This will definitely be setting some precedent on how AI music is treated. I’m on the side of the monkey with a camera and that anything made by these large models is public domain. I’m sure these record companies would be ecstatic if they could license an artists voice without having to have them sing anything new

I wonder if these battles will shake loose the circuit split on de minimis exceptions to music samples (see https://lawreview.richmond.edu/2022/06/10/a-music-industry-circuit-split-the-de-minimis-exception-in-digital-sampling/).

Currently, it is absolutely not “cut and dried” whether the use of any given sample should be permitted. Most musicians are erring on the side of “clear everything,” but does an AI-generated “simulacrum” qualify as “sampling”?

What’s on trial here is basically “what characteristic(s) of an artist’s work do they own?” If you write a song, you can “own” whatever is written down (melody, lyrics, etc.) If you perform a song, you can own the performance (recordings thereof, etc.) Things start to get pretty vague when we start talking about “I own the sound of my voice.”

I think it’s accepted that it’s legal for an impersonator to make a living doing TikToks pretending to be Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise can’t really sue them saying “he sounds like me.” But is it different if a computer does it? It may very well be.

It’s going to be a pretty rough few years in copyright litigation. Buckle up.

Corporate middlemen on AI model generated content: “When we do it, it’s okay! But when you do it, it’s stealing!”

This genie can’t be put back in the bottle and what they wished for has became a monkeys paw for the media monopolies who thought they could replace all their artists with an unpaid robot. They’ll try to update the laws to stop this but it’s already too late.

A lot of the AI stuff is a Pandora’s box situation. The box is already open, there’s no closing it back. AI art, AI music, and AI movies will become increasingly high quality and widespread.

The biggest thing we still have a chance to influence with it is whether it’s something that individuals have access to or if it becomes another field dominated by the same tech giants that already own everything. An example is people being against stable diffusion because it’s trained by individuals on internet images, but then being ok with a company like Adobe doing it because they snuck a line into their ToS that they can train AI off of anything uploaded to their creative cloud.

I mean, the issue the RIAA is raising does not seem to be on AI training, but piracy:

The RIAA has asked Discord to shut down a server called “AI Hub,” alleging that its 145,000 or so members share and distribute copyrighted music: Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever,” for instance, or Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby.” These songs, and several others by the likes of Ludacris, Stevie Wonder, and Ariana Grande, were named in the RIAA’s June 14 subpoena to Discord (pdf).

The music files were being used as datasets to train AI voice generators, which could then churn out deepfake tracks in the styles of these singers.

Later in the article:

It wasn’t clear, from the RIAA’s letters, whether the body was complaining about the databases of original music or about the AI tracks being generated out of them.

Like, I’m sure they’re spooked by AI generated tracks and losing control of the industry… but this seems like a pretty clear cut case of shutting down a Discord server engaged in music piracy.

The children yearn for the vocaloid

Oh my wife tried this. She had it generate a song where it was Taylor Swift’s voice singing a song that wasn’t hers. I didn’t listen too closely, but it sounded decent.

This is really terrifying technology, though. Scammers are probably already working on using it to generate calls to call people’s elderly parents and claim that they are in trouble and need money.

There once upon a time was a band called moroon5 or sth that had no success with their mediocre band music. out of thin air and by accident one of their songs became a hit. and they felt they were artists. the wrote new songs that failed until it dawned the label: repeat. because people do not want art but emotions. like the olden tribal times. a feeling of group.

yet everyone thinks they have a good taste in music and Oasis is art.you dont. and it is not.

ban AI in medicine, because the work of a doctor is art compared to a moron5 song. make it copyright infringement if your AI solves excel shit as good as this one excel artist.

there is no intellectual property on anything.