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Tupac Shakurs estate is none too happy about Drake cloning the late hip-hop legends voice in a Kendrick Lamar diss track. Billboard reported Wednesday that attorney Howard King, representing Mr. Shakurs estate, sent a cease-and-desist letter calling Drakes use of Shakurs voice a flagrant violation of Tupacs publicity and the estates legal rights. Drake (Aubrey Drake Graham) dropped the diss track Taylor Made Freestyle last Friday, the latest chapter of the artists simmering decade-long feud with Pulitzer and 17-time Grammy award winner Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior / Engraving your name in some hip-hop history, an AI-generated 2Pac recreation raps in Drakes track. If you deal with this viciously / You seem a little nervous about all the publicity. Representing Shakurs estate, King wrote in the cease-and-desist letter that Drake has less than 24 hours to pull down Taylor Made Freestyle, or the estate would pursue all of its legal remedies to force the Canadian rappers hand. The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupacs voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult, King wrote, according to Billboard. The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupacs voice and personality, King wrote. Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupacs publicity and the estates legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use. SnoopDogg.com Taylor Made Freestyle also used AI to clone Snoop Doggs voice, with Drake using digital clones of two of Lamars west-coast hip-hop influences to try to hit him where it hurts. In a video posted to social media the following day, Snoop didnt appear to know about the track. They did what? When? How? Are you sure?, the 16-time Grammy nominee and herb connoisseur said. Why everybody calling my phone, blowing me up? What the fuck? What happened? What's going on? I'm going back to bed. Good night, he continued. Engadget emailed Snoop Doggs management to ask about his thoughts on Drake cloning his voice. At the time of publication, we hadnt heard back. The saga contains more than a bit of irony if not outright hypocrisy from Universal Music Group (UMG), the label representing Drake. You may remember the track Heart on My Sleeve by Ghostwriter977, which briefly went viral last year. It was pulled after UMG complained to streaming services because it used an AI-generated version of Drakes voice (along with The Weeknd). Engadget asked UMG if it approved of Drakes use of AI-generated voices in Taylor Made Freestyle and where it stands on the broader issue of using artists digital clones. We havent received a comment at press time. Without a clear explanation, its hard not to see the label as being on the side of whatever seems most financially advantageous to it at any particular moment (surprise!). Laws addressing AI-cloned voices of public figures are still in flux. Billboard notes that federal copyrights dont clearly cover the issue since AI-generated vocals typically dont use specific words or music from the original artist. Mr. King, speaking for Shakurs estate, believes they violate Californias existing publicity rights laws. He described Drakes use of Shakurs voice as forming the false impression that the estate and Tupac promote or endorse the lyrics for the sound-alike. Last month, Tennessee passed the ELVIS (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security) Act to protect artists from unauthorized AI voice clones. The first-of-its-kind legislation makes copying a musicians voice without consent a criminal Class A misdemeanor. But none of the parties involved in this feud are in Tennessee. On the federal level, things are moving much more slowly, leaving room for legal uncertainty. In January, bipartisan US House legislators introduced the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications Act (No AI FRAUD), putting cloned voices like those Drake used in the governments crosshairs. Congress hasnt taken any public action on the bill in the more than three months since. It is hard to believe that [Tupacs record label]s intellectual property was not scraped to create the fake Tupac AI on the Record, King wrote in the cease-and-desist letter. He demanded Drake offer a detailed explanation for how the sound-alike was created and the persons or company that created it, including all recordings and other data scraped or used.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tupacs-estate-threatens-to-sue-drake-for-his-ai-infused-kendrick-lamar-diss-182518997.html?src=rss
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World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch fans who were looking forward to getting together at BlizzCon in November may be disappointed to learn that Blizzard has canceled this year's edition of the event. The publisher didn't give a clear reason as to why it made that decision, but said it was "not made lightly as BlizzCon remains a very special event for all of us, and we know many of you look forward to it." Even so, BlizzCon isn't necessarily gone for good, unlike E3. "While were approaching this year differently and as we have explored different event formats in the past, rest assured that we are just as excited as ever to bring BlizzCon back in future years," Blizzard wrote in a blog post. The publisher plans to spill the beans about expansions (including the upcoming three-part WoW saga and Diablo IV DLC) for its franchises at other events, such as industry trade shows and Gamescom. Now that Blizzard is under Microsoft's umbrella, we can probably expect some news from the publisher at the annual Xbox showcase in June. There are also in-person events lined up for Overwatch esports and to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Warcraft. BlizzCon 2023 was the first in-person edition since 2019, so to miss out once again in 2024 may come as a blow for many fans. Now they'll likely need to wait until at least late 2025 to meet up with a bunch of their peers and Blizzard developers again.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/blizzcon-2024-is-canceled-174906497.html?src=rss
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Reddit is back after a major outage forced the entire site offline. All told, the outage lasted under an hour before company techs fixed the backend problem, according to an official status page. This outage impacted each and every page of the internet's favorite collection of disparate community forums. Reddit's fix looks to be working just fine, as everything is loading on my end. The site experienced another outage last year, which also was patched in under an hour. Those Reddit engineers do good work. Update, April 25 2024, 1:39PM ET: This story has been updated to include the fact that Reddit engineers have fixed the problem and that the site is back. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/reddit-is-completely-down-so-good-luck-finding-cute-cat-pictures-172755445.html?src=rss
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