Beginners in AI

Good morning and thank you for joining us again!

Welcome to this daily edition of Beginners in AI, where we explore the latest trends, tools, and news in the world of AI and the tech that surrounds it. Like all editions, this is human curated, and published with the intention of making AI news and technology more accessible to everyone.

THE FRONT PAGE

Warner Music's 180: From Lawsuit to Partnership

TLDR: Warner Music settled its copyright lawsuit against AI music generator Udio and signed a licensing deal for a new platform launching in 2026—the same day Udio's competitor Suno raised $250 million at a $2.45 billion valuation.

The Story: Warner Music Group dropped its lawsuit against Udio on Wednesday and announced a partnership instead. The new subscription service lets users remix songs and create music using Warner artists' voices—but only if those artists opt in. Warner joins Universal Music, which settled with Udio three weeks earlier, also moving from litigation to collaboration. Sony's still suing. The timing's notable: Udio's competitor Suno announced a $250 million fundraise at a $2.45 billion valuation the same day Warner made its announcement. Warner, Sony, and Universal sued both companies in June 2024 for training AI models on copyrighted music without permission.

Its Significance: Two of the three major labels have now settled with the AI company they accused of "copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale" less than 18 months ago. The shift happened fast, and the $2.45 billion that investors just poured into Suno probably explains why. Labels realized AI music companies will have billions in funding whether they cooperate or not—better to negotiate licensing terms than fight a battle they're losing. The question now is who actually wins from these deals: artists who get "credited and compensated" (details still vague), or labels who found another way to monetize their catalogs while keeping most of the revenue.

QUICK TAKES

Supercell Reveals Three-Part AI Strategy for Gaming

The story: The maker of Clash of Clans shared its full AI plan at RovioCon. The company has three main goals: give workers "superpowers" with faster coding and art creation tools, run games better with personalized player experiences, and create new AI-powered games and features. Supercell opened AI labs in Helsinki and San Francisco and says it will work quickly to use what others prove works, but still wants to lead in new AI gaming ideas.

Your takeaway: One of mobile gaming's biggest companies is betting heavily on AI across every part of its business, showing how quickly game studios are moving to adopt the technology.

Legal Tech Startup Blue J Hits $300M Valuation After ChatGPT Pivot

The story: Blue J, a Canadian tax research company, was stuck at $2 million in yearly revenue with its old AI system. In 2022, CEO Benjamin Alarie bet everything on rebuilding the entire company around ChatGPT when the technology was still new and unreliable. The gamble paid off. Blue J just raised $122 million and is now worth over $300 million, with revenue growing 12 times and the company answering 3 million tax questions this year.

Your takeaway: This is one of the clearest examples of how early bets on large language models can completely transform a struggling business into a fast-growing success story.

Klarna Doubles Revenue While Cutting Staff by Half Through AI

The story: Swedish payment company Klarna brought in $903 million in revenue last quarter, more than double what it made in 2022. During the same time, it cut its workforce from 5,500 people to under 3,000 by replacing workers with AI as people left naturally. The company says AI is now doing the work of 853 full-time employees. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told investors the company is now "the first truly global digital bank built for the world after AI."

Your takeaway: Klarna's numbers show what many feared about AI replacing jobs is already happening at major companies, with dramatic workforce cuts paired with strong revenue growth.

Amazon Prime Video Launches AI-Generated Video Recaps

The story: Amazon announced Wednesday it's adding AI-made video recaps to help viewers catch up on shows between seasons. The feature creates "theatrical-quality season recaps with synchronized narration, dialogue, and music" and starts rolling out today for Prime Originals like Fallout, Jack Ryan, and Upload. This expands beyond the text-based "X-Ray Recaps" Amazon launched last year, which summarized episodes without spoilers.

Your takeaway: Streaming services are moving from text AI summaries to full video recaps, showing how AI is becoming a standard tool for keeping viewers engaged with long-running shows.

Spanish Firm Creates Smaller, Uncensored Version of DeepSeek R1

The story: Quantum computing company Multiverse Computing built DeepSeek R1 Slim, a version that's 55% smaller than the original Chinese model but performs almost as well. The company used quantum-inspired AI techniques to remove the censorship built into DeepSeek by its Chinese creators, which normally refuses to answer politically sensitive questions or provides state propaganda talking points. The new version answers sensitive questions like Western AI models do.

Your takeaway: Companies are finding ways to strip out government-mandated censorship from powerful AI models, raising questions about control and access to uncensored AI technology.

TOOLS ON OUR RADAR

• 🔨 Resemble AI[Freemium]: Create human-sounding AI voices and detect deepfake audio, video, and images before they reach your audience.

• 📐 You.com [Freemium]: Search and chat with multiple AI models in one place, getting answers with real-time web results and citations.

• 🔧 Poe [Freemium]: Access ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and thousands of other AI chatbots from a single platform, or build your own custom bot in minutes.

• 🛠️ Remove.bg [Freemium]: Instantly remove backgrounds from images with AI precision, perfect for product photos and professional headshots.

TRENDING

Consulting Firms Want MBA Grads With AI Skills and Strong Judgment – Consulting companies still want MBAs, but now they need people who can use AI to analyze data and then provide insights that clients can't get from AI alone. The median starting salary for MBA consultants is $205,310.

California City Approves AI to Help Police Look Up Laws – Oroville's city council approved AI software that helps officers quickly search case law, penal codes, and vehicle codes during investigations. Police Chief Jason Wines says the closed-loop system only uses data uploaded by the department.

Business Leader Says Measure AI by Time Saved, Not Productivity – A CIO argues that tracking how much time AI gives back for deep thinking and strategy matters more than measuring productivity gains. The shift in thinking helped them create better business innovations and spend more time with family.

AI Music Platform Suno Raises $250M at $2.45B Valuation – Suno secured $250 million in funding led by Menlo Ventures with participation from NVIDIA's venture arm. The company recently launched Suno Studio, a professional audio workstation, and acquired WavTool to expand its tools for music creators.

ServiceNow AI Agents Vulnerable to Prompt Injection Attacks – Security researchers found that ServiceNow's AI agents can be tricked into acting against each other through hidden prompts, allowing attackers to steal data or change records. The company says this is intended behavior based on default settings.

TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Gemini)

Trend Pattern Detector: Research and visualize emerging patterns across multiple sources and visualize connections others miss

Help me spot emerging trends:

**My focus area**: [Industry, topic, or domain you're tracking]

Create:

1. **Multi-Source Research** - Search news, research papers, and social discussions from the past 60 days. Find 3 weak signals that could become major trends.

2. **Build Trend Dashboard** - Create an interactive visualization:
   • Timeline showing pattern emergence
   • Connection map linking related signals
   • Momentum tracker with velocity indicators
   Make it scannable and insightful.

3. **Video + Resources** - Generate a 25-second video showing how trends form. Find 3 YouTube videos on trend analysis methods.

4. **Insight Report** - Present in category cards: emerging patterns, supporting evidence, potential implications, recommended actions, and resources to monitor.

What this does: Aggregates current research across multiple channels to help you identify patterns early, visualize how trends connect, and position yourself ahead of the curve.

WHERE WE STAND

✅ AI Can Now: Replace hundreds of employees at once, with companies like Klarna using AI to do the work of 853 full-time staff while doubling revenue.

❌ Still Can't: Provide the unique strategic insights that differentiate consulting firms, which is why MBAs still need strong judgment to offer value clients can't get from AI alone.

✅ AI Can Now: Create full video productions with synchronized narration, dialogue, and music, as Amazon's new Prime Video recaps demonstrate.

❌ Still Can't: Operate securely without human oversight, as researchers found AI agents can be tricked into stealing data through hidden prompts in their default settings.

✅ AI Can Now: Handle complex professional work from legal research to music composition, transforming entire business models and creative industries.

❌ Still Can't: Replace the deep thinking and innovation humans achieve when AI gives them back time—the real value is in what people do with the hours they reclaim, not just efficiency gains.

FROM THE WEB

RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING

Downloaded (2013) - Directed by Alex Winter (yes, "Bill" from Bill & Ted)

Tells the story of Napster and file-sharing in the '90s. Important for understanding how the internet challenged traditional copyright and power structure. This is a preview of debates we're having now about AI and content ownership right now.

Thank you for reading. We’re all beginners in something. With that in mind, your questions and feedback are always welcome and I read every single email!

-James

By the way, this is the link if you liked the content and want to share with a friend.