Every published Top AI Stories item tagged with Arts, Entertainment & Recreation, newest first.
ByteDance released Seedance 2.5 on July 31, extending a single generation to 30 seconds with multi-round extensions the company says can build multi-minute pieces that hold a consistent audiovisual language. The model accepts up to 30 reference images, ten video clips, and ten audio clips at once, and adds timestamp-level audio and video editing, green screen, and camera perspective control. It is live in Jimeng and Doubao Pro; the company lists programmatic access through BytePlus ModelArk as coming soon.
Google put Lyria 3.5 into Flow Music, its consumer song-generation app, with richer melodic structure, closer adherence to lyric prompts, more emotionally nuanced vocals and better pronunciation, plus finer control over tempo and duration. It arrives as a free upgrade for existing Flow Music users rather than a new paid tier. Flow Music is Google's most direct answer to Suno and Udio, and Lyria is now the model underneath it.
Streaming service Deezer said fully AI-generated songs have, for the first time, passed 50 percent of its daily uploads — roughly 90,000 tracks a day, up from 44 percent in April. The flood barely registers with listeners, accounting for just 1 to 3 percent of streams, up to 85 percent of which Deezer flags as fraudulent. The company is tagging AI tracks, cutting them from recommendations and playlists, and removing fraud-linked and long-unstreamed uploads. "We have reached a pivotal moment," CEO Alexis Lanternier said.
In its copyright fight with Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros., Midjourney filed a motion to widen discovery — demanding the studios disclose how they use generative AI internally, not just in consumer products. Midjourney argues the studios are "cherry-picking" documents and hiding evidence that they do "exactly what they are suing Midjourney for doing." The gambit aims to bolster a fair-use defense by showing that the studios themselves lean on AI trained on copyrighted work.
Google DeepMind and the independent film studio A24 announced a research partnership that pairs the lab's researchers with A24's filmmakers to develop new creative tools and production workflows, with Google also taking an undisclosed equity stake in the studio. The companies named no specific models and set no fixed deliverables, framing it as open-ended, exploratory work. It is a notable move as frontier labs court Hollywood, arriving amid ongoing tension over AI's role in creative work.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences approved new eligibility rules on Friday that disqualify AI-generated performances and AI-written screenplays from the 99th Academy Awards in March 2027. Acting nominations now require performances "demonstrably performed by humans with their consent," and the Academy reserved the right to demand details on AI usage in any submitted film. Industry tension after the Val Kilmer deepfake in *As Deep as the Grave* and the AI "actress" Tilly Norwood pushed the rule shift; the changes also widen international-feature eligibility via major festival wins.