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Nicolas Cage told a New York ComicCon panel that he refused to sign Amazon’s AI waiver for Spider-Noir, a series Amazon cancelled after one season and 11 Emmy nominations (Variety). Meanwhile more than two dozen staffers at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette tell Wired that executives are having ChatGPT and Claude write publicity copy and emails to literary agents, and that HarperCollins drafted dozens of employees as “AI Champions” (Wired). One industry source tells the Guardian that AI-made ads can cost up to 60 percent less, which worries Luke Scott, who runs Ridley Scott Associates, about a “lost generation” of directors who would have learned on ad shoots (The Guardian).
SiriusXM replaced its Raw Comedy channel, which played tracks from more than 800 comedians a month at $15 a spin, with a channel owned by Sebastian Maniscalco that played 275 last month, three-quarters of the plays going to its top 50 (CBC). Deniz Göktaş, the Turkish stand-up convicted of insulting Erdoğan after 88 days in custody, used his courtroom defense to argue that if leaders can be this fragile about jokes, comedy has power (The New York Times).
And from the physical, practical world of dance, Ballet Des Moines, Iowa’s only professional resident dance company, spends about $45,000 a year on 300 pairs of pointe shoes and is raising $10,000 by October 31 (KCCI).
All of the stories we collected this weekend, below. See you tomorrow.