Paul Stenhouse: Disney and Universal's suit against Midjourney, Call Screening for iOS26, custom CarPlay

Disney and Universal are suing AI image and video generator Midjourney  

With just a couple of sentences you can create your own scene starring Homer Simpson, a Minion, or a Star Wars character. That's cool, but a problem for the studios who own the IP for that content.  

The studios call Midjourney a “virtual vending machine” and “bottomless pit of plagiarism” in their suit.   

Many of these AI companies have been using copyrighted material under "fair use" provisions to train their models, but this lawsuit directly challenges that. The lawsuit seeks damages ($150,000 per infringement) and an injunction that would immediately stop Midjourney’s operations. 

 

Apple is bringing Call Screening to iOS26  

Why are you calling me? That's the question the caller will now need to answer before you decide to pick up. Not interested, ignore them! This builds on the "live voicemail" feature they already rolled out. With this update, telemarketers will need to explain themselves before you answer! Spam calls are a real problem in the USA, so this will come as a welcome relief for many.  

 

CarPlay can now be customized for car makers  

Aston Martin is Apple's first CarPlay Ultra customer. The two collaborated to bring Apple Car Play to the driver's dashboard. So now your maps, music controls and more will be right there, not off to the side screen. But the main CarPlay screen will now have car control capabilities such as air vents, temperature, and driving preferences. It brings the Tesla style experience to more automakers.  

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at be Disney.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And Universal are suing an AI company for the video
generation technology that it has introduced. So basically, if you
want to create your own scene, say starring Homer Simpson
or a Star Wars character, well there is this AI
generator called mid Journey that can do just that, but
for how long. Paul Stenhouse is a texpert, he's with

(00:35):
us this morning.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hey Paul, Hey, Yeah, no, this is causing issues in Hollywood, Jack,
because the people who create this stuff, and let's be honest,
the people who own this stuff, yeah, don't particularly like
it that you can just say, make Homer Simpson do
X or make me a Star Wars character, or have
a minion go down a slide and eat an ice cream.

(00:56):
You know, like you can do any of these things.
And it's getting so good that it is kind of
indistinguishable from the actual content that these people create. And
you know, we pay for it and pay to see
and yeah, they do images, they do video and I
have to say so, they've Disney Universal have teamed up
to sue them. The suit hit court this week and

(01:19):
the studios called it a virtual vending machine. This company
in the Journey and sead it as a bottomless pit
of plagiarism, which is a fantastic I don't know I
came up with that, because that's a great pace, a
bottomless pit of plagiarism. But all these AI companies have
been using copyrighted material right, and they've been doing it
for the chat GPTs of the world too when it

(01:41):
comes to text content, and they're doing all of this
under we're going to get geeky. The copyright kind of
laws have a thing called fair use, and so they're saying, Wow,
this is fair use, and what this lawsuit basically says
is are is not. The lawsuit wants damages of one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars per infringement.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
So when you look at the list in the court
in the suit, it's probably going to be about twenty
million US dollars trying to get in damages. And here's
the thing they really want is the injunction from the
judge that would immediately stop their operations and stop this
stuff from happening. So this is going to be one
of these cases We're starting to see the effects of
AI coming to the quote unquote real world. This one

(02:23):
is going to be a big kind of scene setter
for where we can go with image and video generation
moving forward.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, a scene cetera and a precedentencetera. I would think
when it comes to the you know, the kind of
tensions with these big companies that oversee lots of creative work.
Apple has announced various upgrades for all of its products,
but bringing in call screening. Now, I thought we already
had call screening, but this is a call screening that
puts the onus on the caller.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
It does so people didn't like it. Give me when
caller ad first came out and they said, what you know,
it's a breach in my fat. I don't want to
I don't want to have to do well. Now, yeah,
you're going to have to say why are you calling?
Why are you calling me is the central question for this.
So you can set your phone in this new version
so that it will ask that question, and then you

(03:10):
will need to say why you're calling. And if you're
not interested, you're going to ignore the call. Wow, telemarketers,
I don't think they're gonna like this, are they? The
cold calling salespeople. They're not going to like that. The
I don't know. I guess the church goers. They still
knock on your front door, don't they. So I guess
they're fine. But no, this is a this is a
real problem in the US. We've got a real issue

(03:31):
with spam calls, and this I think is a direct
respons for that. Yeah. I mean, I used to be
one of these people that would answer every phone call
that came to my phone, and now I've turned into
one of those people that has it on silent constantly,
and you know, I never pick it up because I'm
just going to get some robo call that's telling me
that my car tolls haven't been paid. And Jack, I

(03:53):
don't even own a car. Yeah, So so you know,
this is this is the sort of thing that is
going to be really helpful.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
So I can see real utility when you think about
it in the context of telemarketers. But what about if
you just like messing your friends or calling your friends
or someone in your contacts? Does that does it? Do
you have to describe why you're calling them?

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah? I think I'm assuming it's going to be they
haven't given all the details, but I'm assuming there will
be settings. I will guess that because you can even
do things at the moment, like if you call twice
in the same thirty second here overrides you do not disturb.
I have a feeling they're going to be able. You're
going to be able to do some toggling here. But
this is in this next version of iOS now named
iOS twenty six match the future year. Remember they jumped

(04:38):
it up so that it actually now aligns with the calendar, which.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Because it was iOS eighteen or something previously.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
Yeah. Yeah, so this is the this is the reversioning,
and this will be in that So it's going to
be a wee while away, but it'll be interesting to
see exactly how they do rule it out because at
that point, maybe if you have to explain why you're calling,
just send a text.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, yeah, which I'd prefer, no totally. Another big announcement
from Apple at that same conference is that car Play,
so the system that you use when you plug your
Apple phone into your car, that's going to be much
more customizable for different cars.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
So this is a really interesting one because a lot
of car makers have integrated with Android Auto or car
Play and often had their own system as well, and
so there's always kind of been it's never felt very
connected between the two. Right, You've got your kind of
dash over here on one side, and then you've got
the main screen sort of in the middle with your

(05:31):
CarPlay or Android Auto. But Apple is now allowing car
makers to deeply integrate with it, and it goes both ways.
So they've teamed up with Aston Martin, so everyone listening
will be able to get this feature as soon as
it launches, but they've collaborated to make it super integrated,
so that on your main screen you'll be able to

(05:54):
do things like you can in your Tesla, like control
the air and control the temperature and the driving preferences
of your car. But also you'll be able to bring
widgets from your phone, like your music and things like
that directly onto your dash so beside your speedometer, which
is kind of cool, but it's the type of thing

(06:14):
like a lot of these cars have had, but you've
had to use their proprietary software. So this kind of
gives you another option now, but it will have to
be deeply, deeply kind of integrated, and I think Apple
is going to be pretty particular. I imagine with who
they work with which is probably where they started with
Aston Martin.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yes true that thanks so much, Paul, appreciate your time.
As always, that is our Textbert Paul Stenhouse.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks d B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio