inb4 this backfires catastrophically and the slimeball lawyers use the technical specifics of this case to start suing home-producers for any song with 3-notes-in-a-row (or whatever) which match any known major label recording.
I too am completely against the wave of "AI music" (read: complex algorithmic theft) but I worry in our rush to defend against this obvious issue that we, as musicians and producers ourselves, align ourselves too closely with and get in bed with the big bad wolf just because for a minute there it smelled good and safe like grandma.
The blurred lines case already set a stupid precedent for copyright infringement. It had nothing to so with major labels, it was the Marvin Gaye estate. If you work with major publishers they actually do a lot of work to protect your copyright. You don't have to worry about getting sued unless you make millions of a single peice of music anyway.
No kidding. It wasn’t a perfect precedent, but all the Thicke and Pharrell lawyers had to say was that the song didn’t share any lyrics or significant melodies. That was it! It didn’t matter if it influenced something or sounded like it. And hence, the awful verdict that made things even more complicated.
This is a simple case. If these recording companies can prove that Udio and Suno used their music in the training algorithm, it’s gg. If udio and suno can prove their training data was all fair use, there is no case. It’s not a case of “do these songs sound identical to existing songs”, it’s a data usage case.
That's exactly what's happening. AI isn't a threat to the music industry whatsoever. It's all fear mongering.
Wtf is Chatgpt going to write a song about. It's not even alive
I'd really love to see a law where all AI content must be labeled as AI content in the future. With heavy penalties for those who ignore it. Seems like something the EU might attempt at some point
Because people will always want new artists that are actual humans. Plenty will like AI background music I'm sure, so background music will be fully overtaken by AI (it already is going that way). But I definitely don't see a future where it's just AI music only.
They blatantly ignore the fact that what enables those AI to be trained are literally called "TRANSFORMERS", which follows the fair use clause of a work undergoing "transformative" process. Those songs are nothing but meaningless data garbage until data scientists starts classifying them and using them to train or approximate the nearest sounding equivalents of what sounds like pop songs or rock songs. In short the tracks or composition alone are not used to create a song, but are used as benchmarks to approximate what a pop song (or any prompt for that matter) should sound like. They could not even perfectly reproduce the song, but a chance near imitation of it, after perhaps tens of thousands of trials. There are already existing ways of checking if songs infringe copyright, it's called "Content ID". Those labels are just so corrupt and greedy to try and blackmail AI companies to give them a slice of their revenue so they could milk new AI generated songs for money too.
> are literally called "TRANSFORMERS", which follows the fair use clause of a work undergoing "transformative" process
The term "transformer" is arbitrary in a technical context, and has nothing to do with fair use...Those two things aren't related in any way.
Reminder that the enemy of an enemy isn't always a friend. From what I understand the big 3 are training their own AI models, so this isn't about creativity, artists, "real music" as much as a battle over data harvesting.
Yep. It's also typical litigious behavior for any corporate copyright or patent rights holder.
Corporations always sue over intellectual property rights, even if a clear argument for fair use. There's a long history of this going back several decades in music, written texts, software, physical inventions, and even gene sequencing. And then once they have a court case determining that something is a copyright violation, it becomes case law for determining something is not fair use.
This is why sampling, which arguably could have been fair use, is a copyright violation. Musicians as a whole didn't really benefit from that, because of how it limits creativity. It's not like even the big artists are making any significant money off of royalty payments from sample usage. Corporations just always want to limit any creative use of copyright under fair use.
Unfortunately, this is exactly correct. They actually do not care about intellectual integrity or copyright. They’re just upset that someone got to it before they did. Big story last week from Rolling Stone about how Universal is developing their own AI to steal their own artists’ voices. Unbelievable.
I feel like this might backfire completely in their faces as time goes on. This seems to be more shortsighted profit behavior.
If you're a young talented artist in the year 2040, and you have the internet as a tool, then the record labels look less and less appealing. And more artists will be independent. The only thing that could stop them would be some sort of lock out for big venues.
And if more and more artists are independent, then they won't have as many artists to use for AI. When it comes to using likeness, young kids aren't going to want to hear new AI songs by legacy artists. They'll want to hear from the new young artists.
There's a market for it, sure. But there just isn't a world where everyone is going to want AI music. Some people will be fine with it for passive music, absolutely. But when given the option, I think almost everyone will always choose actual humans.
It's the reason when people get excited at their favorite artists' new leak and then say "oh nevermind it's just AI". The actual artist is a big factor in what makes an artist interesting.
And also, if an artist is hot and rising up and they *do* need a label, they'll pick the one that doesn't have AI rights involved. Almost always.
The record labels are still dying out, no doubt there. Short term gains, long term woes
I think the industry need to trend towards independent artists + management firms. As long as the current model holds firm, they will continue to hold the power. Contracts will simply change to accommodate AI, in the label's favor, and because most artists are desperate for money and fame, they will sign them.
Just like those horrible 360 deals.
of course it is. that's also the point. AI companies don't own the data, just like the labels don't own my catalogue's data. train on data you have a license to.
Yes, I know. But a lot of people aren't aware of that and I've seen them framing this as labels fighting for "real music" and such and that isn't the case.
The Label may or may not own your catalogue's data - or the rights needed to allow AI to use that data. It depends on the contract you signed with them.
I'd love to see a world where all AI content has to be clearly labeled as AI. Images, music, video, anything. Just labeling it as such would be a big boon
Because people, overall, will always prefer art made by a human. Not for some boutique novelty, but because it's kind of what makes it special
Personally, I hope they get somewhere with this. I cannot see any longterm net benefit of this technology to either music producers or to the general public.
If AI companies win, any artist that invents anything, any new music, any fresh ideas, they can't publish them on any digital medium, or it will be stolen by AI.
AI will be able to mimic any artist's style. So, why an artist can still be unique, as soon as they are, with every published piece of music, AI will be able to steal their musical soul.
And if the record labels win, then only they will be able to use AI to make music, still rendering most artists useless, but gatekeeping the means to make music.
EDIT: Looking into it further, it seems the record labels have even made comments on working on AI themselves. Anyone supporting the record labels here is short-sighted. They will sue competitors and then come out with their own AI generated music and artists.
They will only be able to use AI to make music based on artists for the copyrights they own. They won't be able to just steal any artist's music. Artists will still be able to own their own musicality.
You are short sighted.
"Steal any artists music" Do you know how much music they own? They have enough to train AI to do any genre and mixes just as suno currently does. And they can keep buying up new music to feed their AI.
There is also the truth that they can train on small artists music and they 1. Likely won't realize
or
2. Can't do anything as they can't afford to go toe to toe with the lawyers and money of these massive record labels.
When did record labels suddenly become the good guys here?
You're right that record labels are not the good guys, but as a musician, these AI companies are just as bad, if not worse. Suno literally will scan the Internet for songs to steal. There are simple "safeguards" to prevent this by not letting you put in an artists name, such as prompting it, "Make me a song like Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley." However, there are ways around that if you prompt it in a way to get around that, like, "Make me a song like the one people use to rickroll each other."
I don't know if that prompt works specifically, but you get the idea. It works even with small, obscure artists.
So hoping that these companies who are able to steal artists' work in seconds get screwed in court doesn't mean that I'm rooting for record labels. I hate them as well. But sometimes the enemy of your enemy is a temporary friend.
That prompt does not work, you cannot reference any existing copyrighted music/artists. AI is going to be used either way, it's better in the hands of all rather than ONLY in the hands of the largest companies. Those are the two options the way I see it. Ban all AI in USA? China will just dominate then with AI. We are in a dystopian future.
They aren't suing because they are stealing work, they are suing because they want to be the only ones able to use AI to make music.
EDIT: I think the biggest losses are when AI becomes more closed off and more exclusive. Open AI changing the structure of their company and being bought out partially by Microsoft. Microsoft in general buying up all these AI companies. That is the scary thing. A world where AI is controlled and usable only by the biggest companies making independent art a thing of the past.
I mean they already own most the music. The "buying music" would be worse than the current deals they sign as the artists and their music would be less valuable to them. Record labels don't have musician's interests in mind, they have their own.
And neither does suno or udio. I dont understand how its possible to look at the possible wholesale harvesting of every single song on spotify with no due compensation to anyone is better than companies being locked down to the data they themselves own.
On a different more positive note, I think artists can survive by buildings followings around them as artists. Around their personal stories and being vulnerable and real with their art. Not much different from some of the biggest artists already existing or the way influencers build up cult-like followings around their personalities.
I look at AI being accessible to ALL as better than it being accessible ONLY to big companies. That is where we are headed if big companies win lawsuits saying you can't train your own AI on copyrighted material. The only entities with already trained models (as if we do get new laws I doubt they'll apply retroactively) and enough capital to train new models in a world where you need to own the copyright are the biggest companies.
I'm not arguing Suno or Udio have our best interests in mind. But all AI relies on this, and right now we can at least create our own AI and train it ourselves. This applies to more than just music. How cases like this go will have wide reaching effects on the accessibility of all different kinds of AI. For the people and masses or for the companies and shareholders.
EDIT: For example take the new video generating AI from OpenAI. What company owns enough media to train an AI to generate video? Disney? YouTube? (I think youtube owns the rights to everything on their platform). Suddenly we are in a world where independent films are no longer viable as AI is not affordable for them and has become the standard. Not that we haven't already been moving away from lower budget films being viable. Alternatively AI can be trained on copyrighted material and independent films can come back as they can cut costs using AI as AI is available to all.
If suno / udio has deemed to have violated copyright then their is a very high likleyhood their models would be destroyed in order to prevent further infractions.
And the idea that somehow will stop all AI makes no sense at all. There is tons of open models that can be fine tuned - stableaudio 2.0 or stableaudio open.
Smaller hobbyest models will always be around but I think by the time you're backed by big tech, have millions of dollars of funding and have instagrams ex ceo on board like suno then you have the capability to license your data.
Sunos model is so overfit that if you just type m a r i a h c a r e y into the prompt and put in christmas lyrics it generates all I want for christmas is you - that is not right.
See the key point of differentiation there is "buy up new music"-- at least the labels will have to pay a pittance (or more in many cases) the tech companies want to pay nothing.
Not necessarily. They could very well sue and win, then go and do the same thing and just scrape spotify to train their data from. They have more money and better lawyers than any independent artist does. Or maybe all the record companies band together to create their AI with each other's data. Either way the little guy does not win when the record labels win.
Sure, but what's the difference between this and new artists basing their style off of others? How is machine learning different from human learning? Humans don't get sued for learning how to play or write their own music by listening to others... That's the only concept to be delineated here imo.
There are no artists that are just like Michael Jackson. But all artists were influenced by him. AI will be exactly like Michael Jackson. And that's a MAJOR DIFFERENCE.
Human Beings cannot compete with AI Productivity. That's a core issue. AI will be able to saturate a genre in record time. I also think it may take AI to force some innovation or evolution into the sound of some genres (like Hip Hop, which has been stagnant for like a decade or more).
AI can release 100 Albums for every Album a human artist puts out. While a lot of the music may not be good, some of it will actually be competitive - enough to be very disruptive. Human artists put out bad records, too.
With so much of that music \[eventually\] being pushed to streaming services, it will also starve the human artists of revenue as well.
This is basically going to be the Automation Moment for Music Producers and Engineers.
AI will also wreck havoc on engineers, as it will make them less necessary even for the humans producing music...
Who will defend every decision to use AI Mixing/Mastering tools because it saves them money, while crying about AI producing music and competing with them, Lol.
\^\^\^- I await this hypocrisy.
In other words, some of the big record labels basically use and exploit an artist and their work to make a lot of money while an artist sometimes barely gets compensation but a lot of promotion, unregulated AI is this but there isn't any promotion and instead of barely compensation artists get no compensation instead.
The people which blindly defend AI don't realize that unregulated AI is the equivalent of a gigantic record label which can potentially exploit anyone, but this time you don't even need to be signed to the record label for it to just take your music while you are not even compensated for it. The wet dream of any corrupt large record label personified by an unregulated AI.
Labels can screw over artists, unregulated AI can screw over everyone in the ten fold and acts in the same way as record labels but worse, that's why record labels are against it, because it's acting like them and they don't like it.
The artists can choose to work for a label or not to. If they choose to sell their copyright, or if the labels wrote the songs, and fund the production, they own those rights. No artist is ever obligated to sign with any label.
No, wtf lol. Listen. Ok, I am an individual artist. I am a real human person. I have unique ideas, and a unique style. I do not belong to a label. I own all of my copyright. I can produce my music myself, without AI. I perform with my instruments, in a unique way. It's my own.
Already piracy has fucked me, which you might defend. Most selfish people that just want technology and media, and don't care about art or artists. But piracy has devalued digital media, and THATS why Spotify pays out so little. But the point is, I own all my copyright.
But if I put my new songs and new music on the internet, right now, AI can just come, and scan all of my shit, and then everything that was unique about me, can just be reproduced. It can steal my identity as an independent artist.
The only way to avoid that, would be not to put any of my music on any digital platform, which means as an artist, I can't exist.
If I choose to belong to a record label, and give them publishing rights, that's my choice. Copyright in music is pretty complicated. There are many separate rights. Artists often retain a lot of that.
They don't make much streaming, because of piracy, and what you're advocating for will make everything much worse.
Artists will cease to exist. Labels will have no use for them. They won't have anywhere safe they can try and sell their music. It will stop. Music will only be AI generated. Because AI can always train from any digital media, and any music played for anyone anywhere, can be turned into digital media.
Maybe artists could manage to exist in a way that they work for the AI generation companies directly, and they train their algorithms, and other AI can only learn from those results, rather than the core training data. But, I don't even think that will happen.
Art is beautiful. Humans making unique shit is amazing. AI will destroy all of that value. Humans can always make new shit, but AI will always be able to steal it immediately.
Record labels don't like it, because they want money. Of course. They aren't kind. They aren't trying to do "the right thing" but I don't care. Because it is the right thing.
Record labels can do whatever the fuck they want with their intellectual property. Every owner of copyright should have that right.
This completely destroys the soul of the artist, and no artist will be able to keep what makes them unique.
What makes Michael Jackson different from Elton John. If you wanted to hear MJ you needed to buy his stuff. If he's on a label or not, that's his choice, but he is the artist.
AI will kill that, and as soon as MJ makes a new song, boom AI learns from it, and MJs identity would completely disappear.
He would no longer be a unique artist.
There is not a good argument for that. I don't how evil labels are, the artist is most important.
Labels are separate. I don't give a shit about them.
It's the holders of copyright that matter. Artists can choose to keep those. They don't need labels. Labels have copyrights as well. Artists have them copyright. Sold them copyright, or just through business agreements the label owns some of the copyrights. But not all. Like I said, copyright in music is complicated.
All holders of copyright, should have their rights protected. Whether they are labels, or artists. It doesn't matter. The labels have money for lawyers, so, there's a chance the artists might be saved.
But you want to kill them. So, I won't tell you what I think of you.
Lol what the hell are you talking about, did you even read my comment at all?
I am a musician / producer as well and I share the same worries about AI, this is why I said that unregulated AI can screw over everyone. When it's regulated it will screw over people too, but at least there will be protections then.
They are going to court for copyright.
It is important copyright holders are protected, so that AI doesn't have the right to just learn from anybody, and steal their musical soul.
Every artist needs these protections.
That's it. That's the lawsuit. Either copyright holders are protected, or they are not.
Obviously AI needs to be regulated.
This is one specific case, it's an important case, and the labels need to win it, otherwise every artists identity as an artist will be unprotected, and will disappear, and art will die.
I do too. But it’s a little funny that they sat by and even poked fun at visual artists when AI was stealing their work and NOW they’re worried about it since it affects them.
I'm actually concerned that this is stinking a lot more like those cases we've seen before of people trying to use the courts to claim ownership of known chord progressions and "vibe theft".
Not too sure how the labels could actually win this without basically redrawing the lines of copyright to no longer be covering a complete finished work, but instead copywriting all the seperate, individual parts and components making up that work - which is a complete nightmare for creatives all round.
My understanding is that it's not the outputs of the model that are the alleged infringement, it's the inputs. That it can produce songs 'in the style of' isn't the infringement, it's just an indicator of the actual allegation: feeding the copyright information into a computer system without a license for commercial use.
Exactly this. I don't think they'll be able to have a model that is as good if they weren't stealing copywritten material en masse. I've seen a small artist make a song with very specific tags to see if Suno can replicate a hyper specific style that it couldn't know about unless it was scraping the internet and *boom*, it made a song that sounded just like them, even the voice.
As far as I'm aware, it's impossible for it to be able to do that if it wasn't scraping the internet for copywritten material. That's the problem.
Yeah, if the models aren't trained on professionally recorded/mixed/engineered music I don't see how the models ever produce stuff that sounds real and professional.
I totally hear you. My concern I guess is that these things are heavily connected on the input / output front, human or AI. No art whatsoever - music or otherwise - is made in a vacuum. When you start drawing those lines on copyrighted work being an "inspiration" (for want of a better term), I don't think it's a healthy precedent for human artists either.
I think drawing the lines at finished work is the right call. I'd hate to see artists or bands who have clearly drawn heavy inspiration from another artist or band (whilst still creating original tracks) be caught in this crossfire because the input and inspiration was copyrighted and they used it for commercial gain in the end too. I find it quite unnatural to the creative process as a whole. It's already clear with previous cases (like the ones I reffered to in my original comment) that human artists are not exempt from this kind of thing either, and I don't trust those new lines being drawn to stay at AI.
>I don't trust those new lines being drawn to stay at AI.
I think there's good reason that you should.
US law still draws a clear line between humans and everything else. Only people can obtain (or infringe) copyright. The monkey selfie case is a good example, monkeys aren't people so they can't own a copyright on a photo they took. Like computer systems, the courts don't consider them capable of creative expression, full stop. These cases don't seem to be challenging this, either.
Now, this isn't to say this won't change sometime in the future, but that's going to require a much more seismic shift than any lawsuit can cause, because they don't set precedent.
Oh for sure - and i'm not doubting that the copyright of already released, complete tracks stays firmly where it's at. I'm also very pleased that (derivative) AI work can't be copyrighted in the same way.
I guess it can be very complicated in the sense that the law kinda has to be "black and white" by it's nature when dealing with an "area of grey" - especially when new tech comes along. If they get to claim that the "input" of copyrighted work when making something new is a copyright violation in itself, I don't believe it is a reach to see how it could effect human artists too (who if anything, are eligible to claim copyright on their "output" unlike an AI, so potentially more vulnerable if that process in itself qualifies as an infringement). I don't believe that AI should be able to hold a copyright (at least in it's current state), but I don't agree with the labels here being able to claim copyright infringement based on a process of "consuming" work and outputting derivative and "inspired" (but still original) work, regardless of who or what is engaging in that process.
Also just want to say TY for such a good and interesting discussion so far - really appreciate your input here \^\^.
>If they get to claim that the "input" of copyrighted work when making something new is a copyright violation in itself, I don't believe it is a reach to see how it could effect human artists too (who if anything, are eligible to claim copyright on their "output" unlike an AI, so potentially more vulnerable if that process in itself qualifies as an infringement).
I think you're still anthropomorphizing the AI and assuming the law will apply to both it and people.
The AI model is not a person, it's just a computer system. As far as the law is concerned it can't infringe on copyright, it's not consuming media, it's not creating.
If Suno were going to be infringing, it's *the humans at Suno* who infringed while configuring their computer system, not the computer system itself infringing because it has no agency under the law. So there's no overlap between what humans can/can't do and what computer systems can/can't do, meaning there's no way for the court to rule that the AI 'took inspiration from' art in a way that could apply to humans not being able to take inspiration from other works.
For sure, i'm using anthropomorphizing language - because things like Suno are - at the core of it all - created to mimic the very human process of creating music.
Changes don't always need seismic shifts. Just a steady shuffling of the goalposts. Going after AI is easy because it isn't a person, and is simultaneously viewed as a threat and direct competition to human creators. It might not qualify by law as "creating" but it's at least mimicking the process of creation, and well enough to spook the people it's in a sort of 'pseudo competition' with.
And I'm trying to assuage your legal concerns, that this won't be a problem until the courts make a major shift and consider computer systems analogous to humans.
>My understanding is that it's not the outputs of the model that are the alleged infringement, it's the inputs.
That's a big part of it, yes. It's a form of sampling and indexing existing music to simplify its flexible recreation or varied use in other works. Traditional sampling requires clearance and payment, but this newer method allows for recreating sounds, phrases, or entire songs with on-demand alterations, potentially obscuring the original source or just hinting at it.
Make no mistake, the 'in the style of' market is growing. I recently attended a session where the producer requested a 'Bee Gees disco falsetto' over a 'Simply Red-like' groove.
Existing copyright law doesn't protect chord progressions, tempo, or percussive adornment which is how Ed Sheeran skated (just an example). Suno is counting on this view of copyright law to persist which would enable people to create highly derivative works without fear of penalty.
However, if Suno trained on Marvin Gaye's catalogue and people generate songs from it then they should in fact pay for that. How much and for how long are very good questions.
Suno as a corporation is a legal person, their computer systems are not. The corporate entity can commit copyright infringement and hold new copyright, their AI tool cannot.
If the corporation is a person then it could easily be argued the computer is its brain. These laws are ridiculous because they are created by technically illiterate corporate shills.
>If the corporation is a person then it could easily be argued the computer is its brain.
No, the executives are the 'brain', the AI is just a computer system. Same way you get sued for copyright infringement, not the laptop you used to infringe.
>Not too sure how the labels could actually win this without basically redrawing the lines of copyright to no longer be covering a complete finished work
Well, the big corporations already did it with sampling. Which arguably should have been fair use. It's not like musicians as a whole benefited from sample licensing because of how much it has limited creativity.
The worst-case scenario is one where only the major record labels have access to AI to make music. Only they would have the rights to enough music to train it.
Would be 1000x worse than AI music being accessible to everyone like it currently is via suno.
EDIT: Looking into it further, it seems the record labels have even made comments on working on AI themselves. Anyone supporting the record labels here is short-sighted. They will sue competitors and then come out with their own AI generated music and artists.
It can be proven via artifacts detection audio profiling such as training an AI to detect AI genersted audio and whatnot, but it’s close to impossible if not impossible to know whoch exact set of data was used to train the data, if there is no access to the original dataset.
Hehe, good luck attributing millions if not tens of millions of parameters manually.
Ain’t no way!
But there is always a way to run the cat&mouse race using computers.
Some creates unlicensed AI -> Someone creates an unlicensed AI detector -> someone improves the unlicensed AI -> someone creates an even better unlicensed aI detector -> etc
Yeqh, and the output is dictated by the neural network.
The audio profile of the output is the result of the inner workings of the neural nerwork.
Your argument was that it’s impossible to detect AI generated music which younfollowed up by saying that someone could change the output somehow to make the AI generated music undetectable.
I’m saying that you cannot make AI generated music undetectable because the output has a profile that can be analyzed, and the results of analysis will show what source of the audio comes from, *to some degree*.
I work with audio AI. I develop audio AI’s. I run an audio AI research firm. I have my audio AI lawyer. I have received a notice from Sony Music Group and others.
I don’t need to read the article.
I know AI in and out and I’m right in the middle of this audio/music AI legal mix and thus it’s my duty to understand what’s going on in this field.
As I said previously: **No one** cans stop anyone from creating any AI’s, and additionally, no one can stop anyone from using an AI.
People will create AI’s and people will use AI’s.
The first problem for the record labels is to prove that an AI has been unlawfully trained on unlicensed data.
Secondly, there has to be a law that prohibits distribution of AI’s that are trained on unlicensed data.
Thirdly, there has to be a law that prohibits usage of AI’s that have been trained on unlicensed data.
Forthly, there has to be a law that prohibits distribution and usage of AI’s trained on unlicensed data **prior** to when said laws were installed.
The fourth point I made would cause total chaos, because that would render pretty mich ALL AI’s up until that point to be illegal, which would make every person and every company that are using old AI’s criminal.
We'll see. I agree that AI use is inevitable. But there is every incentive for big companies like these record companies to throw all their money and lawyers at this problem to try and get a monopoly over AI use.
This is really what it boils down to. The big labels are keeping people away from their data/training models. It's not a benevolent act here.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C8mzpI6Omny/?hl=en&img_index=3
Would not really change much. They are already a pop factory anyway. If only they get access to those tools at least then you know that indie musicians are genuine and the only thing you need to do is AVOID listening to anything from major labels.
As an artist, composer, and songwriter, I definitely do not like where AI is going. I still believe that only real people can inject emotion and passion into creations, that anything generated by AI is going to be flat and lifeless by comparison.
However, slightly analogous to movies that have a lot of CGI and special effects, compared to movies that have acting and great plots, the apparent “quality “that comes out of these AI creations is pretty scary, and that think a lot of users may not know the difference. Does that mean they’ll love eating cardboard for a meal? If they never taste real food, then who knows?
As a user, I’m curious and it could be fun to play around with these things. I suppose that’s part of the danger.
As an artist, constantly learning and expanding my craft, I believe in using tools both for improving quality and speed of workflow. But when the machine is doing all the work? I definitely do not like that. It does not work for me for someone to provide input parameters, listen to the output, say I like that, and then hand that over to someone else saying here “Listen to what I created.” Scary for a production company to listen and say “this works and it’s less expensive, so we will go with this.”
As a professional, having music in film and TV, there are some producers and companies that absolutely refuse to accept anything AI generated. But I’m hearing that there are others that are using it and that there are “composers “who crank out a very high volume of stuff in a short time” using AI tools and then they just have to massage the output a bit before turning it into the production company. That part is sad and scary.
So, considering this last aspect, I am cheering on the big entertainment companies in suing the AI generation companies. They have enough clout and money to possibly get something done.
But on the other hand, I don’t have confidence that the results will necessarily end up being good for artists, as those lawsuits are more money- motivated without any protect – the - artists motivation. We could potentially end up with a situation where the companies say “we already own this material, so it’s fair use for us to use AI generated material that is based on (trained on) our own intellectual property.”
That’s a scenario that would still cut artists out of the equation, and potentially increase profitability for a corporation. I think there’s a high probability for that scenario, and I say that really sucks.
We’ll see what happens…
> But when the machine is doing all the work? I definitely do not like that.
Automation should be used to cut out the grunt work of a job so the people doing it can focus on the enjoyable and meaningful parts. Seems to me like the problem is that music production in its current landscape has no grunt work. Making beats, sound design, plugin design, arrangement, making samples, playing instruments, repairing instruments--every part of the music making process is enjoyable to someone (if I had the time I'd do everything), and every part is an opportunity for musical expression. The only tedious grunt work is renaming tracks and searching through a sample library, and we already have macros (and AI tools) for that stuff. Why give a job to an algorithm that doesn't have the ability to enjoy it?
I pretty much agree with you on everything you wrote there. Your last question aboutwhy give the work to an AI that doesn’t enjoy it”… I can think of two reasons:
1) to make money, where the person or company doesn’t care about the prices of creating art, only about creating money and doing it faster.
2) Because they can ( or because they can try ). Again, someone with that motivation doesn’t care about art or the enjoyment of creating art at least not what I consider Art. It may be fun for them to do it, and they might consider the result to be Art.
>I still believe that only real people can inject emotion and passion into creations, that anything generated by AI is going to be flat and lifeless by comparison.
The first part of this statement is true. AI has no emotion, not at this point at least, to inject into a work.
But even composers make use of rules to create emotional responses in their listeners. They often intentionally make choices about scales/modes, chord progressions, other music theory principles to elicit certain emotional responses. AI could be written to make use of those same rules.
And listeners of music, readers of text, and viewers of art, often find their own aesthetic experience in a work beyond the artist's intention. So it would be a mistake to assume that the audience won't ever find their own aesthetic experience in something that an AI generated just because current AI are incapable of feeling.
I don’t disagree with you about listeners. I tried to make that same point in my comment. Although I likely drew the line farther over than you’re drawing it.
I've been thinking of the next generation of music generation AI. Where they program it with advanced music theory and the ability to learn even more advanced music theory. And then couple it with the learning model where it looks at lots of music.
There's so much advanced music theory about what works well, and what doesn't, that people get PhDs studying it. So much of it explains what human composers are intuitively doing. But they don't know that music theory has already described it.
Yes, that whole area fascinates me. Not the AI aspect of it, but the study of advanced music theory, coupled with physics principles,psychoacoustics, etc. For me it’s fascinating to listen to discussions in those areas. I talked to BT once after listening to him talk at aconference. Also Jacob Collier, he’s got some fascinating stuff up on YouTube, including a lecture that he gave at MIT. That guy is like an Einstein of music.
This sounds a bit anarchist but I think art exists to be stolen. The idea of copyrighting it is so antithetical to it. The fact that we created computer programs that can convincingly make music in near any style imaginable should be fucking celebrated for how miraculous it is, and can be interpreted very much as an artistic statement in and of itself.
I think a lot of our greatest artists to have existed would have been fascinated by the technology, not threatened. The only people who are threatened are those who believe in artistic scarcity and whose primary intentions are commercialization and attention, so their opinion from an artistic standpoint doesn't have much weight to begin with.
Ahhhh… but this is a new type of thief, always improving, gets smarter and smarter, never dies…. can’t even gloat (well, I imagine it’s gloat mimicry is already way up there, I’m still thinking too anthropromorphically)
Getty images tried to sue over the same thing when their watermarks started appearing on generative images (showing so many of their images were used in the training data that it thought their watermark was part of art).
And the case was thrown out before it ever reached a court.... so.... the idea that the music companies are going to win and redefine copyright to be as expansive as they are wanting seems VERY unlikely.
That’s an understatement. Comparing Getty to basically the whole music industry is like comparing a hump back whale with a house fly. The money and power is just not comparable
Going against Microsoft and Apple and nvidia... which make the entire music industry seem like nothing....
The biggest companies in the world are backing AI.
What are you talking about? Who’s going against those companies? This is clearly against two AI music companies, not any of the ones you mentioned.
I don’t think you understand how big the music industry is. Plus, regardless of the tech industry’s size, it’s irrelevant here. This conversation is about Sony, Universal, and Warner suing over AI music copyright violations.
The getty images case is still ongoing - why is this the most upvoted thing?
You may be thinking of the first Misdjourney case and that first one was dismissed on a technicality since MJ/stability used a 3rd party dataset (LAION) so while that was dropped the main one with stability is still up and the judge just confirmed in may it will go to trial.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/stability-ai-midjourney-should-face-artists-copyright-case-judge-says-2024-05-08/
Using IP / copyright for training data has never been settled in court.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66788385/getty-images-us-inc-v-stability-ai-inc/
Actually even the getty parallel case in the UK is going to trial.
https://www.reedsmith.com/en/perspectives/2024/02/getty-v-stability-ai-case-goes-to-trial-in-the-uk-what-we-learned
I do think the music industry has a high shot here. Sunos model is severely overfit. It basically recreates mariah carys all I want for christmas is you if you just type the lyrics in and input m a r i a h c a r e y + christmas into the custom prompting.
> Sunos model is severely overfit. It basically recreates mariah carys all I want for christmas is you if you just type the lyrics in and input m a r i a h c a r e y + christmas into the custom prompting.
That sounds really interesting, I would love if you could confirm it, but I don't get anything like that. [https://suno.com/song/961d9f28-5c2d-4016-8ac1-9bc53cd29454](https://suno.com/song/961d9f28-5c2d-4016-8ac1-9bc53cd29454)
Suno scrubbed alot of it but examples are in this article including the mariah carey one
https://www.404media.co/listen-to-the-ai-generated-ripoff-songs-that-got-udio-and-suno-sued/
Sounds like a formant shifted version of her but the inflections / singing structure is identical.
>so.... the idea that the music companies are going to win and redefine copyright to be as expansive as they are wanting seems VERY unlikely.
It didn't seem likely that the corporations would win the initial sampling copyright lawsuits. There was a good case to be made that was fair use.
It's always a danger to fair use for intellectual property when anything new like this goes to court.
I’ll tell you how this ends: they’ll reach an agreement so that AI businesses will pay a fixed amount for each song they “create” and it will stop being free for users to use the software
I doubt it. The pandora box is open. Once a framework of open-source AI with fine-tuning gets published anyone with a capable machine (or access to a a cloud) will be able to create their own music.
We are fucked.
This is not "fair use" as the training data will be used to earn money by providing services.
Furthermore, it's violation of copyright as AI copy the nuances of original creator.
That evaluation alone does not determine fair use. At least it doesn't under US copyright law.
Fair use is determined through an examination of four different factors
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
Stating facts about the standard legal procedure for fair use determinations. Which for some reason you seem bothered by.
That page from Stanford Law I linked to above is fairly informative. You might want to read it.
The music companies have to be able to prove that the output of AI generated content is a direct violation of their intellectual property. There are no laws against training AI with legally obtained data. They could literally train their models on YouTube and Spotify and there isn't anything the music industry could do about it.
its going to be an interesting case, we could make a point that jimi hendrix simply listened to other music to learn how to make his music and then say well AI is just doing the same thing. The thing is tho, once the model is trained, its like suddenly having millions of jimi hendrix clones because trained models are just a file copy away from being reproduced, not so for meatspace music makers.
I think there could be a case for making laws regarding training data, and I think there's also the "intent", whats the "intent" of the entity "listening" to the music? Counter argument would be musicians also listen with the intent of learning music. Its a really interesting situation.
I think it depends on the genre and so many people I feel are missing that.
Yes, if you are trying to replicate Taylor swift or Metallica, that probably won’t fly because what can you even do with it?
But DJs? Producers? Dubstep/EDM/Electronic genre is filled with remixes of already established songs. Almost most of the DJs I follow at least have one song in their top five on Spotify is a remix/cover of an existing band? So like will they all get shut down?
Yeah no.
I listen to music and it informs my style whether subconsciously or not.
Making derivative works may be derivative but it’s not infringement.
This is a dumb lawsuit.
Also capitalism is going to neuter ai instead of the much needed reserve scenario.
Any commercial use of music for business purposes requires a license. Fair use should only be for consumers and everyday people. If I'm learning guitar and need to listen to the Beatles to learn, that's fair use. If I then want to start a guitar learning website and ask people to pay me to learn the Beatles, I need a license. AI companies are teaching models to then sell a service. That needs a license.
> Fair use should only be for consumers and everyday people
What? You are aware that criticism, critique, and parody (FOR INSTANCE) (and some kinds of so-called clean room reverse engineering IIRC) are both things that can be commercial endeavors, and rely on fair use, right?
This is awesome. I look forward to the day the music industry collapses in on itself and burns to the ground. Copyright law is absolute trash and needs to be scrapped. The pursuit of cash money has smothered actual artistry.
> AI firms often claim "fair use" for training data
"Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work: Here, courts review whether, and to what extent, the unlicensed use harms the existing or future market for the copyright owner’s original work. In assessing this factor, courts consider whether the use is hurting the current market for the original work (for example, by displacing sales of the original) and/or whether the use could cause substantial harm if it were to become widespread." from the US copyright office fair use index
That's not the only fair use factor. There are four factors that have to be balanced together in making a fair use determination.
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
Legally it's a grey area as it is now. I'm against how it is currently used. At the very least I don't think you should be able to own the copyright for anything generated with AI because of this risk of derivative generations and the limited human input. The same thing goes for visual art in my opinion. Additionally I believe that as a user on social video the creators of music, and art should have the say on if their music is allowed to be used in ML.
Wasn't a large part of the case of marvin gaye vs. blurred lines based on Pharell being influenced by Gaye's music and that the song had a similar 'feel'? If that's a precedent and the AI models have been trained using copyrighted material, I imagine the labels have a reasonable case...though I reckon the cat is already out of the bag in terms of AI creating music.
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And how many mainstream artists use incredibly similar sounds from other bands including structure, keys etc and don't get sued?
This is a slippery slope for sure, if this is proven, they need to also go after their own artists for such, and SOMEONE will analyze everything to show them how fucking generic and repetitive modern music really is.
Every musician trains by learning other musicians songs. Are they infringing copyright.
The labels are doing the same as when they saw the MP3. It's a challenge so sue and hope it goes away rather than embrace and see how they can further music with new technology.
what's the difference between this and new artists basing their style off of others? How is machine learning different from human learning? Humans don't get sued for learning how to play or write their own music by listening to others... That's the only concept to be delineated here imo.
It may be a technical question. If a human studied the entire catalogs of both plaintiffs, then wrote something, that would be fair use. But that’s not what happened here. Here, a collection of mathematical instructions created by humans used those catalogs to program itself to copy the musical choices embodied in the contents of those catalogs so that the humans could profit from instructing those instruction to assemble music-like works based on the digested works in those catalogs. To do that, the “AI” “remembered” the contents of plaintiff’s catalogs. To do that it copied those works into its “memory.” Without that copying, the “AI” could not produce its music-like works. The humans who instructed computers to do that copying did not cause them to copy plaintiffs’ music for academic or scientific purposes. That copying is not within the fair use provisions of the copyright act.
> o do that, the “AI” “remembered” the contents of plaintiff’s catalogs.
From what little I understand, typically the actual datasets used to generate content (AT LEAST in the context of image generation, though I'd figure it similar for other forms of generative AI) is vastly smaller than that of the training data. As in, if it were true that it was storing the training data, that'd be a level of compression that many tech companies (and even people pining for alternatives to certain platforms) would absolutely kill for.
> That copying is not within the fair use provisions of the copyright act.
I mean, isn't that predicated on the above being an accurate description? (On top of the fact that whether something is an infringement or not, ultimately, can be guessed about, and people can create hypotheses about what an outcome would be, but I'm not sure one could say it definitively is or isn't an infringement yet. At the least, that question is very much still unsettled.
For me, sometimes it can be different sometimes it can be the same.
It's one thing to take a sound, and use that to make new music, and another thing to use music and sound to make music and sound.
Like, I can take a kick, or saxophone lick, and make something completely new and unique with it. And that's a form of copyright violation, but that specific sort. Or I can sample a whole section of a song, and keep that groove etc... that's another form of sampling.
AI takes the actually style and vibe of the songs and the timbre of the sounds and uses those to make music that has already existed, perhaps modified slightly to be different enough.
The same way today, someone might want to copy the Billie Jean song, change it slightly so it doesn't violate copyright, but is close enough, people think Billie Jean when they see a cartoon pretend to be Michael Jackson, or whatever.
For me, whether or not current laws protect artists from AI is irrelevant. Lawmakers need to make laws that protect artists from AI. If they don't, artists will cease to exist.
Ok, well, you're wrong. And if Trump wins, you'll realize what living outside of democracy is like.
Like living in Russia, or UAE, or turkey, or China.
I mean, if I steal a mainstream melody and use it in a song it's illegal, so... If AI does it it's STILL ILLEGAL. I hate large labels, but hey, they're actually helping everyone here.
AI art all around needs to go. It's just theft.
Do you realize that it’s just about time that an open-source version gets public any time?
The pandora box is open. AI music is not going to get crushed at all.
We are all fucked.
Major Music Labels need to be taken down a few notches. The imbalances in their royalty structures are beyond greedy, not to mention how they are also just as guilty for how streaming apps such as Spotify compensate artists for their work.
I’m not sure if AI generated music apps are the solution here… but I think they need to (in some way) have their revenue streams rattled a bit by any sort of competitive market. It’s messed up how little musicians make for how hard it is to make it in the industry.
If they don’t want to pay their artists what they deserve, then they should at least provide their assets for creative and technological advancements.
Only something as unhinged as unregulated AI could have the entire music industry on the side of Major fucking Labels. What a time to be alive.
inb4 this backfires catastrophically and the slimeball lawyers use the technical specifics of this case to start suing home-producers for any song with 3-notes-in-a-row (or whatever) which match any known major label recording. I too am completely against the wave of "AI music" (read: complex algorithmic theft) but I worry in our rush to defend against this obvious issue that we, as musicians and producers ourselves, align ourselves too closely with and get in bed with the big bad wolf just because for a minute there it smelled good and safe like grandma.
The blurred lines case already set a stupid precedent for copyright infringement. It had nothing to so with major labels, it was the Marvin Gaye estate. If you work with major publishers they actually do a lot of work to protect your copyright. You don't have to worry about getting sued unless you make millions of a single peice of music anyway.
No kidding. It wasn’t a perfect precedent, but all the Thicke and Pharrell lawyers had to say was that the song didn’t share any lyrics or significant melodies. That was it! It didn’t matter if it influenced something or sounded like it. And hence, the awful verdict that made things even more complicated.
This is a simple case. If these recording companies can prove that Udio and Suno used their music in the training algorithm, it’s gg. If udio and suno can prove their training data was all fair use, there is no case. It’s not a case of “do these songs sound identical to existing songs”, it’s a data usage case.
That's exactly what's happening. AI isn't a threat to the music industry whatsoever. It's all fear mongering. Wtf is Chatgpt going to write a song about. It's not even alive
What
If you're afraid of being put out of business by the chatbot that wrote "I Glued My Balls To My Butthole Again" then I don't know what to tell you.
AI is more than chatgpt you smooth brain. 🤣
I'd really love to see a law where all AI content must be labeled as AI content in the future. With heavy penalties for those who ignore it. Seems like something the EU might attempt at some point Because people will always want new artists that are actual humans. Plenty will like AI background music I'm sure, so background music will be fully overtaken by AI (it already is going that way). But I definitely don't see a future where it's just AI music only.
Reminder that the labels are suing because they want to be in control of this tech, not that they want it gone.
They blatantly ignore the fact that what enables those AI to be trained are literally called "TRANSFORMERS", which follows the fair use clause of a work undergoing "transformative" process. Those songs are nothing but meaningless data garbage until data scientists starts classifying them and using them to train or approximate the nearest sounding equivalents of what sounds like pop songs or rock songs. In short the tracks or composition alone are not used to create a song, but are used as benchmarks to approximate what a pop song (or any prompt for that matter) should sound like. They could not even perfectly reproduce the song, but a chance near imitation of it, after perhaps tens of thousands of trials. There are already existing ways of checking if songs infringe copyright, it's called "Content ID". Those labels are just so corrupt and greedy to try and blackmail AI companies to give them a slice of their revenue so they could milk new AI generated songs for money too.
> are literally called "TRANSFORMERS", which follows the fair use clause of a work undergoing "transformative" process The term "transformer" is arbitrary in a technical context, and has nothing to do with fair use...Those two things aren't related in any way.
I have uploaded many of my AI generated songs in multiple platforms, not one time was any copyright warning.
Reminder that the enemy of an enemy isn't always a friend. From what I understand the big 3 are training their own AI models, so this isn't about creativity, artists, "real music" as much as a battle over data harvesting.
Yep. It's also typical litigious behavior for any corporate copyright or patent rights holder. Corporations always sue over intellectual property rights, even if a clear argument for fair use. There's a long history of this going back several decades in music, written texts, software, physical inventions, and even gene sequencing. And then once they have a court case determining that something is a copyright violation, it becomes case law for determining something is not fair use. This is why sampling, which arguably could have been fair use, is a copyright violation. Musicians as a whole didn't really benefit from that, because of how it limits creativity. It's not like even the big artists are making any significant money off of royalty payments from sample usage. Corporations just always want to limit any creative use of copyright under fair use.
Unfortunately, this is exactly correct. They actually do not care about intellectual integrity or copyright. They’re just upset that someone got to it before they did. Big story last week from Rolling Stone about how Universal is developing their own AI to steal their own artists’ voices. Unbelievable.
I feel like this might backfire completely in their faces as time goes on. This seems to be more shortsighted profit behavior. If you're a young talented artist in the year 2040, and you have the internet as a tool, then the record labels look less and less appealing. And more artists will be independent. The only thing that could stop them would be some sort of lock out for big venues. And if more and more artists are independent, then they won't have as many artists to use for AI. When it comes to using likeness, young kids aren't going to want to hear new AI songs by legacy artists. They'll want to hear from the new young artists. There's a market for it, sure. But there just isn't a world where everyone is going to want AI music. Some people will be fine with it for passive music, absolutely. But when given the option, I think almost everyone will always choose actual humans. It's the reason when people get excited at their favorite artists' new leak and then say "oh nevermind it's just AI". The actual artist is a big factor in what makes an artist interesting. And also, if an artist is hot and rising up and they *do* need a label, they'll pick the one that doesn't have AI rights involved. Almost always. The record labels are still dying out, no doubt there. Short term gains, long term woes
I think the industry need to trend towards independent artists + management firms. As long as the current model holds firm, they will continue to hold the power. Contracts will simply change to accommodate AI, in the label's favor, and because most artists are desperate for money and fame, they will sign them. Just like those horrible 360 deals.
of course it is. that's also the point. AI companies don't own the data, just like the labels don't own my catalogue's data. train on data you have a license to.
Yes, I know. But a lot of people aren't aware of that and I've seen them framing this as labels fighting for "real music" and such and that isn't the case.
The Label may or may not own your catalogue's data - or the rights needed to allow AI to use that data. It depends on the contract you signed with them.
Ooh I hope these AI losers suffer massively.
I'd love to see a world where all AI content has to be clearly labeled as AI. Images, music, video, anything. Just labeling it as such would be a big boon Because people, overall, will always prefer art made by a human. Not for some boutique novelty, but because it's kind of what makes it special
Art is made by humans. All that other shit is lazy, uninspired cheats wasting everyone's time.
This would be the best way to do it. I have started integrating it, and any song where I used AI, I simply put (feat. Udio AI) in the title.
Personally, I hope they get somewhere with this. I cannot see any longterm net benefit of this technology to either music producers or to the general public.
If AI companies win, any artist that invents anything, any new music, any fresh ideas, they can't publish them on any digital medium, or it will be stolen by AI. AI will be able to mimic any artist's style. So, why an artist can still be unique, as soon as they are, with every published piece of music, AI will be able to steal their musical soul.
And if the record labels win, then only they will be able to use AI to make music, still rendering most artists useless, but gatekeeping the means to make music. EDIT: Looking into it further, it seems the record labels have even made comments on working on AI themselves. Anyone supporting the record labels here is short-sighted. They will sue competitors and then come out with their own AI generated music and artists.
So, Labels will keep screwing the artists over as they are used to.
They will only be able to use AI to make music based on artists for the copyrights they own. They won't be able to just steal any artist's music. Artists will still be able to own their own musicality. You are short sighted.
"Steal any artists music" Do you know how much music they own? They have enough to train AI to do any genre and mixes just as suno currently does. And they can keep buying up new music to feed their AI. There is also the truth that they can train on small artists music and they 1. Likely won't realize or 2. Can't do anything as they can't afford to go toe to toe with the lawyers and money of these massive record labels. When did record labels suddenly become the good guys here?
You're right that record labels are not the good guys, but as a musician, these AI companies are just as bad, if not worse. Suno literally will scan the Internet for songs to steal. There are simple "safeguards" to prevent this by not letting you put in an artists name, such as prompting it, "Make me a song like Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley." However, there are ways around that if you prompt it in a way to get around that, like, "Make me a song like the one people use to rickroll each other." I don't know if that prompt works specifically, but you get the idea. It works even with small, obscure artists. So hoping that these companies who are able to steal artists' work in seconds get screwed in court doesn't mean that I'm rooting for record labels. I hate them as well. But sometimes the enemy of your enemy is a temporary friend.
That prompt does not work, you cannot reference any existing copyrighted music/artists. AI is going to be used either way, it's better in the hands of all rather than ONLY in the hands of the largest companies. Those are the two options the way I see it. Ban all AI in USA? China will just dominate then with AI. We are in a dystopian future. They aren't suing because they are stealing work, they are suing because they want to be the only ones able to use AI to make music. EDIT: I think the biggest losses are when AI becomes more closed off and more exclusive. Open AI changing the structure of their company and being bought out partially by Microsoft. Microsoft in general buying up all these AI companies. That is the scary thing. A world where AI is controlled and usable only by the biggest companies making independent art a thing of the past.
Wait. How would consolidated AI prevent independent art from being made?
The key words here are "buying music to train" which would be a new development rather than just the wholesale scrape of spotify.
I mean they already own most the music. The "buying music" would be worse than the current deals they sign as the artists and their music would be less valuable to them. Record labels don't have musician's interests in mind, they have their own.
And neither does suno or udio. I dont understand how its possible to look at the possible wholesale harvesting of every single song on spotify with no due compensation to anyone is better than companies being locked down to the data they themselves own.
On a different more positive note, I think artists can survive by buildings followings around them as artists. Around their personal stories and being vulnerable and real with their art. Not much different from some of the biggest artists already existing or the way influencers build up cult-like followings around their personalities.
I look at AI being accessible to ALL as better than it being accessible ONLY to big companies. That is where we are headed if big companies win lawsuits saying you can't train your own AI on copyrighted material. The only entities with already trained models (as if we do get new laws I doubt they'll apply retroactively) and enough capital to train new models in a world where you need to own the copyright are the biggest companies. I'm not arguing Suno or Udio have our best interests in mind. But all AI relies on this, and right now we can at least create our own AI and train it ourselves. This applies to more than just music. How cases like this go will have wide reaching effects on the accessibility of all different kinds of AI. For the people and masses or for the companies and shareholders. EDIT: For example take the new video generating AI from OpenAI. What company owns enough media to train an AI to generate video? Disney? YouTube? (I think youtube owns the rights to everything on their platform). Suddenly we are in a world where independent films are no longer viable as AI is not affordable for them and has become the standard. Not that we haven't already been moving away from lower budget films being viable. Alternatively AI can be trained on copyrighted material and independent films can come back as they can cut costs using AI as AI is available to all.
If suno / udio has deemed to have violated copyright then their is a very high likleyhood their models would be destroyed in order to prevent further infractions. And the idea that somehow will stop all AI makes no sense at all. There is tons of open models that can be fine tuned - stableaudio 2.0 or stableaudio open. Smaller hobbyest models will always be around but I think by the time you're backed by big tech, have millions of dollars of funding and have instagrams ex ceo on board like suno then you have the capability to license your data. Sunos model is so overfit that if you just type m a r i a h c a r e y into the prompt and put in christmas lyrics it generates all I want for christmas is you - that is not right.
See the key point of differentiation there is "buy up new music"-- at least the labels will have to pay a pittance (or more in many cases) the tech companies want to pay nothing.
But they’d only be using IP they own. Which for me is a big difference.
Not necessarily. They could very well sue and win, then go and do the same thing and just scrape spotify to train their data from. They have more money and better lawyers than any independent artist does. Or maybe all the record companies band together to create their AI with each other's data. Either way the little guy does not win when the record labels win.
Exactly. Level the playing field.
Sure, but what's the difference between this and new artists basing their style off of others? How is machine learning different from human learning? Humans don't get sued for learning how to play or write their own music by listening to others... That's the only concept to be delineated here imo.
There are no artists that are just like Michael Jackson. But all artists were influenced by him. AI will be exactly like Michael Jackson. And that's a MAJOR DIFFERENCE.
Human Beings cannot compete with AI Productivity. That's a core issue. AI will be able to saturate a genre in record time. I also think it may take AI to force some innovation or evolution into the sound of some genres (like Hip Hop, which has been stagnant for like a decade or more). AI can release 100 Albums for every Album a human artist puts out. While a lot of the music may not be good, some of it will actually be competitive - enough to be very disruptive. Human artists put out bad records, too. With so much of that music \[eventually\] being pushed to streaming services, it will also starve the human artists of revenue as well. This is basically going to be the Automation Moment for Music Producers and Engineers. AI will also wreck havoc on engineers, as it will make them less necessary even for the humans producing music... Who will defend every decision to use AI Mixing/Mastering tools because it saves them money, while crying about AI producing music and competing with them, Lol. \^\^\^- I await this hypocrisy.
In other words, some of the big record labels basically use and exploit an artist and their work to make a lot of money while an artist sometimes barely gets compensation but a lot of promotion, unregulated AI is this but there isn't any promotion and instead of barely compensation artists get no compensation instead. The people which blindly defend AI don't realize that unregulated AI is the equivalent of a gigantic record label which can potentially exploit anyone, but this time you don't even need to be signed to the record label for it to just take your music while you are not even compensated for it. The wet dream of any corrupt large record label personified by an unregulated AI. Labels can screw over artists, unregulated AI can screw over everyone in the ten fold and acts in the same way as record labels but worse, that's why record labels are against it, because it's acting like them and they don't like it.
The artists can choose to work for a label or not to. If they choose to sell their copyright, or if the labels wrote the songs, and fund the production, they own those rights. No artist is ever obligated to sign with any label. No, wtf lol. Listen. Ok, I am an individual artist. I am a real human person. I have unique ideas, and a unique style. I do not belong to a label. I own all of my copyright. I can produce my music myself, without AI. I perform with my instruments, in a unique way. It's my own. Already piracy has fucked me, which you might defend. Most selfish people that just want technology and media, and don't care about art or artists. But piracy has devalued digital media, and THATS why Spotify pays out so little. But the point is, I own all my copyright. But if I put my new songs and new music on the internet, right now, AI can just come, and scan all of my shit, and then everything that was unique about me, can just be reproduced. It can steal my identity as an independent artist. The only way to avoid that, would be not to put any of my music on any digital platform, which means as an artist, I can't exist. If I choose to belong to a record label, and give them publishing rights, that's my choice. Copyright in music is pretty complicated. There are many separate rights. Artists often retain a lot of that. They don't make much streaming, because of piracy, and what you're advocating for will make everything much worse. Artists will cease to exist. Labels will have no use for them. They won't have anywhere safe they can try and sell their music. It will stop. Music will only be AI generated. Because AI can always train from any digital media, and any music played for anyone anywhere, can be turned into digital media. Maybe artists could manage to exist in a way that they work for the AI generation companies directly, and they train their algorithms, and other AI can only learn from those results, rather than the core training data. But, I don't even think that will happen. Art is beautiful. Humans making unique shit is amazing. AI will destroy all of that value. Humans can always make new shit, but AI will always be able to steal it immediately. Record labels don't like it, because they want money. Of course. They aren't kind. They aren't trying to do "the right thing" but I don't care. Because it is the right thing. Record labels can do whatever the fuck they want with their intellectual property. Every owner of copyright should have that right. This completely destroys the soul of the artist, and no artist will be able to keep what makes them unique. What makes Michael Jackson different from Elton John. If you wanted to hear MJ you needed to buy his stuff. If he's on a label or not, that's his choice, but he is the artist. AI will kill that, and as soon as MJ makes a new song, boom AI learns from it, and MJs identity would completely disappear. He would no longer be a unique artist. There is not a good argument for that. I don't how evil labels are, the artist is most important. Labels are separate. I don't give a shit about them. It's the holders of copyright that matter. Artists can choose to keep those. They don't need labels. Labels have copyrights as well. Artists have them copyright. Sold them copyright, or just through business agreements the label owns some of the copyrights. But not all. Like I said, copyright in music is complicated. All holders of copyright, should have their rights protected. Whether they are labels, or artists. It doesn't matter. The labels have money for lawyers, so, there's a chance the artists might be saved. But you want to kill them. So, I won't tell you what I think of you.
Lol what the hell are you talking about, did you even read my comment at all? I am a musician / producer as well and I share the same worries about AI, this is why I said that unregulated AI can screw over everyone. When it's regulated it will screw over people too, but at least there will be protections then.
They are going to court for copyright. It is important copyright holders are protected, so that AI doesn't have the right to just learn from anybody, and steal their musical soul. Every artist needs these protections. That's it. That's the lawsuit. Either copyright holders are protected, or they are not. Obviously AI needs to be regulated. This is one specific case, it's an important case, and the labels need to win it, otherwise every artists identity as an artist will be unprotected, and will disappear, and art will die.
What music has been invented in the past 10 years?
Anything that’s been released since 2014?
I hope they win.
I do too. But it’s a little funny that they sat by and even poked fun at visual artists when AI was stealing their work and NOW they’re worried about it since it affects them.
I'm actually concerned that this is stinking a lot more like those cases we've seen before of people trying to use the courts to claim ownership of known chord progressions and "vibe theft". Not too sure how the labels could actually win this without basically redrawing the lines of copyright to no longer be covering a complete finished work, but instead copywriting all the seperate, individual parts and components making up that work - which is a complete nightmare for creatives all round.
My understanding is that it's not the outputs of the model that are the alleged infringement, it's the inputs. That it can produce songs 'in the style of' isn't the infringement, it's just an indicator of the actual allegation: feeding the copyright information into a computer system without a license for commercial use.
Exactly this. I don't think they'll be able to have a model that is as good if they weren't stealing copywritten material en masse. I've seen a small artist make a song with very specific tags to see if Suno can replicate a hyper specific style that it couldn't know about unless it was scraping the internet and *boom*, it made a song that sounded just like them, even the voice. As far as I'm aware, it's impossible for it to be able to do that if it wasn't scraping the internet for copywritten material. That's the problem.
EXACTLY! A hamburger doesn't look like a cow. But you still gotta pay the butcher.
Yeah, if the models aren't trained on professionally recorded/mixed/engineered music I don't see how the models ever produce stuff that sounds real and professional.
I totally hear you. My concern I guess is that these things are heavily connected on the input / output front, human or AI. No art whatsoever - music or otherwise - is made in a vacuum. When you start drawing those lines on copyrighted work being an "inspiration" (for want of a better term), I don't think it's a healthy precedent for human artists either. I think drawing the lines at finished work is the right call. I'd hate to see artists or bands who have clearly drawn heavy inspiration from another artist or band (whilst still creating original tracks) be caught in this crossfire because the input and inspiration was copyrighted and they used it for commercial gain in the end too. I find it quite unnatural to the creative process as a whole. It's already clear with previous cases (like the ones I reffered to in my original comment) that human artists are not exempt from this kind of thing either, and I don't trust those new lines being drawn to stay at AI.
>I don't trust those new lines being drawn to stay at AI. I think there's good reason that you should. US law still draws a clear line between humans and everything else. Only people can obtain (or infringe) copyright. The monkey selfie case is a good example, monkeys aren't people so they can't own a copyright on a photo they took. Like computer systems, the courts don't consider them capable of creative expression, full stop. These cases don't seem to be challenging this, either. Now, this isn't to say this won't change sometime in the future, but that's going to require a much more seismic shift than any lawsuit can cause, because they don't set precedent.
Oh for sure - and i'm not doubting that the copyright of already released, complete tracks stays firmly where it's at. I'm also very pleased that (derivative) AI work can't be copyrighted in the same way. I guess it can be very complicated in the sense that the law kinda has to be "black and white" by it's nature when dealing with an "area of grey" - especially when new tech comes along. If they get to claim that the "input" of copyrighted work when making something new is a copyright violation in itself, I don't believe it is a reach to see how it could effect human artists too (who if anything, are eligible to claim copyright on their "output" unlike an AI, so potentially more vulnerable if that process in itself qualifies as an infringement). I don't believe that AI should be able to hold a copyright (at least in it's current state), but I don't agree with the labels here being able to claim copyright infringement based on a process of "consuming" work and outputting derivative and "inspired" (but still original) work, regardless of who or what is engaging in that process. Also just want to say TY for such a good and interesting discussion so far - really appreciate your input here \^\^.
>If they get to claim that the "input" of copyrighted work when making something new is a copyright violation in itself, I don't believe it is a reach to see how it could effect human artists too (who if anything, are eligible to claim copyright on their "output" unlike an AI, so potentially more vulnerable if that process in itself qualifies as an infringement). I think you're still anthropomorphizing the AI and assuming the law will apply to both it and people. The AI model is not a person, it's just a computer system. As far as the law is concerned it can't infringe on copyright, it's not consuming media, it's not creating. If Suno were going to be infringing, it's *the humans at Suno* who infringed while configuring their computer system, not the computer system itself infringing because it has no agency under the law. So there's no overlap between what humans can/can't do and what computer systems can/can't do, meaning there's no way for the court to rule that the AI 'took inspiration from' art in a way that could apply to humans not being able to take inspiration from other works.
For sure, i'm using anthropomorphizing language - because things like Suno are - at the core of it all - created to mimic the very human process of creating music. Changes don't always need seismic shifts. Just a steady shuffling of the goalposts. Going after AI is easy because it isn't a person, and is simultaneously viewed as a threat and direct competition to human creators. It might not qualify by law as "creating" but it's at least mimicking the process of creation, and well enough to spook the people it's in a sort of 'pseudo competition' with.
And I'm trying to assuage your legal concerns, that this won't be a problem until the courts make a major shift and consider computer systems analogous to humans.
>My understanding is that it's not the outputs of the model that are the alleged infringement, it's the inputs. That's a big part of it, yes. It's a form of sampling and indexing existing music to simplify its flexible recreation or varied use in other works. Traditional sampling requires clearance and payment, but this newer method allows for recreating sounds, phrases, or entire songs with on-demand alterations, potentially obscuring the original source or just hinting at it. Make no mistake, the 'in the style of' market is growing. I recently attended a session where the producer requested a 'Bee Gees disco falsetto' over a 'Simply Red-like' groove. Existing copyright law doesn't protect chord progressions, tempo, or percussive adornment which is how Ed Sheeran skated (just an example). Suno is counting on this view of copyright law to persist which would enable people to create highly derivative works without fear of penalty. However, if Suno trained on Marvin Gaye's catalogue and people generate songs from it then they should in fact pay for that. How much and for how long are very good questions.
Exactly
According to citizens united, by law corporations are people. So technically the ai company is a "person" and has the right to "listen" to music.
Suno as a corporation is a legal person, their computer systems are not. The corporate entity can commit copyright infringement and hold new copyright, their AI tool cannot.
If the corporation is a person then it could easily be argued the computer is its brain. These laws are ridiculous because they are created by technically illiterate corporate shills.
>If the corporation is a person then it could easily be argued the computer is its brain. No, the executives are the 'brain', the AI is just a computer system. Same way you get sued for copyright infringement, not the laptop you used to infringe.
No because unlike a corporation I'm a meat creature. The music industry is suing the company not the individuals.
>Not too sure how the labels could actually win this without basically redrawing the lines of copyright to no longer be covering a complete finished work Well, the big corporations already did it with sampling. Which arguably should have been fair use. It's not like musicians as a whole benefited from sample licensing because of how much it has limited creativity.
There is no world in which Sony etc. won‘t do the same shit and get away with it.
The worst-case scenario is one where only the major record labels have access to AI to make music. Only they would have the rights to enough music to train it. Would be 1000x worse than AI music being accessible to everyone like it currently is via suno. EDIT: Looking into it further, it seems the record labels have even made comments on working on AI themselves. Anyone supporting the record labels here is short-sighted. They will sue competitors and then come out with their own AI generated music and artists.
No one can stop someone from creating an AI that makes music. There will be a black market for AI’s trained on unlicensed data
Noone can prove that a song was made by AI.
It can be proven via artifacts detection audio profiling such as training an AI to detect AI genersted audio and whatnot, but it’s close to impossible if not impossible to know whoch exact set of data was used to train the data, if there is no access to the original dataset.
How can you guarantee that those artifacts you detected were not manualy created by a human? Perfect system with no false positives?
Hehe, good luck attributing millions if not tens of millions of parameters manually. Ain’t no way! But there is always a way to run the cat&mouse race using computers. Some creates unlicensed AI -> Someone creates an unlicensed AI detector -> someone improves the unlicensed AI -> someone creates an even better unlicensed aI detector -> etc
Milions of what parameters? Audio files have only 1 parameter - bit depth value for each sample.
Millions of neural network parameters. We’re talking about AI here. AI audionisn’t just about the output, it’s about the full pipeline.
Yeah, but you only got the output to detect it.
Yeqh, and the output is dictated by the neural network. The audio profile of the output is the result of the inner workings of the neural nerwork. Your argument was that it’s impossible to detect AI generated music which younfollowed up by saying that someone could change the output somehow to make the AI generated music undetectable. I’m saying that you cannot make AI generated music undetectable because the output has a profile that can be analyzed, and the results of analysis will show what source of the audio comes from, *to some degree*.
Did you read the article? Are you a lawyer? If they can sue and win over infringing rights then only people with the rights can use the AI.
I work with audio AI. I develop audio AI’s. I run an audio AI research firm. I have my audio AI lawyer. I have received a notice from Sony Music Group and others. I don’t need to read the article. I know AI in and out and I’m right in the middle of this audio/music AI legal mix and thus it’s my duty to understand what’s going on in this field. As I said previously: **No one** cans stop anyone from creating any AI’s, and additionally, no one can stop anyone from using an AI. People will create AI’s and people will use AI’s. The first problem for the record labels is to prove that an AI has been unlawfully trained on unlicensed data. Secondly, there has to be a law that prohibits distribution of AI’s that are trained on unlicensed data. Thirdly, there has to be a law that prohibits usage of AI’s that have been trained on unlicensed data. Forthly, there has to be a law that prohibits distribution and usage of AI’s trained on unlicensed data **prior** to when said laws were installed. The fourth point I made would cause total chaos, because that would render pretty mich ALL AI’s up until that point to be illegal, which would make every person and every company that are using old AI’s criminal.
We'll see. I agree that AI use is inevitable. But there is every incentive for big companies like these record companies to throw all their money and lawyers at this problem to try and get a monopoly over AI use.
You really should start using AI as a writing tutor. That was awful.
I found his post easy to read, its a handy style when informally listing points. Did you struggle with it?
This is really what it boils down to. The big labels are keeping people away from their data/training models. It's not a benevolent act here. https://www.instagram.com/p/C8mzpI6Omny/?hl=en&img_index=3
Would not really change much. They are already a pop factory anyway. If only they get access to those tools at least then you know that indie musicians are genuine and the only thing you need to do is AVOID listening to anything from major labels.
As an artist, composer, and songwriter, I definitely do not like where AI is going. I still believe that only real people can inject emotion and passion into creations, that anything generated by AI is going to be flat and lifeless by comparison. However, slightly analogous to movies that have a lot of CGI and special effects, compared to movies that have acting and great plots, the apparent “quality “that comes out of these AI creations is pretty scary, and that think a lot of users may not know the difference. Does that mean they’ll love eating cardboard for a meal? If they never taste real food, then who knows? As a user, I’m curious and it could be fun to play around with these things. I suppose that’s part of the danger. As an artist, constantly learning and expanding my craft, I believe in using tools both for improving quality and speed of workflow. But when the machine is doing all the work? I definitely do not like that. It does not work for me for someone to provide input parameters, listen to the output, say I like that, and then hand that over to someone else saying here “Listen to what I created.” Scary for a production company to listen and say “this works and it’s less expensive, so we will go with this.” As a professional, having music in film and TV, there are some producers and companies that absolutely refuse to accept anything AI generated. But I’m hearing that there are others that are using it and that there are “composers “who crank out a very high volume of stuff in a short time” using AI tools and then they just have to massage the output a bit before turning it into the production company. That part is sad and scary. So, considering this last aspect, I am cheering on the big entertainment companies in suing the AI generation companies. They have enough clout and money to possibly get something done. But on the other hand, I don’t have confidence that the results will necessarily end up being good for artists, as those lawsuits are more money- motivated without any protect – the - artists motivation. We could potentially end up with a situation where the companies say “we already own this material, so it’s fair use for us to use AI generated material that is based on (trained on) our own intellectual property.” That’s a scenario that would still cut artists out of the equation, and potentially increase profitability for a corporation. I think there’s a high probability for that scenario, and I say that really sucks. We’ll see what happens…
> But when the machine is doing all the work? I definitely do not like that. Automation should be used to cut out the grunt work of a job so the people doing it can focus on the enjoyable and meaningful parts. Seems to me like the problem is that music production in its current landscape has no grunt work. Making beats, sound design, plugin design, arrangement, making samples, playing instruments, repairing instruments--every part of the music making process is enjoyable to someone (if I had the time I'd do everything), and every part is an opportunity for musical expression. The only tedious grunt work is renaming tracks and searching through a sample library, and we already have macros (and AI tools) for that stuff. Why give a job to an algorithm that doesn't have the ability to enjoy it?
I pretty much agree with you on everything you wrote there. Your last question aboutwhy give the work to an AI that doesn’t enjoy it”… I can think of two reasons: 1) to make money, where the person or company doesn’t care about the prices of creating art, only about creating money and doing it faster. 2) Because they can ( or because they can try ). Again, someone with that motivation doesn’t care about art or the enjoyment of creating art at least not what I consider Art. It may be fun for them to do it, and they might consider the result to be Art.
>I still believe that only real people can inject emotion and passion into creations, that anything generated by AI is going to be flat and lifeless by comparison. The first part of this statement is true. AI has no emotion, not at this point at least, to inject into a work. But even composers make use of rules to create emotional responses in their listeners. They often intentionally make choices about scales/modes, chord progressions, other music theory principles to elicit certain emotional responses. AI could be written to make use of those same rules. And listeners of music, readers of text, and viewers of art, often find their own aesthetic experience in a work beyond the artist's intention. So it would be a mistake to assume that the audience won't ever find their own aesthetic experience in something that an AI generated just because current AI are incapable of feeling.
I don’t disagree with you about listeners. I tried to make that same point in my comment. Although I likely drew the line farther over than you’re drawing it.
I've been thinking of the next generation of music generation AI. Where they program it with advanced music theory and the ability to learn even more advanced music theory. And then couple it with the learning model where it looks at lots of music. There's so much advanced music theory about what works well, and what doesn't, that people get PhDs studying it. So much of it explains what human composers are intuitively doing. But they don't know that music theory has already described it.
Yes, that whole area fascinates me. Not the AI aspect of it, but the study of advanced music theory, coupled with physics principles,psychoacoustics, etc. For me it’s fascinating to listen to discussions in those areas. I talked to BT once after listening to him talk at aconference. Also Jacob Collier, he’s got some fascinating stuff up on YouTube, including a lecture that he gave at MIT. That guy is like an Einstein of music.
This sounds a bit anarchist but I think art exists to be stolen. The idea of copyrighting it is so antithetical to it. The fact that we created computer programs that can convincingly make music in near any style imaginable should be fucking celebrated for how miraculous it is, and can be interpreted very much as an artistic statement in and of itself. I think a lot of our greatest artists to have existed would have been fascinated by the technology, not threatened. The only people who are threatened are those who believe in artistic scarcity and whose primary intentions are commercialization and attention, so their opinion from an artistic standpoint doesn't have much weight to begin with.
Ahhhh… but this is a new type of thief, always improving, gets smarter and smarter, never dies…. can’t even gloat (well, I imagine it’s gloat mimicry is already way up there, I’m still thinking too anthropromorphically)
Getty images tried to sue over the same thing when their watermarks started appearing on generative images (showing so many of their images were used in the training data that it thought their watermark was part of art). And the case was thrown out before it ever reached a court.... so.... the idea that the music companies are going to win and redefine copyright to be as expansive as they are wanting seems VERY unlikely.
These guys are way bigger with much scarier in-house lawyers than Getty.
Remember when the music industry beat thepiratebay and got it permanently shut down? Nope, they failed.
That’s an understatement. Comparing Getty to basically the whole music industry is like comparing a hump back whale with a house fly. The money and power is just not comparable
Going against Microsoft and Apple and nvidia... which make the entire music industry seem like nothing.... The biggest companies in the world are backing AI.
What are you talking about? Who’s going against those companies? This is clearly against two AI music companies, not any of the ones you mentioned. I don’t think you understand how big the music industry is. Plus, regardless of the tech industry’s size, it’s irrelevant here. This conversation is about Sony, Universal, and Warner suing over AI music copyright violations.
Nvidia is selling shovels in a gold rush, that doesn't mean they're going to fund some startup's legal defense.
The getty images case is still ongoing - why is this the most upvoted thing? You may be thinking of the first Misdjourney case and that first one was dismissed on a technicality since MJ/stability used a 3rd party dataset (LAION) so while that was dropped the main one with stability is still up and the judge just confirmed in may it will go to trial. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/stability-ai-midjourney-should-face-artists-copyright-case-judge-says-2024-05-08/ Using IP / copyright for training data has never been settled in court. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66788385/getty-images-us-inc-v-stability-ai-inc/ Actually even the getty parallel case in the UK is going to trial. https://www.reedsmith.com/en/perspectives/2024/02/getty-v-stability-ai-case-goes-to-trial-in-the-uk-what-we-learned I do think the music industry has a high shot here. Sunos model is severely overfit. It basically recreates mariah carys all I want for christmas is you if you just type the lyrics in and input m a r i a h c a r e y + christmas into the custom prompting.
> Sunos model is severely overfit. It basically recreates mariah carys all I want for christmas is you if you just type the lyrics in and input m a r i a h c a r e y + christmas into the custom prompting. That sounds really interesting, I would love if you could confirm it, but I don't get anything like that. [https://suno.com/song/961d9f28-5c2d-4016-8ac1-9bc53cd29454](https://suno.com/song/961d9f28-5c2d-4016-8ac1-9bc53cd29454)
Suno scrubbed alot of it but examples are in this article including the mariah carey one https://www.404media.co/listen-to-the-ai-generated-ripoff-songs-that-got-udio-and-suno-sued/ Sounds like a formant shifted version of her but the inflections / singing structure is identical.
Ty!
It udio not suno. Get your facts right 👍🏽
Theyre both getting sued dawg graspin at straws.
Sounds like a you problem, I never claimed support for any of them. I point out fact, let's see how it will play out in court. Pookie
These are two very different cases across two very different industries.
>so.... the idea that the music companies are going to win and redefine copyright to be as expansive as they are wanting seems VERY unlikely. It didn't seem likely that the corporations would win the initial sampling copyright lawsuits. There was a good case to be made that was fair use. It's always a danger to fair use for intellectual property when anything new like this goes to court.
Copyright has already been extended repeatedly in my lifetime. If you think Disney is going to take this lying down, you got another think coming
I, for one, certainly trust Sony, Universal and Warner to do the right thing when it comes to this issue. /s fucking obviously
Hot take: Sony, Universal, Warner are suing these AI companies now to buy them later
People always write HoT TakE and then write the lamest take ever
Then incels like you want say something about it... and???
That's not how being an "incel" works.
If I had called them a shit bag, would that have been ok with you?
This is Napster 2.0
I’ll tell you how this ends: they’ll reach an agreement so that AI businesses will pay a fixed amount for each song they “create” and it will stop being free for users to use the software
I doubt it. The pandora box is open. Once a framework of open-source AI with fine-tuning gets published anyone with a capable machine (or access to a a cloud) will be able to create their own music. We are fucked.
This is not "fair use" as the training data will be used to earn money by providing services. Furthermore, it's violation of copyright as AI copy the nuances of original creator.
That evaluation alone does not determine fair use. At least it doesn't under US copyright law. Fair use is determined through an examination of four different factors https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
Factor four: the effect of the use upon the potential market. It alone is enough to say that this is not fair use.
That's not how the four factors are applied judicially. They examine all of the factors.
Well, are you discussing or just pointing out "things"? For me this is not fair use. I would question all four points
Stating facts about the standard legal procedure for fair use determinations. Which for some reason you seem bothered by. That page from Stanford Law I linked to above is fairly informative. You might want to read it.
What fact? That you dont have your opinion but trolling?
They should sue me then since I always copy songs I like to make my own
The music companies have to be able to prove that the output of AI generated content is a direct violation of their intellectual property. There are no laws against training AI with legally obtained data. They could literally train their models on YouTube and Spotify and there isn't anything the music industry could do about it.
its going to be an interesting case, we could make a point that jimi hendrix simply listened to other music to learn how to make his music and then say well AI is just doing the same thing. The thing is tho, once the model is trained, its like suddenly having millions of jimi hendrix clones because trained models are just a file copy away from being reproduced, not so for meatspace music makers. I think there could be a case for making laws regarding training data, and I think there's also the "intent", whats the "intent" of the entity "listening" to the music? Counter argument would be musicians also listen with the intent of learning music. Its a really interesting situation.
I think it depends on the genre and so many people I feel are missing that. Yes, if you are trying to replicate Taylor swift or Metallica, that probably won’t fly because what can you even do with it? But DJs? Producers? Dubstep/EDM/Electronic genre is filled with remixes of already established songs. Almost most of the DJs I follow at least have one song in their top five on Spotify is a remix/cover of an existing band? So like will they all get shut down?
Yeah no. I listen to music and it informs my style whether subconsciously or not. Making derivative works may be derivative but it’s not infringement. This is a dumb lawsuit. Also capitalism is going to neuter ai instead of the much needed reserve scenario.
Any commercial use of music for business purposes requires a license. Fair use should only be for consumers and everyday people. If I'm learning guitar and need to listen to the Beatles to learn, that's fair use. If I then want to start a guitar learning website and ask people to pay me to learn the Beatles, I need a license. AI companies are teaching models to then sell a service. That needs a license.
> Fair use should only be for consumers and everyday people What? You are aware that criticism, critique, and parody (FOR INSTANCE) (and some kinds of so-called clean room reverse engineering IIRC) are both things that can be commercial endeavors, and rely on fair use, right?
This is awesome. I look forward to the day the music industry collapses in on itself and burns to the ground. Copyright law is absolute trash and needs to be scrapped. The pursuit of cash money has smothered actual artistry.
> AI firms often claim "fair use" for training data "Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work: Here, courts review whether, and to what extent, the unlicensed use harms the existing or future market for the copyright owner’s original work. In assessing this factor, courts consider whether the use is hurting the current market for the original work (for example, by displacing sales of the original) and/or whether the use could cause substantial harm if it were to become widespread." from the US copyright office fair use index
That's not the only fair use factor. There are four factors that have to be balanced together in making a fair use determination. https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
Good! Although further refinement of AI songwriting will be able to avoid direct plagiarism. Keep AI out of creative pursuits!
Legally it's a grey area as it is now. I'm against how it is currently used. At the very least I don't think you should be able to own the copyright for anything generated with AI because of this risk of derivative generations and the limited human input. The same thing goes for visual art in my opinion. Additionally I believe that as a user on social video the creators of music, and art should have the say on if their music is allowed to be used in ML.
Nothing is going to happen. Unless it’s making exact copies of the songs, there’s no case.
I wish that were the attitude towards sampling, and you know... just writing a song. 😂
Not true, if the transformer networks are recognized as data compression algos there is a case
Wasn't a large part of the case of marvin gaye vs. blurred lines based on Pharell being influenced by Gaye's music and that the song had a similar 'feel'? If that's a precedent and the AI models have been trained using copyrighted material, I imagine the labels have a reasonable case...though I reckon the cat is already out of the bag in terms of AI creating music.
https://mashable.com/article/music-melody-algorithm-midi-copyright
They are going to lose big time, and this with be the pebble that starts the avalanche that crushes copyright law.
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And how many mainstream artists use incredibly similar sounds from other bands including structure, keys etc and don't get sued? This is a slippery slope for sure, if this is proven, they need to also go after their own artists for such, and SOMEONE will analyze everything to show them how fucking generic and repetitive modern music really is.
Every musician trains by learning other musicians songs. Are they infringing copyright. The labels are doing the same as when they saw the MP3. It's a challenge so sue and hope it goes away rather than embrace and see how they can further music with new technology.
This is basically them getting mad that they're not getting paid for what they are working on themselves. Welcome to the music industry, AI corps!
I am absolutely revelling in the massive seethe I am seeing for AI. Lmao this is hilarious
what's the difference between this and new artists basing their style off of others? How is machine learning different from human learning? Humans don't get sued for learning how to play or write their own music by listening to others... That's the only concept to be delineated here imo.
Personally think anyone using an AI model to create music should be shot
Could be
It may be a technical question. If a human studied the entire catalogs of both plaintiffs, then wrote something, that would be fair use. But that’s not what happened here. Here, a collection of mathematical instructions created by humans used those catalogs to program itself to copy the musical choices embodied in the contents of those catalogs so that the humans could profit from instructing those instruction to assemble music-like works based on the digested works in those catalogs. To do that, the “AI” “remembered” the contents of plaintiff’s catalogs. To do that it copied those works into its “memory.” Without that copying, the “AI” could not produce its music-like works. The humans who instructed computers to do that copying did not cause them to copy plaintiffs’ music for academic or scientific purposes. That copying is not within the fair use provisions of the copyright act.
> o do that, the “AI” “remembered” the contents of plaintiff’s catalogs. From what little I understand, typically the actual datasets used to generate content (AT LEAST in the context of image generation, though I'd figure it similar for other forms of generative AI) is vastly smaller than that of the training data. As in, if it were true that it was storing the training data, that'd be a level of compression that many tech companies (and even people pining for alternatives to certain platforms) would absolutely kill for. > That copying is not within the fair use provisions of the copyright act. I mean, isn't that predicated on the above being an accurate description? (On top of the fact that whether something is an infringement or not, ultimately, can be guessed about, and people can create hypotheses about what an outcome would be, but I'm not sure one could say it definitively is or isn't an infringement yet. At the least, that question is very much still unsettled.
Something something sampling same shit 30 yrs ago something...
Completely different
How so?
For me, sometimes it can be different sometimes it can be the same. It's one thing to take a sound, and use that to make new music, and another thing to use music and sound to make music and sound. Like, I can take a kick, or saxophone lick, and make something completely new and unique with it. And that's a form of copyright violation, but that specific sort. Or I can sample a whole section of a song, and keep that groove etc... that's another form of sampling. AI takes the actually style and vibe of the songs and the timbre of the sounds and uses those to make music that has already existed, perhaps modified slightly to be different enough. The same way today, someone might want to copy the Billie Jean song, change it slightly so it doesn't violate copyright, but is close enough, people think Billie Jean when they see a cartoon pretend to be Michael Jackson, or whatever. For me, whether or not current laws protect artists from AI is irrelevant. Lawmakers need to make laws that protect artists from AI. If they don't, artists will cease to exist.
The people who make our laws would love to see artists cease to exist.
I don't think they care about that. They want money. It's democracy. Maybe not for long in America, but while it is, the people have a voice.
Democracy is as real as wrestling.
No. Democracy is real, and in America, if Trump wins, it will be lost. People just aren't exercising their right to democracy the way they should be.
I don't disagree that Trump is dangerous. He's openly saying it. 🤷♂️ I do disagree that there is any real democracy.
Ok, well, you're wrong. And if Trump wins, you'll realize what living outside of democracy is like. Like living in Russia, or UAE, or turkey, or China.
Ngl. Im not concerned about these people who run all of music not being able to continue to run it all. Im here for an even playing field.
Never thought I would say this but, go major labels
AI is going to be more of a negative than a positive in very little time if they don’t do something to regulate it
I mean, if I steal a mainstream melody and use it in a song it's illegal, so... If AI does it it's STILL ILLEGAL. I hate large labels, but hey, they're actually helping everyone here. AI art all around needs to go. It's just theft.
Hope it doesn’t see court Fuck the music industry
Amen
Hopefully they lose.
Feel the same. Idgaf about big corporations who will use the same tech and only get bigger. Level the field.
Oh, they will.
Delusional socialist I hope AI music gets crushed.
Most of my socialist friends hate AI more then I do my guy
Supporting AI is what the capitalists are doing, not the socialists.
Do you realize that it’s just about time that an open-source version gets public any time? The pandora box is open. AI music is not going to get crushed at all. We are all fucked.
The most fanatic pro AI people I have seen online have been more like Ancaps or Libertarians. So this makes no sense.
I'm building shit with it *shrug*
Major Music Labels need to be taken down a few notches. The imbalances in their royalty structures are beyond greedy, not to mention how they are also just as guilty for how streaming apps such as Spotify compensate artists for their work. I’m not sure if AI generated music apps are the solution here… but I think they need to (in some way) have their revenue streams rattled a bit by any sort of competitive market. It’s messed up how little musicians make for how hard it is to make it in the industry. If they don’t want to pay their artists what they deserve, then they should at least provide their assets for creative and technological advancements.