Canva Acquires Leonardo.ai as AI Publishers Face Legal Scrutiny
Canva purchases generative AI startup Leonardo.ai to boost its design suite, while Perplexity launches a revenue-sharing program to appease publishers. Meanwhile, AI music generators Suno and Udio hire top lawyers to fight massive copyright lawsuits.
Canva acquires generative AI startup Leonardo.ai to enhance its Magic Studio suite and strengthen its artificial intelligence capabilities. The cash-and-stock deal brings Leonardo.ai’s 120 employees and its real-time photorealistic image generation technology into Canva’s ecosystem. This strategic move aims to enrich Canva’s design tools and expand its already massive user base of over 180 million monthly active users.
Perplexity AI introduces a revenue-sharing model for publishers to address ongoing plagiarism accusations from major media outlets like Forbes, Wired, and Condé Nast. The new Publishers Program shares a percentage of advertising revenue with publications whose content appears in Perplexity’s AI-generated answers, with initial partners including Fortune, Time, and Der Spiegel. This approach highlights a growing trend where AI companies seek financial partnerships with media organizations to avoid costly copyright legal battles.
AI music generators Suno and Udio hire the elite law firm Latham & Watkins to defend against massive copyright infringement lawsuits from major record labels. Sony Music, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group bring the legal action against the AI platforms for allegedly using copyrighted music in their training data. Latham & Watkins brings valuable experience to the case, as the firm previously represents other major AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI in similar intellectual property disputes.