Universal Music Asks Streaming Services to Block AI Access to Its Songs
variety.comJem Aswad Senior Music Editor The world’s largest music company, Universal Music Group, is asking major streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music to block artificial intelligence companies from using its music to “train” their technology, according to a recent report in Financial Times.
Confirming the report, a UMG spokesperson told the FT: “We have 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.
We expect our platform partners will want to prevent their services from being used in ways that harm artists.” The process involves the AI companies uploading copyrighted music from the platforms into their technology and thus enabling the bots to digest the lyrics and music and then essentially create songs or melodies in those styles.
Among countless recent examples, David Guetta recently used ChatGPT to add a rap from an AI-generated Eminem to one of his songs, although he has apparently managed to sidestep copyright issues by not releasing the song; the real Eminem is a Universal artist, and the use opens up a whole new realm of copyright issues.
Read more on variety.com