back to article Everyone's suing AI over text and pics. But music? You ain't seen nothing yet

Generative AI models are most known for knocking out text and pictures, though they're also getting some way with audio. Music is particularly tricky, arguably: as humans, we can be relatively forgiving with machine-imagined imagery and some forms of writing, but perhaps not so much with audio. People can be very picky about the …

  1. Dinanziame Silver badge
    Happy

    There's a lot of music in the public domain! I'm personally looking forward to Beethoven's 33rd piano sonata and Mozart's 42nd symphony. Maybe AI won't be able to create music based on anything written in the 20th century but I'll survive.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      ... won't be able to create music based on anything written in the 20th century but I'll survive.

      Nicely dodged: it looks like you nearly typed "I will survi.."

      :-)

    2. Jedit Silver badge
      Headmaster

      "Maybe AI won't be able to create music based on anything written in the 20th century"

      How about the 21st century? Notoriously downbeat prog rocker Steven Wilson was asked by a friend last year why he'd never written a Christmas single. When Wilson said he didn't think he could, the friend asked ChatGPT to "write a Christmas song in the style of Steven Wilson" and it came back with a ton of lyrics that were close enough in tone to get Wilson interested. They did a bit more refinement, then Wilson wrote a tune to go with the lyrics and took it into the studio. The result is on his YT channel and he gave it away to everyone who bought his latest album. The resemblance to his own work is uncanny.

      1. martinusher Silver badge

        Re: "Maybe AI won't be able to create music based on anything written in the 20th century"

        Back in the Good Old Days -- OK, the 18th century / Baroque era -- writing music 'in the style of' was regarded as paying a compliment to the original composer. Music performance was largely improvised, like a rock or jazz concert, so no two performances were exactly alike.

        The problem isn't copyright or anything like that, its the rentier capitalism associated with the notion of 'intellectual property'. As soon as the work becomes something that can be bought and sold and monetized -- rented -- out it becomes raw material for businesses who's primarily aim is to control the availability and flow of this material to maximize their profits. Anyone who's dealt with sheet music from the time before the Internet and laser printers will know how this works.

        1. RegGuy1

          Re: "Maybe AI won't be able to create music based on anything written in the 20th century"

          Exactly. Great music can beget great music. This has always happened. Would any of these great pieces have never been written if the greedy, selfish, lazy, 'give me some of your money coz I've done nothing to create your great work' attitude had been allowed to surface:

          Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis: Ralph Vaughan Williams/Thomas Tallis

          The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra: Benjamin Britten, on a Theme of Purcell

          Saint Anthony Variations: Johannes Brahms/Joseph Haydn

          Pulcinella: Igor Stravinsky/Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

          There are shed loads more. These are just the first that come to mind.

          [Edit: Opps, not quite a timely reply!]

    3. wub

      "I'm personally looking forward to..."

      You phrased that perfectly! You can obtain, and look at, and even perform sufficiently old music without violation.

      But if someone else performs it, you'll need to find a Creative Commons licensed recording or one that is in the public domain. Music performances are subject to performance rights, which can be violated just like creation rights.

      It is amazing how often decisions get made that ignore intellectual property rights, considering how serious the consequences sometimes turn out. The rights owners really don't do much education, relying entirely on punishment to get the word out.

      The local repertory theater I sometimes attend started playing music prior to performances, while the audience was seating itself. When I realized that this amounted to a public performance, it scared me - I didn't want them to get sued, and at any given performance in southern California, I could easily imagine a lawyer with the right in the audience. I quietly asked one of the ushers if that sound I was hearing was music, and whether there had been a negotiation about rights.

      Now we enter the theater to either silence, or to music that is included in the performance that is about to start. Sad, much less fun, but at least there is less risk to expensive litigation...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You are right to be

        On a long enough timeline either one of RIAA's narcs or a disgruntled former cast member would have outed your group, and it's not worth the trouble. Not sure about your group, but community theater doesn't have time to compose their own overture.

        The real issue here is that the relevant licensing body has no incentive to pursue legal business dealings with small fry organizations like theaters or schools. They are trying to sign up dance clubs and events companies. So your interaction with them will be in wasting days or weeks trying to sign up or talk to someone about legal licensing, only to be quoted prices that make no sense. They of course do not care. As far as they are concerned, if they notice you pay them or stop, and while they focus their enforcement on venues that represent a real opportunity on their end.

        Sadly the law compels them to enforce the rights of their suppliers (the rights holders in the recording industry) which means suing mom and pop operations no matter how bad the optics are. It's much the same for schools and non-profits, where even if the audience is a class of kindergartners, and the law does not require them to offer reasonable terms to anyone if the generic price makes no sense.

        It should be a 5-min process to log in and pay for a small one off event, and it should probably cost less then buying or renting whatever the media is, but sadly that's how it works, which means creators lose out on the long tail revenue because the licensing bodies won't update the code on their website.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: You are right to be

          "creators lose out on the long tail revenue"

          If you think the rentiers give a shit about creators (except as being cash cows), you're very much mistaken

  2. tony72

    The track Heart On My Sleeve, which was generated using AI and copied the voices and musical styles of rapper Drake and Canadian musician The Weeknd, was made by a mysterious producer known as Ghostwriter and went viral. UMG promptly stepped up again, demanding it be removed from streaming platforms.

    However the claim made on YouTube at least was based on a few seconds of the track that were an actual sample, not the AI generated part, IIRC. We await legal precedent being set to decide whether training an AI on material constitutes copyright infringement of said material, or whether copyright law can be stretched to cover "sounds like" creations.

    1. Tom Graham

      The Robin Thicke Vs Marvin Gaye Blurred Lines copyright case involved no actual sample in the song.

      The Gaye estate sued and won on the basis they elements of the song sounded a bit like something he could have written.

      1. wub

        "...elements of the song sounded a bit like something he could have written."

        Ask John Fogerty about his solo album Centerfield. The owner of the rights to the Creedence Clearwater Revival albums successfully sued Fogerty over Centerfield because the music it contains sounds too much like CCR, which Fogerty also wrote. Basically, he lost because he wrote new music in the style of his earlier music, and the rights owner claimed this reduced the value of the existing back catalog.

        This really sucks - how else is he supposed to write? But at the same time, the point about diluting the future value of the prior catalog is "sound". Ick.

        1. Hawkeye Pierce

          I believe Fogerty won ths court case didn't he? And that he then succesffuly countersued?

          Furthermore the two cases against him followed the release of Centerfield were on more specific terms that just "sounds too much like CCR" - one was because one of the tracks was considered to be a personal slanderous attack on the then-owner of the rights to his previous songs and the second was on the basis that a chorus was the same (not just "sounds like") that from a previous CCR song.

        2. Ex IBMer

          Yet, Taylor Swift recently simple re-recorded all of her old music catalogue and released them as 'Taylor Swift's versions' to take ownership of her music back when her recordings were sold.

          I don't think anybody would be enthusiastic enough to sue her. And it sets a very nice precedent.

          1. doublelayer Silver badge

            It doesn't set any precedent. She could do that because she retained copyright to the music itself, just not the specific recording of her singing it. She had the rights to make a new recording of her singing her copyrighted work. Nobody had a claim against her for doing it. Had she signed over the rights to the song, not just the recording, she would not have been permitted to do so.

            1. Alan Brown Silver badge

              Metallica rather famously spent a long time encouraging their fans to pirate their recordings due to the conditions of their recording deals meaning they effectively got paid nothing(*) - as soon as they regained the rights they pulled a 180 and became one of the more rigorous enforcer talking heads

              (*) This isn't uncommon. Most recording artists end their careers heavily in debt. Of the ones who don't, they're usually in exactly the same position they started out in. (One of the OMD guys rather famously attributed the breakup to "When we started, I was living in a bedroom at my mum's and getting £30 week. Several smash hit albums and world tours later I'm still living in a bedroom at my mum's and getting £30/week. At some point you decide to go get a real job"

  3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "AI makers believe training their models on copyrighted material is fair use"

    Of course they do. The courts will teach them otherwise.

    1. druck Silver badge

      Re: "AI makers believe training their models on copyrighted material is fair use"

      I don't think they believe it for a second, the only thing they believe is the $billions from their backers can buy them the result they want in court.

  4. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

    GANs and Pop Music

    The anime "Carole & Tuesday" was set in a people-living-on-Mars far-future where a brilliant person used a huge array of computers to analyze then-modern pop music, and to "create" very-commercially-successful new songs based on the analyzed data.

    The future appears to be closer than we thought.

    1. RAMChYLD

      Re: GANs and Pop Music

      The last person who did that in real life ended up with the song "Rudolph, the All-gracious King".

      https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/christmas-carols-get-butchered-by-ai/

      Yes, MPreg and cannibalism. In a Christmas song. By an AI trained on Christmas carols and then given a 10 second snippet of Mariah Carey's unspeakable Christmas megahit and asked to finish it. And yet it's surprisingly catchy.

  5. tiggity Silver badge

    music copyright cases and rights are a pain

    Often dubious.

    Look at The Verve & "Bitter Sweet Symphony", they initially did a deal with Decca to use a brief sample from a version of "The Last Time" by the Stones*, but still ended up getting sued.

    These things not helped by (lets take chords as example as a lot of pop written that way) as there's only a relatively small number of chords, and not that many combinations of chords that sound good when played in succession so duplication of some chord progressions is inevitable and it comes down to lawyers arguing about what's infringement & what isn't.

    Then we look at how same progression sounds v. different depending on the instrument it is played on (and indeed, on the same instrument, the "devils interval" tritone played on an acoustic guitar is far less impactful than on an electric, set up with pedals & amp for full on "metal" sound ). Anyone who has heard a thrash or death metal band play a Christmas carol for a laugh in a festive season gig will attest to it being a wholly different musical experience to what you would encounter in Carols from King's (for non UK readers, https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/chapel/carols-from-kings)

    * Ironic as Stones arguably ripped off fragments from a few old traditional blues tunes.

    1. RedneckMother

      Re: music copyright cases and rights are a pain

      Yeah, keep buying that stairway, eh?

      :)

      Apologies, I'm in a "reflective" mood.

      1. myhandler

        Re: music copyright cases and rights are a pain

        Have you listened to Zodiac by Spirit? LZ were a support band to Spirit at the early days. Randy C reportedly told Page "yeah man you can use that bit". Then Randy's descendants thought they deserved a bit. Love and peace, love and peace.

    2. Jay 2

      Re: music copyright cases and rights are a pain

      The Verve got caught out for two reasons:

      1) One way or another they ended up using a longer sample than what had been agreed/cleared.

      2) The sample in question was from an orchestral arrangement of The Last Time (not the Stones version) whose copyright was owned by an obviously very litigious guy called Allen Klein who used to mange the Stones during part of the 1960-70s. Note he was doing that in a personal capacity and I believe it didn't have much (or anything) to do with the Stones themselves. Though I'm sure they didn't complain about nay extra royalties etc...

      Slightly fortunately the rights to Bittersweet Symphony have now been passed back to The Verve (who whoever of them is credited with writing it), but I doubt that will ever recoup what being sued and the lack of royalties over ~20 years

  6. Khaptain Silver badge

    Won't be a problem

    The Record Companies will soon realise that they themselves can create AI music and make huge sums of money without having to pay any artists at all and since they own the copyright to many of the existing pieces.

    Mainstream Artist's, especially Pop, will no longer be required. Taylor Swift might be the last huge pop star, that's not a bad thing though.

    However, let's see if AI can write a Bohemian Rhapsody or a Stairway to Heaven, Dark Side of the Moon etc, I doubt it very much.

    1. Vometia has insomnia. Again.

      Re: Won't be a problem

      That was pretty much Stock, Aitken & Waterman's approach. Very formulaic music with assorted different singers and as soon as an "artiste" got too big for their boots they were sacked and someone new brought in. I guess sort of prehistoric Pop Factor, and AI-generated dross will just be another chapter from the same book.

    2. Zippy´s Sausage Factory

      Re: Won't be a problem

      In truth a lot of record companies don't own the copyright. They own the copyright of a recording and have a particular deal with the artist.

      They'll probably start putting AI clauses in contracts now, of course, but probably everything from 2022 or before is a legal minefield their lawyers will be warning them not to touch until they get everyone involved to sign nice shiny new bits of paper.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Won't be a problem

      >Mainstream Artist's, especially Pop, will no longer be required. Taylor Swift might be the last huge pop star, that's not a bad thing though.

      Of course, Taylor Swift, has famously just re-recorded a number of her albums so that *she* retains ownership of her work. Support act on the UK leg of the Taylor Swift tour this year, Paramore, are reportedly doing the same. Other acts, always retained the copyright by doing it themselves and only using record labels for distribution.

      Others are more chill about their rights and allow other artists to use them provided they give appropriate credit - and presumably a share of any royalties.

      The record companies aren't the only player in town - but they are the ones with the biggest lawyers.

    4. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Won't be a problem

      They'll probably try, but I doubt it will work. A lot of musicians and bands have a powerful brand which attracts people to spend money on it. It's not just that they make good music. Most of the popular ones make reasonably good music, assuming you like the genre they're making it in, but others could manage that as well.

      Books work similarly. There are several authors I really like reading and, when they publish a new book, I eagerly go out and read it. This isn't because other authors can't write a book of comparable quality, but because I don't know about them yet. The author's name can be a powerful influence on whether people buy it since they know what they're getting. If every book was published under a new pseudonym, I wouldn't already know I liked it and would be less likely to find out about its existence, meaning fewer sales. Publishers might respond to this by trying to sell lots of AI-generated or ghost-written books under the same pseudonym, but if they do it too much, I will figure out that the name is no longer attached to the consistent quality I'm looking for and stop reading books by that pseudonym. The benefit of a brand that conveys a certain message to the people buying the work will probably keep individuals around, both in literature and in music.

  7. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Meh

    Hmmm.

    These days I hardly ever listen to commercially produced music. Instead I get it from amateur musicians directly, or sometimes just compose something myself.

  8. Felonmarmer

    The prompt for those Dune images was specifically asking a screenshot from the 2021 trailer. Sure that might be copyright infringement depending on how it's used, but no more so than taking a screenshot directly.

    It's using the AI as a search engine, not asking it to do anything different from the original.

  9. Long John Silver
    Pirate

    Deglobalisation, copyright, and AI

    Seemingly, the USA is the global focal point for litigation over so-called 'intellectual property' (IP). 'Owners' and vendors of IP in other nations follow suit.

    As regards much of the world, legal rulings and precedents established in the USA become de facto constraints elsewhere. This arises for two reasons. First, the US is the single largest market for the sale of IP products originating elsewhere, Therefore, foreign distributors become obliged to register presence in the US and to abide by US jurisdictional requirements.

    Second, English language popular culture rests primarily in the hands of multinational companies. These have to deal with a plethora of differing national interpretations of the international copyright convention; therefore, they 'play safe' by sticking to US demands, which are reinforced via the US Trade Representative.

    Deglobalisation, hastened by reactions to the USA/EU sanctions against Russia, is creating a new geopolitical environment which reflects in rearrangements of trading blocks. Also, the US economy is fragile, being dependent upon financialised pseudo-market-capitalism, and also upon (now declining) USD hegemony. The 'global south' may seek to revisit its current international obligations concerning copyrights, patents, and the reach of trademark laws.

    AI technology is being embedded in commerce and in the public imagination at an astonishing pace. Its full potential for good and for ill is yet to be established. Unquestionably evident is AI's severe challenge to the (anachronistic) notion of IP; this comes atop of four decades of the burgeoning 'digital era' which of itself makes the concept of IP shaky, not least because IP laws are becoming unenforceable in the digital realm. The USA, and its major trading partners, will strive to place a cap on the technology's information sharing abilities; they will fail; this because of activity beyond their jurisdiction. Unless Internet blocking becomes truly effective, and taking into account anonymous distributed storage peer-to-peer networks, the rearguard battle against smashed paywalls, shared information, and entitlement to derive from and freely use information, is lost.

  10. HammerOn1024

    You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet...

    Ahhhh... BTO... a fine vintage...

  11. Grogan Silver badge

    Let them go bananas... the more ridiculous their claims,. the closer they get to being told to STFU. The AI sampling is a different issue than claiming copyright over some little pattern of notes though. About that, humans learn from experience. Someone who grew up listening to a genre of music, is going to THINK somewhat like those musicians. Who influenced them as they were writing their songs?

    What about that typical "boogy woogy" progression used in so many songs, across different genres of music?

    How many songs have notes based on old folk ballads? An example that comes to mind. There's an old folk ballad "Lady Musgrave" or is it "Lady Margaret" or is it "Matty Groves" (all based on the same song). Cross over to America and Doc Watson comes out with "Shady Grove" which is the exact same tune with different words and American nuances (I'm not complaining... it's all great). Plagiarism, or human nature? There's nobody alive to object.

    Technology is coming, and some careers are going to be over. I'm not saying art and music, but the days of being paid well for trivial things are coming to an end. Janitors will be screaming bloody murder when self driven floor polishing machines and automated attendants do most of the work etc.

    Mining of undesirable materials goes away when we stop using them too, do we prolongue burning coal because coal miners will be out of a job? (possibly a bad example because it's likely going on to some extent). Those poor asbestos mining employees, nobody wants the stuff in construction anymore. It's not completely practical yet, but soon the petroleum industry is going to take a big hit too.

    Throughout history, technology has made jobs obsolete. Hell, they were against refrigeration because it was going to put an end to the ice trade. Ships used to travel to colder waters to harvest ice and bring it back to more southern sea ports. The first inventions were suppressed as nonsense by people with vested interests and it couldn't get funding. It took the civil war, which made that commerce difficult, for them to pull their heads out of their asses. By then, Europeans had such devices eerily similar to the patent that didn't get any traction.

  12. ecofeco Silver badge

    The critical question is...

    Do I have enough popcorn for what will be an EPIC pig fight!

  13. Ex IBMer

    One day, a clever creator will mechanically develop millions of 'songs'

    Each of these 'songs' will be 2 or 3 bars long or however long the most minimum successful lawsuit was (minus one note).

    There will be an exhaustive set - and they will be released into the Public Domain. Others will be able to draw on them by combining song 1, 34211,34772, 43228 and 5511889 to create an entirely new derivative song.

    Nobody sues people over two letter sets, or single word phrases.

    Then this nonsense will stop.

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      That's been tried. It doesn't work. Just as you can release every combination of two words into the public domain, and every single word, but that won't eliminate copyright on sentences produced from the words. Music copyright complaints, when they're talking about small similarities between two distinct pieces, are often dubious in quality. A brute force algorithm won't fix it for two reasons:

      1. The copyright office in the United States has clearly stated that a dumb program's output can't be copyrighted unless there is significant human effort involved, so they don't have copyright over the tiny chunks in the United States, where many of the lawsuits occur.

      2. Most of the sections would be too small to copyright anyway, in the same way that I can't write "I am" (copyright me, you can't use it).

  14. bertkaye

    the perils of miscommunications

    Me: ChatGPT, make me something like Ludwig van

    ChatGPT: here is a nice VW bus that seats nine

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: the perils of miscommunications

      I wonder what it would make of "camper Van Beethoven" (Would it have a matchstick man driving? Skinhead bowlers in the rear?)

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So we are getting there....

    You know Frank Farian is still alive to see this day - a day where he would not need people to create his art anymore...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just change it a bit. "Prisencolinensinainciusol” reached the top spot on the Italian charts when it was released in 1972, despite the fact that the lyrics were 100 percent gibberish. Italian singer Adriano Celentano wrote the song to mimic the way he thought American English sounded.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "Italian singer Adriano Celentano wrote the song to mimic the way he thought American English sounded."

      And he suceeded. Even native english speakers have to stop and listen to realise it's gibberish

  17. Charles Ghose

    Defending AI's Creative Freedom

    AI isn't the only casualty of greedy record labels crying about copyright violations. Just take a look at how a YouTube video of a birthday party, a high school concert, or a music recital will have a copyright claim against the video just because a copyrighted piece of music is playing in the background. Do these record labels expect YouTubers to ask a restaurant or clothing store to turn off the music so they can make a video? Or tell a museum or festival not to play any music to avoid a copyright claim, which comes with the threat of a copyright strike that could result in YouTube deleting their YouTube Channel? I thought in the United States there is freedom of expression, but this freedom is fine on YouTube as long as the YouTuber is not using copyrighted music in their videos or livestreams. Now AI is under attack.

    Let's think of AI as a human with the talent of playing by ear. For a human to play by ear, they need to hear a piece of music; they learn to copy the piece of music by listening to it. If that human created a new piece of music from the experience of listening to music and playing by ear, would that be a problem? Of course not. Isn't training AI with pieces of music the same as a human listening to music and playing by ear? In this case, AI has the capability to play by ear, to make new pieces of music in a way from its memory like a human would.

    As for making new music works using a famous singer's voice with AI without that famous singer knowing about it or being involved. Well, isn't that just like a human doing an impression of a famous singer? Are human impressionists breaking copyright by singing just like, for example, Michael Jackson or Frank Sinatra? Maybe as a compromise, the voice that is generated by AI shouldn't be 100% accurate, but I believe in most cases it isn't.

  18. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Copyright laws are currently insane

    Media companies managed to obtain unprecedented levels of goverment control in the last 2 centuries and copyrights are at the point where they're actively HARMFUL to societal development

    These outfits are busy shoring the dam up ever-higher but that simply means that the flood will be worse when it breaks

    Copyright is necessary, but there's absolutely no need for my decendants to profit from my work for 50 years after I'm dead, etc. This is just ridiculous and likely to be looked at in future as one of the worst excesses of 20th-21st century stupidity

    (Hint: In the current copyright environment, Dickens and others probably wouldn't have been nearly as prolific)

  19. MrKrotos

    Its not simple

    Music is an interesting thing, for example you cant copyright a chord!

    You also cant copyright a drum pattern...

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