Together with
Coffee and gratitude. Happy Monday, FutureParty people. Before we kick off the week, we just want to give a special shout-out to everyone who’s been helping to fuel the editorial team as of late. Your cups of kindness are what keep us going (literally), so thank you. It’s much harder to type when your hands are shaking from caffeine withdrawals. ☕
In other news… influencers get banned, self-checkout falls from grace, and the music industry sues Anthropic.
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CREATOR ECONOMY
Antiviral // Illustration by Kate Walker
Public places are banning influencers
The Future. Despite the creator economy thriving, more cafes, businesses, and even towns are deciding the influencer exposure isn’t worth the headache. That’s potentially bad news for micro-influencers who rely on a steady flow of content to stay in the conversation… but it could be uniquely beneficial for brands and businesses looking to create “offline” experiences that every influencer wishes they could document.
Anti-influencing
Influencers may no longer be trending, according to Mashable.
Dae, a design shop and cafe in Brooklyn, instituted a no photos-and-videos policy (other than a quick snap) because influencers have “gotten a bit out of control for us.”
Pomfret, a town in Vermont, closed access to tourists of its most-photographed public spaces because influencers had caused the area too much damage.
Andorra, a micronation in Europe, is even instituting new laws to curb the migration of YouTubers.
And in recent years, a hotel in Ireland and a cafe in Taiwan also put up that “No Influencers” sign.
Why would businesses and local governments be against the free publicity provided by influencers? There are several reasons.
They can’t handle the popularity — it draws too many people for businesses without enough resources or space.
The wave of customers that influencers bring in (and just want to get a photo) can scare off long-term customers — a more sustainable business model.
Influencers often want to exchange content for goods or services, which some businesses have found isn’t a fair trade most of the time.
None of this means influencing is going away… but the industry may be contracting as brands try to focus on allocating resources to influencers who can truly move the needle. Influencer marketing agency Linqia recently found brands are increasingly preferring to partner with “macro-influencers” if they want to make a splash on socials.
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MUSIC
Hearing double // Illustration by David Vendrell
The music industry sues Anthropic to mute AI
The Future. After Anthropic’s Claude 2 chatbot was found lifting the lyrics (sometimes word-for-word) of over 500 copyrighted songs, Universal Music Group, ABKCO, and Concord Publishing sued… and they have a very good chance at winning. If the labels win, the lawsuit could act as a foundational precedent for similar copyright infringement cases in the entertainment and literary industries.
Lyric Language Model
The music industry’s lawsuit against Anthropic has a strong precedent in its favor.
Copyright claims in music focus on two criteria: whether lyrics, notes, or melodies are substantially similar (songs are so short that something copied is almost always considered substantial) and whether someone had access to the music in question.
When a judge rules those criteria are met, artists have to add copied songwriters to their credits to share in the royalty pool (and will likely have to pay damages).
But the practice is so common that many artists just happily add their inspirations to the songwriting credits to begin with (as Sam Smith did with Tom Petty on “Stay With Me”).
That brings us to AI. Allegedly, Claude copied lyrics wholesale, so the substantiality bar is met. And generative AI, by design, has access to everything it’s trained on, so that bar is cleared, too.
What Anthropic will likely argue, according to Axios, is that the generations fall under fair use, like a human remixing artistic inputs to create an original output — just faster because a computer is doing it.
Well, music publishers typically win against those cases, too, like in this shockingly similar lawsuit from a decade ago. New technology, same problem.
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Kindred homes, kindred spirits
We’re all familiar with the concept of using our property for something else. À la Airbnb. But what does the future of that look like? It looks like Kindred.
Kindred is building a members-only network to allow people to basically exchange homes. Within a trusted circle of members, the idea is, it’s totally cool and cozy to swap dwellings. The craziest part is, no one pays each other. Instead, they pay Kindred a fee to join the club.
Who’s behind the development of their genius mobile app and internal tool kit? None other than STRV. What absolute pros, huh?!
RETAIL
Fire sale // Illustration by Kate Walker
Customers want to return self-checkout
The Future. Self-checkout kiosks haven’t turned out to be the time-and-cost-saving wonder they were hailed to be, reflecting the larger disinvestment in the shopping experience. The problem is, the technology exists between traditional customer service and future tech-powered optimization. So, the future of retail may be just walking out of the store with items à la Amazon Go or returning to an era when human interaction is both expected and welcome.
Human help, please
After a decade or so of self-checkout kiosks, customers miss cashiers. So, some companies are switching back to that tried and true strategy: hiring more human workers.
Walmart has removed kiosks entirely from some stores and redesigned the self-checkout areas in others to allow for more help from clerks.
Costco is putting more employees near its self-checkouts to help with customer issues.
ShopRite is re-hiring employees after testing a self-checkout-only model. Why? Customers didn’t like it.
While it was initially billed as a way to make shopping more convenient (and a way to save money on labor), the self-checkout system has created constant headaches for customers who contend with accidentally double-scanning items or wrestle with where to put scanned items. And that’s when the kiosks work.
But, The Atlantic also argues the attitude behind kiosks is a microcosm for many of the issues in retail, including understaffing, messy shelves, and increased theft.
Simply put, stores need employees for the foreseeable future.
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Bye, bye, bye plastic
Degradable plastic isn’t cool. But Matter is. That’s because they make lots of great stuff with plant-based biopolymer and fiber. Think trash bags, food storage containers, tableware, plates, and bowls.
All of their products:
Return valuable nutrients to the soil
Reuse crop waste
Are certified compostable
So, say it with us: bye, bye, bye plastic.
Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
Jon Stewart has walked away from his Apple show The Problem over creative disagreements on episode topics like China and AI. Read more → thr
Queue, a movie tracking, review, and recommendation app backed by Hollywood heavyweights, has partnered with Lionsgate to offer BOGO tickets for the upcoming Hunger Games movie. Read more → variety
FaZe Clan, the esports brand once valued at a winning $725 million, sold to GameSquare Holdings for $17 million after a rough year. Read more → bloomberg
Fashion & E-Commerce
Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine launched a year-long incubator to support female entrepreneurs and has announced its first cohort of 15 women. Read more → thr
Toys “R” Us is rising from the toy box with new “flagship” stores on land and locations in airports and cruise ships. Read more → fastcompany
College bookstores are putting up a walled garden around textbooks to keep students from buying them on Amazon. Read more → forbes
Tech, Web3, & AI
NASA is not too happy about SpaceX’s delays in delivering its lunar lander. Read more → theinformation
NVIDIA rolled out an AI program called “Eureka” that teaches robots to do tasks like spin a pen in their hand, open drawers, and catch balls. Read more → engadget
NYC’s Transit Authority released a new app called “NYC Subway Rat Detector” to do exactly what you think it does. Read more → fastcompany
Creator Economy
Even as every app rolls out social shopping features, Facebook is still the top marketplace choice for millennials and Gen Z, according to Traackr. Read more → insider
Instagram may let users comment on posts with polls. Read more → theverge
Elon Musk wants X to be more like streamers, announcing the platform will offer a lower-priced, ad-supported tier and a high-priced, ad-free one. Read more → techcrunch
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.