Spotify is rolling out a new AI product aimed at improving the experience for music fans in partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG). Billboard reports that Spotify users will be able to create covers and remixes of songs by participating UMG artists and songwriters. The update was announced during Spotify’s Investor Day presentation on May 21 and is made possible by a licensing deal that covers recorded music and publishing rights, enabling Spotify to release generative AI music tools. Spotify sees this as an opportunity to increase exposure and revenue for UMG artists. “Solving hard problems for music is what Spotify does, and fan-made covers and remixes are next. What we’re building is grounded in consent, credit, and compensation for the artists and songwriters that take part. Through each technological transformation, we have worked together with Sir Lucian and his team to evolve the music ecosystem into a richer, more beneficial experience for fans and a more rewarding...
Waymo will pause operations in several cities. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Waymo, owned by Alphabet Inc., is an autonomous ride-hailing service that calls itself the “world’s most experienced driver.” The company, co-led by Tekedra Mawakana, says its technology uses detailed custom maps, real-time sensor data, and AI to determine its position on the road at all times, rather than relying solely on GPS. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Waymo (@waymo) Waymo has served more than 20 million riders and completes more than 400,000 rides a week. However, it will pause operations in Atlanta after one of its robotaxis drove through a flooded street, according to TechCrunch. “Safety is Waymo’s top priority, both for our riders and everyone we share the road with. During a period of intense rain yesterday in Atlanta, an unoccupied Waymo vehicle encountered a flooded road and stopped,” the company said in a statement, per TechCrunch. The vehicle has since been recovered...
A directory that helps people connect patients to Black doctors is being sued. Find A Black Doctor is an online directory founded by Dina D. Strachan, a graduate of Harvard University and Yale School of Medicine, and a board-certified dermatologist. According to its website, its directory features U.S.-based Black physicians and dentists in active clinical practice. It is driven by a mission to provide patients in the Black community with access, education, and resources to improve health outcomes. According to a statement on Find A Black Doctor’s website, “Having access to Black doctors has been shown to improve health outcomes — particularly for Black men.” The American Medical Association reports that African Americans make up approximately 13% of the U.S. population, but are only 5% of practicing physicians. “This underrepresentation adds a challenge to potential patients seeking a physician of this kind. Just like women have been shown to prefer access to female physicians,...
Kountry Wayne didn’t originally plan to pursue comedy, but his gift led to an empire that brought him millions of dollars. The Georgia native admitted that when he entered the content and entertainment space, business was always his priority “from day one,” he said on the “Earn Your Leisure” podcast. He acknowledged comedy “was just a gift” that he knew “how to monetize.” Wayne began recording comedic videos as far back as 2014. He went viral in October 2014, and by March 2015, he had 1 million followers and was touring as a comedian. He claims he was making “like a million dollars a year at the time” on the podcast. He stopped sharing video content on social media by 2017. However, COVID-19 halted his live bookings, and he turned back to social media to share content. Facebook was one of the early platforms that paid him for uploading videos. His first video led to a $70 payment from the company. “When the pandemic came, I got back to it on Facebook cause I had built that Facebook...
Chris Rock reveals how much money he missed out on with the film “Shrek.” Rock is a South Carolina native raised in Brooklyn, New York. He dropped out of high school, earned a GED, studied broadcast journalism for a year at a community college, and worked various jobs to sustain himself, including as a busboy at Red Lobster, according to Oprah. He held on to his aspirations for a career in comedy. “By the time I was 7 or 8, I wanted to be a comedy writer. When I’d see the credits roll after a comedy show, I’d say to myself, ‘I’m going to write for one of these shows one day,'” he said, per Oprah. While in line for a ticket to comedian Eddie Murphy’s stand-up show at Radio City Music Hall in 1985, he stumbled upon a newspaper ad promoting an open-mic session at comedy club Catch a Rising Star. He auditioned and performed there as part of his entry into comedy. Rock credited Murphy as the first to inspire him “to be in front of the camera as a comedian” during a conversation with...
will.i.am was an early investor in several tech companies, including OpenAI. In 2025, Fortune estimated his net worth at $50 million, attributing it to his music career and investments in early-stage companies such as Tesla, Pinterest, and OpenAI. “I did some pretty cool investments in the past,” will.i.am told Fortune. He described OpenAI as one of his smartest investments to date. OpenAI launched in 2015 with support from billionaires such as Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel, as well as Amazon Web Services and other industry giants. Hoffman played a significant part in will.i.am’s investment in AI, according to Forbes. Hoffman initially wanted the musician to invest in OpenAI’s rival, Inflection AI, which he co-founded with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “One day, Reid called me and said, ‘There’s this guy you should meet named Mustafa. I know you’re interested in AI, and there’s not that many people from the industry that have the vernacular and understanding of the...
Wyclef Jean has big plans ahead for his music career. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Jean, a Haitian-born musician, took a blast to the past to reflect on making music in his basement, where he built a studio. One of Hip-Hop’s best-selling albums, The Fugees’ 1996 album “The Score,” was created there. According to BET, the album, which includes “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and “Ready or Not,” sold 22 million copies. “‘The Score,’ one of the, you know, the biggest Hip-Hop selling albums, is done out of a basement. So, which is normal today. For a young kid to have a computer, be in their room, and literally lay out the entire music,” Jean told Yahoo Finance. “ We was doing this 30 years ago inside of a basement and making it cool to do music in your bedroom. ‘Ready or Not,’ I did that in my small little bedroom in the Booga basement in the hood.” Now, that many years later, Jean is not only planning to release a new album but also to explore nearly every genre he has...
YouTube has taken a page from Sora’s playbook. Sora’s Remix tool, which was developed by OpenAI, used natural-language commands to edit pre-existing videos, allowing users to add, remove, or edit objects in a video, according to information shared in a YouTube video. Sora also had a “Cameos” feature , which allowed users to create and use their likenesses in AI-generated videos. However, those features are no longer available on Sora, and its web app shut down on April 26, 2026, according to the company. YouTube, owned by Google and reaching 3 billion users, is now picking up the mantle by rolling out its own “Remix” feature for Shorts. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the feature at its Google I/O event Tuesday, May 19. Remixing with Gemini Omni According to The Hollywood Reporter, users will be able to write prompts and remix an original short to change its style or add themselves to the video, without altering the video’s original context. YouTube will leverage Gemini Omni,...
A class action lawsuit was filed against The Walt Disney Co. over its use of facial recognition technology. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the lawsuit was filed in federal court in California over allegations that The Walt Disney Co. violated privacy, competition, and consumer protection laws by using its facial recognition technology on guests at park entrances. The complaint said that Walt Disney Co. “does not adequately disclose the use of their biometric collection, so consumers — which almost always include children — have no idea that Disney is collecting this highly sensitive data,” according to the outlet. “While Disney publicly states ‘[t]he security, integrity, and confidentiality of your information are extremely important to us, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable,’ it appears visitors cannot discern which of the entrances into Disney Theme Parks actually are the ones to clearly avoid to ‘opt-out’ of facial recognition,” the filing said, per USA Today....
Wells Fargo has agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging discrimination in loan approvals. Banking Dive reports that a lawsuit combining multiple cases, filed by Wells Fargo shareholders in federal court in Northern California, accuses the bank giant of approving fewer than 50% of refinancing applications for Black borrowers in 2020. The banker was also accused of conducting fake job interviews with nonwhite candidates in order to meet diversity goals, as AFROTECH™ previously reported. Shareholders argue that the bank’s board of directors breached its fiduciary duties regarding Wells Fargo’s regarding the bank’s discriminatory hiring and lending practices, according to a press release shared by the office of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, which served as court-appointed co-lead counsel and was represented by lawyers Mark Molumphy, Tyson Redenbarger, Gia Jung, and Elle Lewis. Wells Fargo has agreed to a $110 million settlement. Of that amount, $100 million will be put toward a Borrower...
Football was never the end goal for two-time Super Bowl champion Justin Tuck. In an interview with Adam Glyn, who describes himself as a New York City-based comedian and street journalist, Tuck revealed that sports were always meant to be the path to a great education, then to a great career. In 2001, he earned a scholarship to the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. He became the team captain and graduated in 2005 as the program’s all-time leader in sacks, earning a management degree, according to his LinkedIn profile. “Sports for me was a conduit or a gateway to get a great education for free. My mom and dad couldn’t afford to send me to the University of Notre Dame… It was always the plan to go and do something from a career standpoint, that was very different than athletics,” he said. Tuck went on to the NFL, drafted in the third round as the No. 74 overall pick in 2005 by the New York Giants. He spent the majority of his 11-year career with the team, then...
Ruka Hair has raised new funding to scale its mission of ensuring hair and beauty solutions work for the textured-hair community. Ruka Hair Ruka Hair Co-Founder and CEO Tendai Moyo was 17 when she went to a corner shop in Swindon, England, on the hunt for hair extensions, she explained in an interview with Translate Culture. She recalled seeing inexpensive hair extensions and later realizing the industry had changed little over the years. “I was a strategy consultant prior to this, and the industry hasn’t changed very much. It’s still really hard to find high-quality hair extensions that work for Black women. Success for us is about creating a brand that brings Black women joy,” Moyo said in the video. “ For too long in this space, getting your hair done is painful. When you’re a kid, it comes with a lot of t ears. I t’s expensive, you’re spending money on products that don’t work, and oftentimes, you don’t really know what you’re doing because you haven’t had that expert access. So...
Canadian-born streamer Agent 00 has forged his own lane. At 12 years old, he begged his mother to buy him a Kodak camera, he said in a YouTube video. He started taking pictures of his loved ones, took part in video competitions, and even began editing Call of Duty montages. He also started uploading NFL videos to a clip channel. One video in particular of Marshawn Terrell Lynch racked up 70,000 views, he said. That avenue came to a halt due to a copyright strike, he said during a live interview at the University of California, Berkeley, for the Microsoft Windows Campus Creator Tour. “Then I had to find my own hustle,” he explained. He started editing videos for others, providing commentary, and then sharing gaming content on YouTube, with NBA 2K putting him on the map. “I played The Last of Us. I was really good at that. I had some good videos there. Anything from like Watch Dogs, Call of Duty, you know, and stuff like that. Eventually, I landed on NBA 2K,” he said during the live...
MEDASE Cocktails has expanded to another retailer. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, the Los Angeles-founded venture was cofounded by Inga Dyer and Monica Cornitcher. The two were inspired to launch the company in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic when Cornitcher relocated from Atlanta to California, allowing her to spend more time with Dyer, who was already based there. “Then we started to talk about, ‘Hey, it wou ld be nice to have a cockt ail, right?’ Because we did drink cocktails throughout college, after college, but we were kind of slowing down on drinking . And Inga’s reason for not drinking was that she was battling breast cancer at the time,” Cornitcher said in a previous interview with AFROTECH™ . “ And during her battle with breast cancer, she was not drinking at all . And we were starting to experiment with mocktails in the space . We probably tasted everything out there at the time.” In 2023, MEDASE Cocktails launched as a premium, zero-proof, organic,...
Morgan State University’s nursing program is now the best in the state. According to a press release, Morgan State University’s Department of Nursing achieved a 100% first-time pass rate for the NCLEX-RN nursing licensure examination for its 2025 bachelor’s in nursing graduates. A 2025–26 NCLEX-RN program report found that the entire cohort of test-takers passed on the first attempt and outperformed state and national averages. The Historically Black College and University’s (HBCU’s) nursing program last achieved a 100% pass rate in 2018, per the release. “This achievement affirms the strength, discipline, and intentionality of a program that has steadily built toward this level of excellence,” said Kim Dobson Sydnor, Ph.D., dean of the School of Community Health and Policy, in the press release. “A 100 percent pass rate is not simply a measure of academic success — it reflects the readiness of our graduates to enter the profession at a critical moment for health care.” As a result...
