It's April 25, 2024, 01:53:20 AM
tbh I'm not really a fan of Drake or KendrickI thought it was a pretty creative idea for Drake to do this though
That’s the case with perhaps the most notable AI-generated song so far, “Heart on My Sleeve,” which went viral earlier this month for its somewhat convincing pantomime of a Drake and The Weeknd song. The song, posted by an anonymous TikToker going by the name of Ghostwriter, amassed millions of streams before Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, and YouTube removed it. In the case of YouTube, the culprit for removal was what felt like an unforced error: the otherwise original song inexplicably included a Metro Boomin production tag at the beginning. Universal Music Group claimed it was an unauthorized sample and successfully got the song pulled. In this case, a copyright claim worked — but just barely. Other original songs, like an AI Drake song called “Winter’s Cold,” have been pulled from streaming platforms, too, based on alleged copyright infringement.“Heart on My Sleeve” is exactly the kind of thing UMG wants streaming platforms to crack down on, saying AI companies are violating copyright law by training their models on artists’ songs (both Drake and The Weeknd have deals with UMG).
The music group sent urgent letters in April to streaming platforms, including Spotify (SPOT) and Apple Music, asking them to block artificial intelligence platforms from training on the melodies and lyrics of their copywritten songs.The company has “a moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorized use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators,” a spokesperson from Universal Music Group, or UMG, told CNN. “We expect our platform partners will want to prevent their services from being used in ways that harm artists.”The move by UMG, first reported by the Financial Times, aims to stop artificial intelligence from creating an existential threat to the industry.Artificial intelligence, and specifically AI music, learns by either training on existing works on the internet or through a library of music given to the AI by humans.UMG says it is not against the technology itself, but rather AI that is so advanced it can recreate melodies and even musicians’ voices in seconds. That could possibly threaten UMG’s deep library of music and artists that generate billions of dollars in revenue.“UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists — as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already,” UMG said in a statement Monday. “However, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music … begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on.”The company said AI that uses artists’ music violates UMG’s agreements and copyright law. UMG has been sending requests to streamers asking them to take down AI-generated songs.
Last January, for example, I wrote to you about the streaming royalty model. A new model was needed, one that would properly reward the artist-fan relationship and disincentivize fraud and gaming the system. Because artists are at the center of everything we do, we called it the “Artist-Centric Model.” I’m proud to say that in just a matter of months, several global platforms, including the world’s largest music platform, have already adopted artist-centric principles that will transform the way artists are compensated for their work. In the coming months, I believe you will see more platforms adopting these principles. Why? Because it is the right thing to do both for artists and for the wider music ecosystem. As this new model becomes widespread, the impact will be profound: a healthier, more equitable and more vibrant music ecosystem that rewards all artists—be they major, indie or DIY—at all stages of their careers.
We launched our Responsible AI initiative this year with two goals in mind. First, to lobby for “guardrails,” that is public policies setting basic rules for AI. In the U.S., for example we are lobbying for legislation that would establish a federal right of publicity to harmonize the protections of artists’ image, likeness and voice from AI deepfakes. We were the first music company to call upon the U.S. Congress to protect artists against unethical uses of AI.
I feel like this is a psy-op to see how the public reacts to AI.