Billie Eilish in 2019. Image: Lars Crommelinck Photography/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
More than 200 musicians have asked AI developers and tech companies not to use AI music-generation tech, due to concerns it they will replace human artists and ‘substantially dilute’ royalty pools.
Hundreds of musicians – including Billie Eilish and Katy Perry – have signed an open letter calling on developers to stop using AI to “devalue the rights of human artists”.
More than 200 artists have signed the open letter, which claims that some platforms and developers are using AI to “sabotage creativity” and undermine workers in the music industry. The open letter also claims that some of the “biggest and most powerful companies” are using the work of these artists without permission to train AI models.
“These efforts are directly aimed at replacing the work of human artists with massive quantities of AI ‘sounds’ and ‘images’ that substantially dilute the royalty pools that are paid out to artists,” the letter reads.
The musicians claim this would be “catastrophic” for many working musicians in the industry that are “just trying to make ends meet” and have called on AI developers, tech companies, platforms and digital music services to “pledge” that they will not use AI music-generation technology.
“This assault on human creativity must be stopped,” the letter reads. “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights and destroy the music ecosystem.”
AI in the music industry
AI has been causing concerns in various creative sectors for some time and music is no exception. The rise of generative AI technology last year saw a wave of AI-generated songs that sounded similar to popular artists.
Last year, the Deezer streaming service said it would work on AI-detection tools after various songs that mimicked real artists flooded social media platforms. Meanwhile, the US state of Tennessee brought in legislation last month to protect music industry professionals from the potential dangers of AI.
Other creative sectors have taken action in response to concerns about AI. Last year, thousands of writers signed a letter written by the Authors Guild, which called on the likes of OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta to stop using their work to train AI models without “consent, credit or compensation”.
The New York Time is in the middle of a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft and claims AI chatbots made by these companies – including the popular ChatGPT – are trained on millions of articles published by the US media outlet.
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Billie Eilish in 2019. Image: Lars Crommelinck Photography via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
