Austin-based venue owners, professors, lawyers, musicians and I spoke on a panel this week on stronger AI regulations for musicians at the Far Out Lounge. Organized by ATX Musicians in solidarity with protests at large record labels in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville, calling for a musician union and artist protections. 

The panel discussed Data centers and Udio’s AI partnership and Universal Music Groups (UMG)’s patents. I detail them in this week’s newsletter. 

Austin city council is weighing investment opportunities with environmental impacts of inviting data centers builds, reports Austin Current. City Council Member Ryan Alter said the city has ways to protect Austin’s resources while contributing to the economy. City Manager T.C. Broadnax has until July to decide whether data centers are allowed within city limits and under what conditions. 

About half of all data center builds have been delayed or canceled due to lack of resources, Bloomberg reports. 

An exponentially growing digital footprint requires data centers to store users emails, iCloud, Google Drive, Uber Eats, websites, text messages, music streaming, video streaming and more. Cities and counties attract new builds mainly through tax breaks, but ultimately generate revenue for public funds. 

“Our success depends on more investment and more revenue to cover the services our growing city needs and our residents want,” Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said. “Our peer cities recognize this reality and have built robust economic development programs of their own.”

Data Annotators in Kenya label all content recorded with Meta glasses, Swedish newspaper discovers. Users send bank information, intimate videos, and the face geometries of passerby in the glasses’ “always-on” mode. 

“I will continue to relentlessly stand up to any company that threatens the privacy and safety of Texans,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Meta’s glasses raise serious concerns, and my office will thoroughly investigate these devices to ensure that no individual is being unlawfully recorded, tracked, or subjected to the unauthorized collection of their data.” 

College student Anh Phi Nguyen and Caine Ardayfo modified the glasses to dox passerby to highlight privacy concerns, in 2024. Meta plans to include facial recognition in future updates. 

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The lawsuit turned partnership between Udio, Universal Music Group and Warner shifted the AI music platform’s direction towards control. 

They are building a new, “walled garden” version of its platform – where users can make songs in the style of opted-in rights holders, but cannot download the music from the platform to distribute elsewhere. 

“Having spent probably a unique amount of time talking about this with artists, there is trepidation but also excitement about what can be done,” Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez said. “control is really the fundamental building block – (particularly) control over how songs are distributed.” 

UMG has filed 60 patents ahead of licensing and distribution issues under a new company, Music IP Holdings Inc. Notable patents uses AI to mediate rights holder consent for AI generated tracks and embeds a digital watermark on the output. You can read 9 of the patents here.