Val Kilmer’s Daughter Responds to Criticism of AI Performance, Says Late Dad Wanted to ‘Set Precedent; TODAY, April 29, 2026

  Scott Stump, TODAY; Val Kilmer’s Daughter Responds to Criticism of AI Performance, Says Late Dad Wanted to ‘Set Precedent’

"Val Kilmer’s daughter explained why her family supports an AI-generated version of the late actor appearing in an upcoming movie, which has sparked a fierce debate in a Hollywood industry on edge about AI taking jobs from actors.

Mercedes Kilmer, 34, spoke on TODAY April 29 about an AI-generated version of the late star of "Top Gun," "The Doors" and "Tombstone" appearing as Father Fintan, a priest and Native American spiritualist in the upcoming movie "As Deep as the Grave." 

She said her father "wanted to do this" out of a desire to create "structures for actors to own their licensing and to have rights.""

Supreme Court tosses $1B copyright verdict in record companies' battle over illegal internet downloads; Fox News, March 25, 2026

Eric Mack, Fox News ; Supreme Court tosses $1B copyright verdict in record companies' battle over illegal internet downloads

"The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Wednesday that internet providers are not liable for copyright infringement by their users, delivering an opinion in Cox v. Sony and tossing a $1 billion verdict."

Supreme Court Sides With Internet Provider in Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music; The New York Times, March 25, 2026

Ann E. Marimow, The New York Times ; Supreme Court Sides With Internet Provider in Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music

Leading music labels sued Cox Communications for failing to terminate accounts of subscribers flagged for distributing copyrighted music.

"The Supreme Court unanimously said on Wednesday that a major internet provider could not be held liable for the piracy of thousands of songs online in a closely watched copyright clash."

Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment; SCOTUSblog, March 25, 2026

SCOTUSblog; Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment

"Holding: Internet service provider Cox Communications neither induced its users’ infringement of copyrighted works nor provided a service tailored to infringement, and accordingly Cox is not contributorily liable for the infringement of Sony’s copyrights.

Judgment: Reversed and remanded, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Thomas on March 25, 2026. Justice Sotomayor wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment, joined by Justice Jackson."

Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations; Tom's Hardware, February 9, 2025

 Jowi Morales

 , Tom's Hardware; Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations

"Facebook parent-company Meta is currently fighting a class action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition, among others, with regards to how it trained LLaMA. According to an X (formerly Twitter) post by vx-underground, court records reveal that the social media company used pirated torrents to download 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen. It then used this information to train its AI models.

The evidence, in the form of written communication, shows the researchers’ concerns about Meta’s use of pirated materials. One senior AI researcher said way back in October 2022, “I don’t think we should use pirated material. I really need to draw a line here.” While another one said, “Using pirated material should be beyond our ethical threshold,” then they added, “SciHub, ResearchGate, LibGen are basically like PirateBay or something like that, they are distributing content that is protected by copyright and they’re infringing it.”"