Over 200 artists, including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Pearl Jam, REM, Chase & Status and Jon Bon Jovi, have called for a halt to the growing influence of AI on the music industry.
The Artist Rights Alliance published the letter, which was aimed directly at AI developers, technology corporations and digital streaming platforms.
In addition to warning concerning the impact of AI on musical creativity, the letter discusses the erosion of artists' rights: “This attack on human creativity should be stopped. We must protect ourselves from Al’s predatory use to steal the voices and likenesses of skilled artists, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”
Additionally, a number of the strongest tech corporations have been accused of using AI to coach models of artists' work without consent, with the goal of replacing human-made art with AI-generated “sounds.”
The letter ends with a call to motion, asking stakeholders within the AI and music sectors to talk out against the event or use of AI technologies for music creation that would replace human art or deny creators fair compensation.
“We call on all AI developers, technology corporations, platforms and digital music services to commit to not develop or use AI music creation technologies, content or tools that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or us deny appropriate remuneration for our work.”
Musicians are setting their sights on generative AI
So what exactly is that this letter about?
First, platforms like TikTok are introducing AI music creation tools that save them from having to pay artists through labels like Universal Music Group (UMG), which has removed its catalog from the location and accused TikTok of undermining artists.
Google has also reportedly developed a yet-to-be-released text-to-audio model based on an enormous collection of music, including tracks from major labels, without in search of permission from copyright holders.
Lyor Cohen, global head of music at Google and YouTube, said: “Demis (Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind) and his team presented a research project around GenAI and music, and my head fell off my shoulders. I walked around London for 2 days, excited by the probabilities, interested by all the issues and realizing that GenAI is there in music – it's not only across the corner.”
Then there are existing AI music platforms like Suno, which may generate incredibly high-quality audio from text prompts.
Limewire also recently released an AI music platform with built-in publishing and monetization features.
Ed Newton-Rex, who left Stability's audio team and founded the moral generative AI organization Fairly Trained, launched a series of tests that apparently exposed Suno for producing near copies of famous tunes and lyrics, including Eminem tracks and “Bohemian.” Rhapsody” by Queen. ”
Newton-Rex writes in Music business worldwide“I and others have discovered that Suno frequently releases music that closely resembles copyrighted material. This applies to all musical styles, melodies, chord progressions, instrumental parts and lyrics. In this post I’ll present some examples and evaluate what they mean.”
These were requests reminiscent of:
“For this song, I used Suno's secondary song creation mode, which means that you can enter custom lyrics. Here I copied the lyrics from Dancing Queen. So you possibly can ignore the text and just concentrate to the style.
Style: 70s pop
Title: Prancing Queen
Lyrics: (full lyrics from Dancing Queen)
Result:”
Newton-Rex's AI-generated Bohemian Rhapsody is probably essentially the most eerily much like the unique:
The fallout
Generative AI has now shifted from text to larger, more complex media formats reminiscent of audio and video. This brings with it recent risks.
While text might be the richest source of information on this planet, melodies and lyrics are fairly easy to attribute to the unique artists, and music-related copyright lawsuits are inclined to be more aggressive and explicit.
Will musicians join writers and visual artists in launching a series of vicious lawsuits against corporations like Suno?
Will people attempt to market questionably authentic AI-generated music through popular streaming platforms like Spotify?
If AI corporations get on the flawed side of industry giants like Disney and Universal or get bad press from artists like Taylor Swift, all hell could break loose.
It's probably not a matter of if, but when.
