While I focus on Technology, Innovation, and Publishing, because I have a platform, I also flag items that I think are important. I also try to include some resources & opportunities. Please let me know what you think.

Important Items

The Supreme Court’s disastrous new abortion decision, explained

The Republican justices just nuked much of federal Medicaid law, in order to spite Planned Parenthood.

https://www.vox.com/scotus/417844/supreme-court-medicaid-abortion-medina-planned-parenthood-south-carolina

Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ could mean slower Wi-Fi for you

The Senate version of the budget reconciliation bill could force the FCC to sell off as much as half of the spectrum used by the 6GHz Wi-Fi band.

https://www.theverge.com/news/694479/senate-bill-reduce-capacity-6ghz-wifi-band

Technology

Anthropic wins key AI copyright case, but remains on the hook for using pirated books

Anthropic has won a major legal victory in a case over whether the artificial intelligence company was justified in hoovering up millions of copyrighted books to train its chatbot. In a ruling that could set an important precedent for similar disputes, Judge Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of CA said Anthropic’s use of legally purchased books to train its AI model, Claude, did not violate U.S. copyright law.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-ai-copyright-case-claude/

Mixed Decision in Anthropic AI Case: Authors Guild Responds to Summary Judgment in Bartz v. Anthropic

According to the court’s order, Anthropic downloaded >7M books from pirate sites and digitized millions of purchased print books to build a “central library of ‘all the books in the world’” to support the training of its large language models. It is undisputed that Anthropic made unauthorized copies from illegally downloaded books and in doing so committed mass copyright infringement; the question before the court was which—if any—of these actions were excused as “fair use,” permitted under the law. As such, the court addressed whether the following actions were fair use:

The copying of pirated and scanned books in training AI;
Scanning lawfully purchased print books into digital form; and
Downloading, building, and retaining a permanent digital library of pirated books.

The court ruled that both #1 and #2—the acts of training Claude on books, however obtained, and digitizing purchased (i.e., legally acquired) print books for internal storage—constituted fair use. However, it found that #3—for Anthropic to knowingly download and copy pirated books for its library (from which it made subset copies to train its AI)—was not fair use. The case will proceed to trial on this issue and the resulting damages.

https://authorsguild.org/news/mixed-decision-in-anthropic-ai-case/

Meta wins AI copyright case, but judge says others could bring lawsuits

Meta prevailed against a group of 13 authors, including Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, in a major copyright case involving the company’s Llama AI model. The judge wrote that it “is generally illegal to copy protected works without permission,” but in this case, the plaintiffs failed to present a compelling argument that Meta’s methods caused “market harm.” The U.S. District Judge left the door open for other authors to bring similar AI-related copyright lawsuits against Meta.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/25/meta-llama-ai-copyright-ruling.html

The Courts Just Made Our Libraries Sitting Ducks For AI Plundering

There’s a difference between writing a parody and feeding someone’s work into a billion-parameter model so it can sound convincingly like a novelist without hiring one.

https://lithub.com/the-courts-just-made-our-libraries-sitting-ducks-for-ai-plundering/

Microsoft sued by authors over use of books in AI training

Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and several others alleged that Microsoft used pirated digital versions of their books to teach its AI to respond to human prompts.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/microsoft-sued-by-authors-over-use-books-ai-training-2025-06-25/

Time’s up for platform privilege

The U.S. legal system is sending a clear message: innovation and growth aren’t an exemption from the law.

https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2025/06/26/times-up-for-platform-privilege/

Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers

“We want our publishers to stand with us. To make a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.”

https://lithub.com/against-ai-an-open-letter-from-writers-to-publishers/

Fanfiction writers battle AI, one scrape at a time

In April a user scraped 12.6M fanfics from the online repository Archive of Our Own (AO3) and uploaded the dataset to Hugging Face, a company that hosts open-source AI models and software. This caused an outcry from the fanfiction writer community.

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/688640/fanfiction-ai

AI chatbots need more books to learn from. These libraries are opening their stacks

Harvard is releasing 1m books, published as early as the 15th century, in 254 languages, to AI researchers. Boston’s public library to release troves of old newspapers and government documents.

https://apnews.com/article/ai-chatbot-training-data-libraries-idi-e096a81a4fceb2951f232a33ac767f53

News Corp Staffers Wary of In-House AI Tool

Journalists at three Rupert Murdoch newspapers have reported concerns after training sessions for an in-house AI tool

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun/20/news-corp-bets-big-on-ai-tools-but-journalists-voice-concerns

Why Hearst built an AI voice assistant tool for Delish

A weekend experiment has become an AI voice assistant on Delish, helping home cooks follow recipes hands-free.

https://digiday.com/media/why-hearst-built-an-ai-voice-assistant-tool-for-delish/

Axel Springer Hopes To Build A New AI-Driven Business

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/406919/axel-springer-hopes-to-build-a-new-ai-driven-busin.html

iHeart’s Podcast Platform Goes Multilingual with AI

iHeartMedia Podcasts Go Multilingual with AI: iHeartMedia announced that it is making some of its top podcasts available in multiple languages by using AI.

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/iheartmedia-podcasts-go-multilingual

The music industry is building the tech to hunt down AI songs

Rather than focus on takedowns, the industry now rapidly developing infrastructure to detect, trace, & license AI-generated content, potentially transforming licensing into a $10B market by 2025

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/686767/music-industry-ai-song-detection-tracking-licensing

Curated realities: An AI film festival and the future of human expression

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/06/curated-realities-an-ai-film-festival-and-the-future-of-human-expression/

Graphic artists in China push back on AI and its averaging effect

“I think it forces both designers and clients to rethink the value of designers. Is it just about producing a design? Or is it about consultation, creativity, strategy, direction, and aesthetic?”

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/688645/graphic-artists-china-ai

The photographer using AI to reconstruct stories lost to censorship

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/688648/almagul-menlibayeva-ai-reimagining-censored-government-work

The End of Publishing as We Know It

Many news publishers see AI as a near-term existential threat that undermines “a key pillar” of the digital-revenue model

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/06/generative-ai-pirated-articles-books/683009/

As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

Google’s AI search features are killing traffic to publishers, so now the company is proposing a possible solution. Google launched Offerwall, a tool that allows publishers to generate revenue beyond the more traffic-dependent options, like ads. Offerwall lets publishers give their sites’ readers a variety of ways to access their content, including through options like micropayments, taking surveys, watching ads, and more. In addition, Google says that publishers can add their own options to the Offerwall, like signing up for newsletters.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/26/as-ai-kills-search-traffic-google-launches-offerwall-to-boost-publisher-revenue/

Singapore’s National Library Board Brings Books to Life with AR Spectacles

HT @FoSTorg Singapore’s National Library Board (NLB), in partnership with technology provider Snap and agency LePub Singapore, are exploring the use of Spectacles, Augmented Reality glasses powered by Snap OS, to enable readers to be immersed in the different worlds of the story they are reading. Developed for Snap Spectacles, the experience with books and stories will be enhanced with audio-visual AR effects in real-time. The Augmented Reading Lenses work by scanning the book while the person is reading it, and uses text recognition and machine learning to provide audio and visual effects. This includes creating soundscapes that use suspenseful music to set the scene, sound effects like doors creaking or distant chattering, plus visuals and effects that complement the storyline.

https://lbbonline.com/news/Singapores-National-Library-Board-Brings-Books-to-Life-with-AR-Spectacles

Told one minute at a time, micro dramas are soap operas designed to fit in your hand

HT @FoSTorg Inspired by China’s $5 billion micro-drama boom, apps like ReelShort, DramaBox, and DramaWave are delivering fast-paced, cliffhanging stories in 60‑second vertical episodes. With tens of millions of downloads in the past month, vertical dramas are redefining serialized storytelling, offering instant payoff for a hyper‑fast entertainment economy.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/19/nx-s1-5330470/micro-drama-soap-opera-app

WhatsApp rolls out AI-generated summaries for private messages

Meta’s AI can write a catch-up summary of messages you’ve missed.

https://www.theverge.com/news/693310/whatsapp-ai-message-summaries-meta

WhatsApp ditches its no-ads policy

Users who link their Facebook or Instagram accounts to WhatsApp will get ads that are personalized beyond just their location, language, and channel-following data.

https://www.morningbrew.com/stories/2025/06/17/whatsapp-ditches-its-no-ads-policy

Runway is going to let people generate video games with AI

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/694531/runway-ai-video-games-generate

Meta is offering multimillion-dollar pay for AI researchers, but not $100M ‘signing bonuses’

https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/27/meta-is-offering-multimillion-dollar-pay-for-ai-researchers-but-not-100m-signing-bonuses/

AI Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts

Recent studies have found that those who use large language models like ChatGPT tend to converge around common words and ideas. It makes our brains less active and our writing less original. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/ai-is-homogenizing-our-thoughts

We Need to Chat(GPT)

A 16-yr old student to ChatGPT: Slowly, your voice started to replace my own, and I couldn’t write a paragraph without wondering how you would say it. The more I relied on you, the less I challenged myself. It turns out, there’s a name for this: Cognitive offloading. A study published in the journal Societies found that frequent reliance on A.I. tools negatively affects critical thinking skills, as it reduces the mental effort of tasks. Additionally, teachers have already noticed effects, finding traces of A.I. through the lifeless and more generic works their students are turning in. Increased reliance on A.I. takes away from our ability to challenge ourselves and develop ideas that are truly original. And I’ve felt that myself: a sense of uncertainty whenever I don’t have your guidance invading my ideas.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/learning/we-need-to-chat-gpt.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

New data highlights the race to build more empathetic language models

Leading AI models outperform humans on emotional intelligence tests. While emotional AI assistants promise improved mental health support, they raise concerns over manipulation and unhealthy attachments.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/24/new-data-highlights-the-race-to-build-more-empathetic-language-models/

Disney & Amazon Advertising Units Team Up

This will give advertisers direct access to Disney premium inventory on Disney+, ESPN, Hulu & others. Amazon also forged major pact w Roku, giving advertisers access to >80% of U.S. connected-TV households.

https://deadline.com/2025/06/disney-amazon-advertising-streaming-1236434775/

Netflix-TF1: Landmark Deal Sets Stage For More Partnerships Around The World

Netflix to stream all 5 of France’s TF1 channels plus more than 30K hourso of programmingm which will be available on-demand. Netflix is poised to strike more aggregator-style deals. This deal is equivalent of NBC, or another major American network, handing over its output to Netflix.

https://deadline.com/2025/06/netflix-tf1-deal-sets-stage-more-partnerships-1236437762/

Publishing & Media

‘It opened up something in me’: Why people are turning to bibliotherapy

“Bibliotherapy” has been soaring in popularity as a means of improving people’s wellbeing. But getting it right depends on the book, and the person.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250616-how-bibliotherapy-can-both-help-and-harm-your-mental-health

Local bookstores are thriving. They’re doing so in different ways.

From hosting events and pouring drinks to posting on TikTok and stocking “romantasy” novels, booksellers are finding various paths to success post-COVID

https://www.timesunion.com/business/article/local-independent-bookstores-upstate-20338887.php

A Travel Ban Reading List: 50+ Books to Broaden Your Horizons

HT @AuthorsGuild “Only 3% of books published in the United States are works in translation as opposed to countries like France where 45% of the books are works in translation.” Bookmark this list: PEN America with a travel ban reading list full of must-reads.

https://pen.org/a-travel-ban-reading-list/

Tool to identify poisonous books developed by University of St Andrews

Arsenic was historically mixed with copper to create a vivid green for book covers, which can irritate modern day readers

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jun/06/tool-to-identify-poisonous-books-developed-by-university-of-st-andrews

Anna Wintour Stepping Down as Vogue U.S. Editor-in-Chief After 37 Years

https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/anna-wintour-stepping-down-vogue-us-editor-in-chief-1236441835/

Trump Reportedly Cuts Funding for Publisher of Prestigious Nature Journals and Scientific American Magazine

Springer Nature currently has 19 active contracts with federal agencies, including a $5.2 million contract to provide subscriptions to the company’s portfolios of journals.

https://gizmodo.com/trump-reportedly-cuts-funding-for-publisher-of-prestigious-nature-journals-and-scientific-american-magazine-2000620234

EveryLibrary Institute Releases “The Censorship Acceleration, An Analysis of Book Ban Trends After 2020” Report

Since 2020, efforts to censor books have shifted from isolated incidents to a nationwide movement, driven by well-funded political and religious organizations.

https://www.infodocket.com/2025/06/20/everylibrary-institute-releases-the-censorship-acceleration-an-analysis-of-book-ban-trends-after-2020/