3 Major Record Labels Sueing AI
AI is already stepping into our lives with intelligent chat bots, image/video generation and song writing…its been taking an impact on the music industry in many ways…like with creating explicit images of Taylor Swift and spreading across X (formally known as Twitter), and then you have a good side of it — which is helping people write their songs in a creative fashion…until now.
The 3 major record labels are suing two AI programs: Suno and Udio-maker. But, who are the big three major record labels?
Sony Music and Entertainment
Universal Music Group
Warner Music Group
“Suno and Udio have both made headlines for their ease in generating music, and the latter led to one of the most notorious pieces of AI music: Metro Boomin’s Drake diss track ‘BBL Drizzy.’” by Billboard Canada, written by Richard Trapunski on Jun 25, 2024.
The AI programs use artists’ music to create similar compositions; and the people who created these AI programs didn’t get a license so they could use other artists’ work to help program the AI music bot. So the 3 major labels are asking for a compensation of £118,200 per piece.
Suno on the other hand didn’t respond to the request by these three labels, however Udio said that it was “uninterested in reproducing content” which the BBC Reported from Udio’s blog post.
And now different creative groups and firms are starting to challenge the rights usage act for AI using other people’s work without being compensated.
Suno,has more than 10 million people using the program to make music, and they are also in partnership with Microsoft.
To use the AI music software you have to pay a monthly fee; and that has raised $125m (£96 million).
Udio is one of the famous AI music making bots as it gained its fame after someone had created “BBL Drizzy” which is a parody track of the artists Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
Apparently Udio has said: “the system is explicitly designed to create music reflecting new musical ideas. And implemented and continue to refine state-of-the-art filters to ensure our model does not reproduce copyrighted works or artists’ voices.
We stand behind our technology and believe that generative AI will become a mainstay of modern society.”
However, not only just these two AI softwares, the people who have created AI programs believe that anything that has been created by AI should not be copyrighted, due to the fact that a computer doesn’t need to earn a wage while we do.
The main use for AI music software is to help people create new music by gaining new inspirational ideas, to work on samples, and to help grow their musical creativity; and according to the company Ubio — AI will end up being part of our modern society.
However…as we know record labels are saying that the two AI programs have been making money from copied songs.
“The use here is far from transformative, as there is no functional purpose for… the AI model to ingest the Copyrighted Recordings other than to spit out new, competing music files” The record labels have stated.
Something that the BBC has stated is that the complaints were saying that Suno and Udio have created works like “Prancing Queen” which even made ABBA fans struggle to tell the difference from AI generated recording and a real recording from the actual band. Along with other songs like: All I Want For Christmas Is You and My Girl.
As a lot of people in the music industry are saying, AI is starting to threaten human creation within the music industry; as it is now starting to sound identical to celebrities like Billie Eilish and ABBA etc.
What also makes it interesting at the moment is that 200 and more have signed a letter calling for a predatory use of AI within the music industry to stop.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you think AI will take over the music industry? Will musicians lose their jobs?
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