On Tuesday, the Artist Rights Alliance (ARA) announced that more than 200 music artists, including the estates of Pearl Jam, Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, and Frank Sinatra, have signed the AI published an open letter criticizing the In the letter, the artists call on AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to stop using AI to “violate and devalue the rights of human artists.” . ARA’s tweet added that AI poses an “existential threat” to their art.
After the rise of the first mainstream AI image generators in 2022, visual artists began protesting the emergence of generative AI. We then found that the outcry extended to professionals in other creative fields, given that generative AI research is being conducted on other forms of creative media. This has expanded to include writers, actors, filmmakers, and now musicians.
“When used irresponsibly, AI poses significant threats to our ability to protect our privacy, identities, music, and lives,” the open letter states. Some of the “largest and most powerful” companies (not named in the letter) are using artists’ work to train AI models, with the aim of replacing human artists with AI-generated content. They claim they are using it without permission.
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List of music artists who signed the ARA open letter against generative AI.
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List of music artists who signed the ARA open letter against generative AI.
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List of music artists who signed the ARA open letter against generative AI.
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List of music artists who signed the ARA open letter against generative AI.
Billboard reported in January that AI research conducted at Google DeepMind trained an anonymous music-generating AI on a large dataset of copyrighted music without obtaining artists’ permission. Reported. The report may be referring to Google’s Lyria. Lyria is an AI-generated model announced in November that the company positions as a tool to enhance human creativity. Since then, this technique has enhanced his musical experiments from YouTube.
We previously covered AI music generators that appear to be fairly primitive in 2022-2023, including Riffusion, Google’s MusicLM, and Stability AI’s Stable Audio. We also covered open source music voice cloning technology that is frequently used to create music parodies online. Although we have yet to find an AI model that can produce perfect, fully composed, high-quality music on demand, the quality of output from music synthesis models has steadily improved over time.
When considering the potential impact of AI on music, it is useful to recall historical instances where technological innovations first sparked concern among artists. For example, the introduction of synthesizers in the 1960s and 1970s and the emergence of digital sampling in the 1980s both faced scrutiny and fear from some in the music community, but the music industry eventually adjusted. Did.
Over the past year, we’ve seen a fairly widespread fear of the unknown related to AI, but like other music production tools and technologies that have come before, AI tools will be integrated into the music production process. may be. Even if such a merger were to happen, some artists could be hurt in the process, and ARA wants to speak out about it before the technology advances further.
“Race to the bottom”
Artists Rights Alliance is a nonprofit advocacy organization that describes itself as “an alliance of working musicians, performers, and songwriters fighting for a healthy creative economy and fair treatment for all creators in the digital world.” I’m explaining.
The signatories of ARA’s open letter say they acknowledge the potential of AI to improve human creativity when used responsibly, but that replacing artists with generative AI would mean paying artists less. It also claims that the royalty pool will be “significantly diluted” and that this could be “potentially disastrous.” ” To the many working musicians, artists, and songwriters trying to make a living.
In the letter, the artists said that unchecked AI would create a race to the bottom, devaluing their work and preventing them from receiving fair compensation. “This attack on human creativity must be stopped,” they write. “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal the voices and likenesses of professional artists, violate the rights of creators, and disrupt the music ecosystem.”
It is noteworthy that the word “human” is emphasized in the letter (“human artist” is used twice, “human creativity” and “human artistry” are used once each). ). The output of a human artist and his AI system. This means the recognition that we have entered a new era in which not all creative achievements are performed by humans.
The letter concludes with a call to action, calling on all AI developers, technology companies, platforms, and digital music services to protect songwriters and their AI music generation technologies that undermine or replace their human artistry. We require you to commit not to develop or introduce content or tools. Do not deny artists fair compensation for their work.
It’s unclear whether companies will respond to these demands, but so far the outcry from visual artists has not stopped the development of more advanced image synthesis models. “Unfortunately, this would be about as effective as writing an open letter to stop tomorrow’s sun from rising,” Dare Obasanjo, a frequent AI industry commentator, wrote in the thread.
