected this week across the region. Pope Francis is back at the Vatican. in time for Easter week. God my, God about with bronchitis sent the pontiff to the hospital.

But he was discharged on Saturday and led a two-hour mass in St. Peter's Square the next day. The Vatican has said the 86-year-old will take part in the full array of Easter events this week. It's the busiest period in the church calendar. Now, oil prices are surging

after a surprise output cut by OPEC and its allies. Carmel Crimmons is here with the latest. That's right, OPEC and its allies blindsided financial markets with a surprise production cut of more than 1 million barrels. That's bad news for consumers, an anomalous sign for global inflation. The White House of the decision was ill-advised, and its impact was immediately felt. Bread oil futures have jumped by nearly $4 a barrel,

and it's now priced at over $83 a barrel. And Goldman expects that to hit $95 a barrel by the end of this year and $100 next year. The oil price move has also narrowed the odds of another Fed interest rate hike. Jack is back. Jack Ma, that is, China's most famous entrepreneur. He went into self-imposed exile more than a year ago after Beijing cracked down on his empire and the broader tech sector.

His fortunes are viewed as a barometer of Beijing's attitude towards private enterprise. So what does his return mean? Reuters Smeet Chartergeet breaks it down. In many ways, it's an indication that the government is really looking to improve the sentiment of the private businesses. China has a new premier now, Nietzscheank, who is known to be very business friendly. He wants them to look for growth and expansion. And therefore, any indication that Tajikma is welcome to come back to the country, people in many ways see that this is a signal that finding the regulatory thought is coming.

What does a former business rock star do after exile? Have we got any ideas? So Jack Ma has his own foundation, which is involved with a lot of charitable work. He has a school that he co-founded with a couple of his former colleagues at Alibaba. He has also involved himself in agricultural activities and he's very, the other beats of media reports that he has been learning about users of technology in the agricultural sectors. All right. Sounds like a busy guy. Thank you very much, Sumit Chattagy. The exponential use of generative AI has sparked a new legal conundrum.

Who owns AI-generated content? One lover of graphic novels in New York City decided to find out. Legal reporter Tom Hals has been following the copyright case of Chris Kastanova. Chris used an AI program called Mid-Journey to generate the images for the novel. Here's Tom and Chris on this landmark case. Chris was typing in things like, you know, Central Park, New York. Desolate, deserted, futuristic New York.

skyscrapers. It was getting back these images of like crumbling skyscrapers and overgrown Central Park and really wild stuff. Out of this came an 18-page story called Zaria of the Dawn. It featured a character resembling the actress Zendaya who roams a deserted futuristic Manhattan. Chris talked about publishing this graphic novel that they created. And on social media, people immediately said, waste of your time, don't do it. You can't copyright it because he made it using generative AI. So Chris decided, well, I'll just copyright the novel and see what happens. They posted a image of the copyright on Instagram saying, yeah, I've set a precedent. This proves it you can get a copyright for art generated using artificial intelligence. The Copyright Office saw

that. The Copyright Office said that it doesn't matter how much effort it takes. It matters how much creativity it takes. You didn't tell us he used artificial intelligence. You told us you created it. You didn't tell us a machine created it. The arrangement and my story, because I wrote myself, those things are copyrighted, but every single image by itself aren't. So they canceled the copyright. That raised the question of who owns the copyright. There's a computer scientist named Stephen Thaler in Missouri. He says he owns the artwork of every, Everything created by his machine in the same way a farmer owns all of the output of the trees in an orchard. Other people argue nobody owns the output of these things.

There's another whole side of this. And that's the way the machines are trained on other people's copyrighted work. So now the argument is that the work those machines are creating is actually an active infringement. The big question comes down to, when you hold a camera up to your eye and snap a picture, you have a pretty good idea what the lighting is going to be. You can control the framing. you can control the composition and whatnot. You know, taking the camera and sending it off from the world and saying, come back with a bunch of pictures for me to the landscape.

And the argument is that's what AI is doing. You don't really know what you're going to get. And that's really what the question is, is how much do you exert control over the output? And the Copyright Office says it matters how much you have control and who exerts that control and whose expression is reflected in the ultimate work, man or machine. The Copyright Officer and Mid Journey declined to comment, Tom. The office has noted its decision to revoke the copyright was specific to Zaria and the use of Mid Journey.

They indicated a different result might be possible with another piece of AI-generated work. So Kastanova is working on a new novel that will once again test the limits of the law. If I do AI or not, it's going to be here. So if I can teach artists how to use it, maybe they'll can keep their jobs and take advantage of it. Spare a thought, if you would, for the well-heeled homeowners of Los Angeles this Monday morning. A new mansion tax that took effect over the weekend has seen many of them shed property investments. A 4% levy on homes above $5 million and 5.5% on homes above $10 million is designed to provide funding for the city's homelessness crisis. Despite having the backing of most voters, the measure is bad for business,

says Celebrity Realtor and star of the Netflix reality series, Selling Sunset, Jason Oppenheim. The markets are having a very difficult time. Real estate's having a very difficult time because of inflation and because of high interest rates. He also takes issue with the name Mansion Tax. Because really, what does $5 million get you anyway? Not exactly a mansion in Los Angeles.

That's it for Reuters World News. on Tuesday. Don't forget to subscribe or follow us on your favourite podcast app. In the meantime, you can find more trusted news at Reuters.com.