A group of 200 musicians has signed an open letter calling on technology companies and developers not to undermine human creativity with AI music generation tools.
The list of signature artists is so strong and broad that it could be a great Coachella lineup. Billie Eilish, Bob Marley Estate, Chapel Lawn, Elvis Costello, Greta Van Fleet, Imagine Dragons and Jon Bon Jovi are featured. , Jonas Brothers, Kacey Musgraves, Katy Perry, Mac DeMarco, Miranda Lambert, Mumford & Sons, Nicki Minaj, Noah Kahan, Pearl Jam, Sheryl Crow, Zayn Malik and more.
“When used irresponsibly, AI poses a significant threat to our ability to protect our privacy, identities, music, and lives,” the letter said. “Some of the biggest and most powerful companies are using our work without permission to train their AI models…This is devastating for many working musicians, artists, and songwriters just trying to make a living. It will be a terrible situation.”
These artists are right. AI models generate new music, artwork, and writing features by training on vast datasets of existing works, but in most cases it is futile to request that works be removed from these models. It's a work. It's as if one of these artists is trying to stop someone from copyrighting their music, but that's not realistic. It is already possible to create convincing deepfakes of popular artists, and the technology will continue to improve.
Some companies, such as Adobe and Stability AI, are working on developing AI music generators that use licensed or royalty-free music. But even these tools can have a negative impact on artists who create scores for television commercials and other beats that artists may license for their own work.
Historically, as technology has become more and more sophisticated, musicians have been left in the lurch. First, file sharing made it easy to get music for free. Streaming emerged as an answer to this problem, but it didn't satisfy artists. The Musicians Allied Workers Union (UMAW) has spent years trying to improve streaming payouts to artists. Artists in the union estimate that Spotify's average streaming royalty rate is about $0.0038, or about a quarter of a cent. So it's no surprise that musicians are skeptical about this new technology.
The authors also argue against the rise of generative AI. In July, more than 15,000 authors, including James Patterson, Michael Chabon, Suzanne Collins, and Roxanne Gay, wrote a similar message to the CEOs of OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft. signed the open letter.
“These technologies imitate and regurgitate our language, stories, styles, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poems become “food” for AI systems; It’s been endless meals without being charged,” the author’s letter reads.
But these technology companies don't listen. You can also visit ChatGPT and ask them to create a bunch of passages in the style of Margaret Atwood. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but it does show that large language models can take in “The Handmaid's Tale” and spit out a degraded version of the language model. that. Additionally, copyright law is not necessarily sophisticated enough to deal with generative AI, so legal recourse is of little use at this point.
“This attack on human creativity must stop,” the musicians' letter said. “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal the voices and likenesses of professional artists, violate the rights of creators, and disrupt the music ecosystem.”