Music industry poised to sue AI for copyright infringement as models generate similar tunes
Copyright concerns and potential lawsuits from record labels stand in the way of AI systems effectively creating original music, limiting innovation and progress in this area.
Summary
- Generative AI models can produce text, images, and audio, but music is particularly challenging due to people's preferences and tastes.
- Copyright law poses a major obstacle for AI-generated music if systems are trained on copyrighted songs without permission. Record labels are very litigious about unauthorized use of music.
- Systems trained only on original or licensed music may not be as effective. Getting rights is difficult and favors big tech companies over startups.
- Musicians have sued over brief samples or similar chord progressions and riffs. AI models create output with traces of their training data, risking claims of plagiarism.
- AI developers argue fair use and transformative output, but these defenses remain legally uncertain.
- Illustrators have called out AI art for replicating copyrighted images. Similar lawsuits from musicians seem inevitable as AI music improves.
- Unclear if AI music can become commercially viable given unsettled legal issues around copyrighting AI content.