Do we think the voices of Spongebob and Toad were asked to add their names? More than 200 members of the music industry — including Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, Katy Perry, J Balvin, Sam Smith, the Jonas Brothers, Camila Cabello, Doechii, Kacey Musgraves, Metro Boomin, HYBE, and the estates of Bob Marley and Frank Sinatra — have signed an open letter stating that AI will “degrade” the value of human artistry and prevent “fair compensation” if left unchecked. Written by the nonprofit Artist Rights Alliance, the letter notes that responsibly-used AI has “enormous” potential for advancing creativity. However, it denounces the practice of generating sounds by training AI models on the work of artists and songwriters without permission, which it says is done out of a desire to replace humans and “dilute the royalty pools.” The Artist Rights Alliance is asking tech companies and digital music services to pledge not to use AI music-generation technology that infringes on the rights of artists. “This assault on human creativity must be stopped,” the letter concludes. “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”
AI has been generating discourse in the music industry for a while now. (Remember that viral Drake and the Weeknd song that was made with imitated vocals, and later deemed ineligible for the Grammys?) AI was also one of the reasons that major publisher UMG decided earlier this year to pull its artists’ catalogues off of TikTok. In October 2023, UMG also joined fellow publishers Concord Music Group and ABKCO in suing Anthropic, a company that makes AI models, for allegedly infringing on copyrighted lyrics. The Artists Rights Alliance’s letter is the industry’s latest attempt to place some limits on generative AI technology. Your move, robots.
By Jennifer Zhan , 2024-04-03 07:01:56
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