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Authors push back as publishers and agents make claims on Anthropic settlement

Authors report publishers and agents wrongly claiming shares of Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement, which pays $3,000 per pirated work across roughly 500,000 titles.

Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement, given final approval in July, pays $3,000 per pirated work for nearly 500,000 titles, split 50-50 with publishers for in-print books. Authors including April Henry report publishers claiming payments for works whose rights reverted years ago, and some agents claiming percentages despite not being rightsholders. Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger attributes the disputes to poor recordkeeping rather than deliberate overreach. Full author claims require rights reversion before the settlement's August 10, 2022 download date.

TechCrunch · AI · 10d agoAI industry

Meta debuts its Muse AI agent. Will consumers trust it?

Meta launched Muse, a consumer AI agent powered by Muse Spark that connects to users' apps to execute tasks like emailing, booking travel, and payments.

Meta introduced Muse, a personal AI agent for US users that connects to email, calendars, payments, shopping, and other services to execute tasks such as booking travel, lowering bills, and completing purchases via Link by Stripe. The agent runs in a dedicated Muse Secure VM with a separate Sentinel agent kept apart at the system level, and Meta claims it cannot see passwords or payment data and does not share conversations with ad systems. Muse is free to start, with Power ($20/month) and Maximum ($100/month) subscription tiers, and is available on the web, iOS, Android, and WhatsApp, with Meta AI glasses support planned. The launch follows Meta's $18 billion multistate consumer-harms settlement and comes as rivals like Gemini Spark and Claude Cowork push agentic AI.

TechCrunch · AI · 8d agoAI industry 3 sources1

The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn’t make it

TechCrunch compiles a running list of failed AI products and startups, including Relay, OpenAI's Sora, Humane AI Pin, Notion Mail, and Microsoft's Recall.

TechCrunch's 'AI graveyard' tracks notable AI products and startups that shut down or underperformed, citing S&P Global data that about 42% of AI initiatives are abandoned. Examples include the Relay automation startup, OpenAI's Sora video platform (shut March 2026), ChatGPT Atlas browser (discontinued August 9), Notion Mail (shutting September 22), and Apple's delayed Siri AI that contributed to a $250 million settlement. Hardware failures include the Humane AI Pin ($230 million raised, assets sold to HP for $116 million) and the Rabbit R1, which sold 100,000 units but received poor reviews. Microsoft's Recall feature remains controversial after a researcher demonstrated a tool extracting its captured data.

TechCrunch · AI · 1d agoAI industry1

OpenAI stuck fighting Musk antitrust suit after Apple finds a way out

Musk voluntarily dismissed all antitrust claims against Apple but continues pursuing OpenAI over alleged ChatGPT-iPhone chatbot market monopolization.

Elon Musk filed court papers confirming all claims against Apple over its ChatGPT iPhone integration are resolved, agreeing never to raise them again. He refuses to drop parallel claims that OpenAI used the non-exclusive Apple deal to monopolize the chatbot market. OpenAI has dismissed the suit as harassment as Musk's AI firm, now called SpaceXAI, races to catch up.

Ars Technica · AI · 2d agoAI industry

Meta’s AI agent Muse is now the No. 2 app in the US

Meta's agentic AI app Muse ranked No. 2 on the US iOS charts with 83,000+ downloads, trailing Threads and ChatGPT launch pace.

Sensor Tower data shows Muse was downloaded over 83,000 times on iOS in the US, climbing from 4th to 2nd on the App Store, but below Threads' 4.3 million launch-day downloads and ChatGPT's 500,000 first-week installs. The Android version ranks only No. 338 in the Productivity category on Google Play. Muse launched days after Meta's $18 billion multistate settlement over social media consumer harms. Rival agent Instinct, valued at $2.5 billion with $350 million available, recently added Stripe and 1Password integrations.

TechCrunch · AIupdated · 1h agofirst · 6d agoAI industry 12 sources1