📰 News Roundup

• New York Mets x ChatGPT: The baseball team has collaborated with OpenAI to create a fan experience that will launch this week, giving all fans in the stadium a pin badge that turns into an AI powered digital experience when scanned with a phone, as well as an AI field guide, and an AI enhanced photo both for fans.

• Ralph Lauren joins the AI trend: David Lauren, son of Ralph and chief branding and innovation officer at the RL powerhouse has launched Ask Ralph, a conversational AI-powered fashion styling helper for users of its U.S. app. Trained on decades of Ralph Lauren archives and lookbooks, Ask Ralph can suggest outfit options for events and answer fashion questions.

• Holy Smokes Batman! Warner Bros is suing Midjourney for “brazenly dispensing” imagery of Warner Bros IP, including Superman, Batman and Scooby Doo. The lawsuit states: “It is hard to imagine copyright infringement that is any more willful than what Midjourney is doing here.”

• 490 million and change: A report by AI research institute Epoch AI has concluded that xAI and Musk spent $490 Million to train Grok 4. The report also details the energy, water and CO2 costs of the project, which you can check out here.

• Oakley drop what we all wanted: Oakley launch the performance meta AI glasses, the product everyone wanted in the first place. A huge wraparound shape reminiscent of Oakley’s heritage, meta AI linked to Strava to monitor your performance, and a camera moved from the rims to the center of the glasses. The future is here?

• Anthropic’s possible $1.5 Billion bill gets paused: In a court case over Anthropic’s pirated use of 3,000 books, a judge has paused the settlement, with authors now worried the case may unravel. “We’ll see if I can hold my nose and approve it” Judge Alsup stated.

🤖 What to expect from the LA Summit

Join us on November 19th in Los Angeles for the second Artist and the Machine: AI & Creativity Summit; a private event at a secret location in the city where culture and technology collide. As the creative landscape shifts, we're gathering a cross-disciplinary community of artists, studios, founders, brands, and technologists to explore where we're headed: and how we can shape it together. We'll dig into key themes like:

✨ Power Plays & Paradigm Shifts — The fundamental moves that industry leaders - top brands, studios, big tech and institutions - are making now and why they'll reshape everything.

✨ New Creative Economies — Revenue unlocks, IP monetization, and the emerging creator economy.

✨Wild Imagination vs. Replication — Are we truly pushing creative boundaries or just automating the old playbook? We'll explore all mediums - from video to experiential to robotics and more.

✨Humans at the Heart — Artists as stewards of authentic, brand-driven creativity in an automated world.

✨Human-Algorithm Partnership — Designing for human agency, alignment, and flourishing in creative collaboration.

✨The Studio Revolution — How legacy institutions and new creator-native models are colliding to redefine creation and distribution.

🛠️ Tool Of The Week: App Connectors by Perplexity

Perplexity’s App Connectors let you pull answers and take action across apps and files from one place, instead of bouncing between tools. You can ask it to surface the latest project updates from Notion, check on a pull request in GitHub, or draft an email—all within the same interface. Security is built in with SOC 2 compliance, encryption, and clear data controls, so teams can manage information confidently. On a personal level, this can be especially useful when setting up for a meeting or planning the week: rather than digging through email, notes, and docs, you can gather context quickly and start with a clear view of what’s important.

Try out App Connectors HERE

To find out more on the free trials click HERE

🤖 Summit Spotlight: Shantell Martin

Shantell Martin is a globally recognized artist celebrated for her signature black-and-white line drawings that explore identity, connection, and storytelling. Her practice spans fine art, technology, design, and performance, with collaborations including the New York City Ballet, MIT Media Lab, and Puma.

Speaking on the Pioneers of AI podcast, Martin speaks about her viewpoint on artist’s rights with AI. Explaining how technology could have been built with a different direction from the inception, during this current AI boom:

“Suddenly, we’ve forgotten creative systems like Creative Commons. You’re taking work so there should be attribution, there should be credit, and these are things that could have been built in from the bottom. OpenAI could have built these things from the ground up, with the Creative Commons license. That’s where the flaw is, there wasn’t the right intention there.”

When asked what the most important thing about being human in the AI era, she responds:

“Connection and community are more important than anything”

Shantell Martin will be speaking at our LA Summit in November, more info on her, the summit and tickets HERE

🏆 Chroma Awards

The Chroma Awards is an AI Film, Music Video, and Games competition to unite creators, communities, and companies across the world. Chroma is offering $1M+ in free trials to educate, empower, and spotlight the next generation of creatives to compete for $175,000+ in cash prizes.

🛜 Follow @artistandthemachine

Remember to follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn as we get closer to our AI & Creativity summit in Los Angeles.

Til next time,

Dani Van de Sande (Founder), James Joseph (The Weekly Newsletter’s Editor) & the Artist and the Machine team.

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