Over 200 music artists including Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry, Zayn Malik, and Nicki Minaj have signed an open letter calling for protection against the “predatory” use of AI in the music industry.
Issued by non-profit organisation Artist Rights Alliance, the open letter calls on “AI developers, technology companies, platforms, and digital music services to cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of the human artists.”
It goes on the say that when AI is used “irresponsibly”, it poses “enormous threats” to artists’ identities, music, and livelihoods, detailing how AI-created audio and images substantially dilute the royalty pools that are paid out to artists.
“Some of the biggest and most powerful companies are, without permission, using our work to train AI models,” it writes. “These efforts are directly aimed at replacing the work of human artists.”
Other signatories also include the estates of Bob Marley and of Frank Sinatra – whose voices often appear in AI-created videos uploaded to online platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
One “cover” using Frank Sinatra’s voice over the song ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ has as many as 5.2 million views, and another using Bob Marley’s voice over the song ‘Dance Monkey’, by the band Tones and I, has close to a million.
“This assault on human creativity must be stopped. We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likeliness, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem,” it claims.
The letter also asks its addressees to pledge to not develop or deploy AI music-generated technology, content, or tools that “undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or deny us fair compensation for our work.”
The message however does encourage the belief that AI has the potential to support creativity in a manner that enables the development and growth of new experiences for music fans.
Coincidentally, the letter was published in the same week that OpenAI announced the release of a tool that can create a clone of anyone’s voice, based on a 15-second recorded audio.
It claimed that the ‘Voice Engine’ tool is only available to a select few firms to limit any risks around misinformation, particularly in the year that has been termed as the global year of elections.
