As we saw in part 14 of the series using the example of the AI company Anthropic, the music majors are already taking legal action against copyright infringements that they believe are taking place through the training and use of AI models. At the same time, however, they are also supporting projects such as the AI-generated completion of the Beatles’ song “Now and Then” and are looking to collaborate with technology companies to keep up with the latest developments around AI in music. In this concluding part of the ‘AI in the music industry’ series, we take a closer look at the majors’ ambivalent relationship with the use of artificial intelligence in the creation and distribution of music.
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Part 18: Deep Fakes and Data Protection
We saw in part 17 of the series that voice clones such as ‘Fake Drake’ raise copyright issues, although the legal situation in the US and the EU is different. However, deep fakes go far beyond copyright and can affect a person’s privacy and therefore their general personal rights. In this part of the series on AI in the music industry, we will discuss how this can happen and why the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation is relevant in this context.
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Part 17: ‘Fake Drake’ and the Problem of Deep Fakes
In mid-April 2023, there was a lot of excitement when the song “Heart on My Sleeve” appeared on the Internet and went viral. It features Canadian rap superstar Drake in a duet with his famous compatriot The Weeknd. Fans were already thinking that Drake had released a new song with a crazy new promotional campaign when it emerged that his voice had been artificially imitated by someone disguised in a sheet and sunglasses, calling himself ghostwriter977, who then posted the song on TikTok.[1] The song was already available on Spotify on 4 April[2] and then also appeared on other streaming portals and YouTube.[3]
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Part 16: A Neighbouring Right for AI-Output?
As we saw in part 15 of the series ‘AI in the Music Industry’, artificial intelligence will not have a copyright personality for the foreseeable future. However, it is being discussed that the output created by AI creates could be protected by a related or neighbouring right, as in the case of images (film and photography) or sound recordings (neighbouring right for music labels). In this part of the series, we look at the advantages and disadvantages of a neighbouring right for AI-generated musical works.
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Teil 15: Is AI a Creator?
In 2017, something revolutionary happened, and yet hardly anyone took notice. In March of this year, the Luxembourg branch of the world’s oldest music collecting society, the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM), for the first time recognised an AI as an author and registered the musical works it produced for use. This is an unprecedented process, as it was previously legally undisputed that only natural persons, i.e. humans, could produce intellectual creations within the meaning of copyright law. This part of the series therefore examines whether AI can be regarded as an intellectual creator under existing copyright law, and what conditions would have to be met for it to be recognised as such.
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Part 14: AI and Copyright Infringement
As we have seen in previous parts of this blog series, AI applications are quickly reaching the limits of copyright law. This starts with training the AI with huge amounts of music data, continues with processing that data in the hidden layers of the AI, and ends with AI output such as voice clones. Copyright issues can therefore arise throughout the entire process of AI-generated music, which we will explore in this part of the “AI in the Music Industry” series.
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Part 13: Text-to-Music-Generators: Music LM, Stable Audio, Riffusion and MusicGen
Text-to-music generators are an important development for user-friendly music creation, using simple commands (prompts) to tell the AIs what music to make, as we know from ChatGPT. Not only are new pieces of music created en masse by AIs, but also voice clones of superstars that are indistinguishable from the original. The most popular tools, such as Music LM, Stable Audio, Riffusion and MusicGen, will be discussed in more detail in this part of the blog series.
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Part 12: Google’s Magenta Studio and the WaveNet
Another company at the forefront of AI research and driving the transition from Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is Google and its parent company Alphabet. In particular, in the area of AI-generated music creation, Google created early AI applications with Magenta Studios, which ultimately opened the door to Artificial General Intelligence in music creation with WaveNet, developed by DeepMind. Both developments will be explored in this part of the blog series.
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Part 11: Open AI and the GPT Technology
In 2023, Open AI’s “ChatGPT” caused a sensation. For the first time, AI has arrived at the heart of society and become accessible to the public. GPT technology is not only the basis of the popular chat bot, but is also used in the AI software “Jukebox”, which can compose music on its own without human intervention and can even imitate the voices of well-known artists. In part 11 of the “AI in the Music Industry” series, we take a look behind the scenes of Open AI and GPT technology, starting with the first experiments that Open AI conducted at Ars Electronica in Linz in order to continue composing Gustav Mahler’s 10th Symphony with the help of AI in 2019.
Read moreAI in the Music Industry – Part 10: François Pachet: The Continuator, Flow Machines and “Daddy’s Car”
An important pioneer in AI music creation was François Pachet, who originally worked at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris before moving to the SONY Computer Science Laboratory to experiment with AI in music improvisation. Among other things, he created the first AI that could interact with jazz musicians on stage in real time, as well as the first AI-generated pop song, “Daddy’s Car”. François Pachet’s role as a pioneer in AI music creation is highlighted in this part of the series “AI in the Music Industry”.
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