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AI music, the next IP battleground

In the USA, the recording industry has all but announced a war against AI-generated music.

After decades of fighting online piracy that, they claim, was stealing billions of dollars from their plush Birkin Bag purses, the industry finally wised-up and realised that the internet could be more of a valuable distribution tool than a threat. Once that penny dropped we finally saw them transition from physical media to streaming services and profits soared.

Now however, another threat to their plush lifestyle has reared its ugly head.

Thanks to a the growing number of services that allow even the most tone-deaf users to create very professional-sounding music tracks, complete with vocals and stunning musical scores, the effective monopoly enjoyed by traditional music publishers is under threat.

Their response has been to fund a number of startups that have claimed to be working on software that can rat-out AI-generated tracks so that they can be reported to the social media platforms used for their distribution.

The recording industry asserts that these AI-produced tracks are nothing more than copyright breaches because they've been created by systems that have scraped existing protected works and used those to create new works.

They want those creating AI music to pay license fees for the use of that scraped content as the "inspiration" for that new stuff.

Of course the logistics of exactly how this would work remains a mystery.

A piece of AI-produced music may have had its genesis in thousands or tens of thousands of "inspiring" pieces that were scraped. Exactly how is anyone supposed to determine exactly which protected works were crucial or involved in the synthesis of new material?

We also have to point out the obvious and remind the industry that all new music created by human beings is biased and influenced by protected works that the artist has heard before but nobody's suggesting that their output should be subject to the payment of license fees.

The sad reality of this situation is that we may soon see some significant changes in how AI-generated music is distributed.

Right now, anyone can go to one of these services and in response to a few text-based prompts, create a fantastic piece of original music. They can then upload that music to a site such as YouTube and earn money from it via monetization.

You can bet your bottom dollar that pretty soon the recording industry will say to sites such as YouTube "either you give us a split of any earnings from AI-generated music or we withdraw the licenses we've granted you to cover the use of our copyrighted tracks on your platform". When that happens YouTube will take the knee and do exactly what the industry demands -- because they know how dependent their platform now is on revenues generated by copyrighted music tracks that have been uploaded.

Some might argue that this is fair but the real problem arises when the system which detects and flags AI music as such, gets it wrong. Already we see that YouTube's content ID system frequently mis-flags music and in doing so, steals revenue from creators who then have to prove ownership or license of that audio -- risking a channel strike if their appeal is denied.

Imagine what happens if you're a budding musician who uploads their own composition (devoid of all AI) and is then told "Identified as AI, revenue denied". How do they prove that the work is not AI-created?

If YouTube's existing track record is anything to go by, the creator is the last person to be believed in such situations. Inevitably the claimant is given greater credence than the creator so huge injustices could result.

Also, given that in virtually every country on the planet, AI-generated material is not subject to copyright, what happens when new AI stuff is based on existing AI stuff. Since there's no copyright to be infringed then no claim can be made against it... right?

What we're actually seeing here is the recording industry running true to form. They are threatening those who dare to challenge their business model and will spend a fortune on lawyers trying to deter such activities. Eventually however, they'll wake up to the fact that AI isn't their enemy, it's probably going to be their future.

Once the music execs twig to the fact that, thanks to AI, they can create new works themselves, without paying artists, studio musicians, producers and such -- they'll be all over it. Suddenly they'll jump ship and it is THEY who will be claiming that new AI works should not require licensing from existing music publishers. What's more, they'll be demanding copyright protection for such works, when they have created them using AI.

At that point the music industry is dead. I won't shed a tear.

Carpe Diem folks!

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