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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 Issues

America First? Not When It Comes to Your Health.

Via @NYTOpinion

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/opinion/trump-defunding-medical-research.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g08.mOpN.8RxO3TiyIk9A&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Trump’s environmental policies are reshaping everyday life. Here’s how.

The president’s rollbacks and funding cuts are affecting your food, water, and air — even if you don’t realize it.

https://grist.org/politics/trumps-environmental-policies-are-impacting-your-daily-routine/

Trump Shrank Staffing of National Parks. See How Many Are Struggling.

Amid deep cuts, more than 90 parks have reported problems like lost revenue and cuts to emergency services. One expert called this “a dangerous path.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/us/politics/trump-cuts-national-parks.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hU8.IVNw.CwZ31aQ2J8Zv&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Technology

Anthropic Settles Major AI Copyright Suit Brought by Authors

The case stems from Anthropic’s downloading of over 7M books from pirated “shadow libraries” LibGen and PiLiMi. Anthropic faced damages worth up to $150K for each intentional infringement.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/anthropic-settles-major-ai-copyright-suit-brought-by-authors

Anthropic Lawsuit Update from Authors Guild

Critical Next Steps

• If you are not an Authors Guild member and there is a chance that Anthropic downloaded your books from LibGen or PiLiMi, fill out this contact form to be notified by the lawyers representing the class action with information about the settlement.
• If you are an Authors Guild member, your information has already been provided to the class action attorneys under a court order. You don’t need to submit a contact information form to the lawyers, though you may if you want to.
• Secure your rights to out-of-print books. If any of your traditionally published books are out of print, make sure you document the reversion of your rights. This ensures you’ll be entitled to the full share of settlement money for the book.

https://authorsguild.org/news/anthropic-lawsuit-update-settlement-reached-with-pay-out-to-authors/

How Perplexity’s new revenue model works, according to its head of publisher partnerships

Perplexity opened a $42.5M pool to pay publishers from subscription revenue from AI browser comet. 80% is shared w partner publishers, including Der Spiegel, Time, & Fortune.

https://digiday.com/media/how-perplexity-new-revenue-model-works-according-to-its-head-of-publisher-partnerships/

Perplexity sued by Japanese media giants for stealing information and presenting false information

The news comes one day after Perplexity introduced a new revenue-sharing plan for publishers.

https://www.engadget.com/ai/perplexity-sued-by-japanese-media-giants-for-stealing-information-and-presenting-false-information-133048116.html

Wired & Business Insider remove ‘AI-written’ freelance articles

Other publications published questionable articles by the same person, going by the name of Margaux Blanchard. Most stories contained unverified people, casting doubt on whether any quotes or facts are real.

https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-journalism/wired-and-business-insider-remove-ai-written-freelance-articles/

AI translation service launched for fiction writers and publishers prompts dismay among translators

ICYMI UK-based GlobeScribe is charging $100 per book, per language for use of its services, but translators say that nuanced work can only be produced by humans.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/08/globescribe-ai-translation-service-fiction-writers-publishers-prompts-dismay-among-translators

Group of French publishers to use tool to detect AI in manuscripts

ICYMI

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/group-of-french-publishers-to-use-tool-to-detect-ai-in-manuscripts

European Creative Industries Unite to Condemn AI Act Implementation on IP Rights

ICYMI A coalition of 39 organizations, representing millions of European creators from music, film, publishing, and the visual arts, has formally rejected the EU AI Act’s implementation measures.

https://ppc.land/european-creators-reject-ai-act-implementation-measures/

A.I. Is Coming for Culture

We’re used to algorithms guiding our choices. When machines can effortlessly generate the content we consume, though, what’s left for the human imagination? A look at the potential future of personalized, AI-generated entertainment, and how it could both submerge human originality and enable new forms of expression.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/01/ai-is-coming-for-culture

Netflix wants its partners to follow these rules when using gen AI

Netflix requiring partners to disclose AI use – must not infringe copyrights, store or reuse production data, or replace talent with digital likenesses without consent.

https://www.theverge.com/netflix/764433/netflix-gen-ai-production-guidelines

Google Secretly Uses AI on Videos at YouTube

YouTube used AI to enhance videos on its Shorts platform without informing creators, altering details like skin texture, clothing, and facial features. Experts warn that AI-mediated editing blurs the line between reality and digital manipulation.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250822-youtube-is-using-ai-to-edit-videos-without-permission

Can artists really stop AI from stealing their work?

Tools like Glaze and Nightshade aim to muddle AI training, while lawsuits and legislation target AI companies directly. But researchers warn defenses may never fully hold.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91394281/can-artists-really-stop-ai-from-stealing-their-work

Qwen-Image Edit gives Photoshop a run for its money with AI-powered text-to-image edits that work in seconds

https://venturebeat.com/ai/qwen-image-edit-gives-photoshop-a-run-for-its-money-with-ai-powered-text-to-image-edits-that-work-in-seconds/

AI Watches You Sleep—And Other Big Smart Home Systems

AI-powered home systems are rapidly transforming everyday life, with innovations like Eight Sleep’s biometric-tracking mattress that creates a digital twin of users to optimize sleep in real time. Using sensors to monitor heart rate, breathing, movement, and temperature, the mattress can adjust conditions to improve rest and even integrate data from wearables. Beyond sleep, other AI-driven devices are reshaping the home: Aura Air predicts allergen spikes, Suvie’s robot chef prepares meals on schedule, GE’s smart mixer adapts to environmental factors, and Ring’s drone camera enhances security. Additional innovations include AI-tinted windows, smart locks, predictive fire detectors, and household robots like Ecovacs’ vacuum-mop hybrid and Foldimate’s laundry folder. Together, these examples illustrate how once-futuristic automation is becoming mainstream, raising questions about how much personal automation people really want in their homes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwerner/2025/08/24/ai-watches-you-sleep-and-other-big-smart-home-systems/

Microsoft Word now automatically saves new documents to the cloud

Microsoft 365 Insiders are now testing changes to how documents are saved in Word for Windows.

https://www.theverge.com/news/767522/microsoft-word-automatic-document-save-cloud-default

How to Make AI Work for You: The Author’s Guide For Visibility

MT @craicer SEO is changing now that AI is being used more often. So how do you manage now to get the word out about your books?

https://badredheadmediallc.substack.com/p/how-to-make-ai-work-for-you-the-authors

What the Agentic AI Era Means for Business—And for Humanity

HT @ValaAfshar Via @benioff We are at the beginning of the Agentic Era, the most significant transformation of work in history. For the first time, machines can perform not only repetitive tasks, but cognitive work once reserved for humans. These AI agents–which can reason, adapt, and act on their own–are already reshaping thousands of companies and will ultimately touch every job and every person.

https://time.com/7312641/agentic-ai-era-humans/

Salesforce builds ‘flight simulator’ for AI agents as 95% of enterprise pilots fail to reach production

Salesforce launched three major AI research initiatives to address the gap between promising demos and real-world enterprise performance. Central to this is CRMArena-Pro, a “digital twin” simulation platform that stress-tests AI agents on realistic business tasks like customer service and supply chain disruptions. Salesforce also introduced the Agentic Benchmark for CRM, measuring AI readiness across accuracy, cost, speed, trust and safety, and sustainability, and unveiled new data-cleaning tools such as Account Matching to unify messy enterprise records. The announcements come amid heightened security concerns after a breach exploiting OAuth tokens exposed vulnerabilities in Salesforce-integrated tools.

https://venturebeat.com/ai/salesforce-builds-flight-simulator-for-ai-agents-as-95-of-enterprise-pilots-fail-to-reach-production

We must build AI for people; not to be a person

RT @mustafasuleyman AI’s value is precisely because it’s something so different from humans. Never tired, infinitely patient, able to process more data than a human mind ever could. This is what benefits humanity. Not an AI that claims to feel shame, jealousy, fear + so on.

https://mustafa-suleyman.ai/seemingly-conscious-ai-is-coming

Amazon quietly blocks AI bots from Meta, Google, Huawei and more

RT @benedictevans Amazon is now blocking AI scraping from Meta, Google and other LLM systems, which means they won’t send purchasing traffic to Amazon (or will send less), but also means they won’t have access to all of that SKU-level data and reviews about products.

https://www.modernretail.co/technology/amazon-expands-its-fight-to-keep-ai-bots-off-its-e-commerce-site/

Spotify is adding DMs

Spotify launches a DM feature to let users share audio and send text-based messages, available to mobile users over 16 years old in “select markets” this week. Both Free and Premium accounts can share audio content and send messages to each other.

https://www.theverge.com/news/765771/spotify-messages-dms-audio-sharing-feature

Bland, easy to follow, for fans of everything: what has the Netflix algorithm done to our films?

When the streaming giant began making films guided by data that aimed to please a vast audience, the results were often generic, forgettable, artless affairs. But is there a happy ending?

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/aug/28/bland-easy-to-follow-for-fans-of-everything-what-has-the-netflix-algorithm-done-to-our-films

Publishing & Media

Simon & Schuster Leader to Step Down

ICYMI Jonathan Karp, the chief executive since 2020, will oversee a new imprint that publishes six books a year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/books/review/jonathan-karp-simon-and-schuster.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hE8.oKwj.YAXS1ahucH8U&smid=tw-share

NEA cancels decades-long creative writing fellowship

Alice Walker. Charles Bukowski. Louise Erdrich. Juan Felipe Herrera. These are just some of the authors who received a Creative Writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts over the years. The fellowship has now been canceled. The annual program was set up in 1966 to help foster American fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The latest iteration of the fellowship offered fiction and creative non-fiction writers a $50K grant. Applications were due in March and notifications were set to go out in December. But last week, notices were sent to applicants stating: “The NEA has cancelled the FY 2026 Creative Writing Fellowships program.”

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/26/nx-s1-5518202/nea-cancels-creative-writing-fellowship

Books Aren’t Magic Empathy Pills (But They Help)

https://lithub.com/books-arent-magic-empathy-pills-but-they-help/

How Publishing Has Changed Since 2015

Via @janefriedman

https://janefriedman.com/how-publishing-has-changed-since-2015/

Wikipedia Enters Partnership with Dow Jones

Journalism from Dow Jones & Co, including the Wall Street Journal, has become available to editors of Wikipedia

https://talkingbiznews.com/media-news/wikipedia-strikes-deal-with-dow-jones-publications/

Why you should make the library a model for your business

Business leaders should strive to build environments where people feel inspired, curious, and connected. The public library can show you how.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91379648/why-you-should-make-the-library-a-model-for-your-business

Why Shop? In Maine, the Library of Things Has It All (Almost).

HT @benedictevans One town’s effort to make pricey items accessible and encourage people to buy less stuff seems to be catching on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/climate/maine-library-of-things.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ik8.f3Yd.au_UL5GzKQsW&smid=tw-share

SiriusXM Becomes Top Player in Podcasting

SiriusXM has become a dominant player in podcasting, representing half of the top 20 podcasts in the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/business/media/siriusxm-podcasts-alex-cooper-mel-robbins.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hE8.i6BE.yCml28vzwzI0&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Microsoft Taps More Publishers for LinkedIn

LinkedIn has expanded its video advertising program, adding new publishers and creator-led shows.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/linkedin-deepens-video-ad-push-taps-more-publishers-creators-spur-growth-2025-08-25/

Art, history books out of students’ reach due to overreaching bans

Tennessee banned books that depict humans unclothed – even if the photos in question are of 3000-year old statues.

https://pen.org/art-history-books-out-of-students-reach-due-to-overreaching-bans/

Resources & Opportunities

WMG Luncheon with Molly Jong-Fast

9/10 12-2pm, Barbetta Restaurant, NYC. $65 members, $75 non-members. Join WMG for a very special luncheon featuring outspoken journalist, political commentator, columnist, and podcaster Molly Jong-Fast. Jong-Fast returns to WMG to discuss her New York Times bestselling book, How To Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir. The only child of the groundbreaking feminist writer Erica Jong, whose influential 1973 novel, The Fear of Flying, influenced the founders of WMG, Jong-Fast examines her childhood of privilege set against the backdrop of an erratic mother who was often inaccessible and focused primarily on herself. When her mother slips into dementia, Jong-Fast struggles with “the bereft, broken feeling of something ending before it ever got the chance to start.”

https://www.womensmediagroup.org/event-6277261

WMG Job Seekers with Susan McCulloch and Susan Gordon

Are you looking for a job, underemployed, or planning to pivot? Women’s Media Group is pleased to offer our second Job Seekers event of the year to share tips and support. Come join us for a free, virtual, members-only session. Connect with each other, hear from an expert, and come armed with questions! Former WMG Membership Chair Susan McCulloch will be in conversation with fellow WMG member Susan Gordon, owner of Lynne Palmer Executive Recruitment, Inc. FREE, Members Only, 9/25 12-1pm ET via Zoom.

https://womensmediagroup.org/event-6312933

Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library

Patrons of all ages who are blind, low vision, or who have a disability that makes it hard to read standard print, can get free accessible materials in a wide range of formats including braille, talking books, magazines, and more, at Heiskell Library

https://www.nypl.org/locations/heiskell

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