The musicians' concerns echo those of authors who, in July, signed a similar open letter addressed to the CEOs of OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft. The authors' letter highlighted how AI systems mimic and regurgitate their language, stories, style, and ideas, using copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry as 'food'. However, the tech companies have not responded, and copyright law is currently insufficient to address generative AI. The musicians' letter concludes by calling for protection against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists' voices and likenesses, violate creators' rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.
Key takeaways:
- A group of 200 musicians, including Billie Eilish, the Jonas Brothers, and Nicki Minaj, have signed an open letter calling on tech companies to not undermine human creativity with AI music generation tools.
- The artists argue that AI poses threats to their privacy, identities, music, and livelihoods, as companies are using their work to train AI models without permission.
- Some tech companies are developing AI music generators that use licensed or royalty-free music, but these could still negatively impact artists who make scores for TV commercials or other beats that an artist might license for their work.
- Authors have also taken a stand against the rise of generative AI, with over 15,000 writers signing a similar open letter addressed to the CEOs of major tech companies, arguing that these technologies mimic and regurgitate their language, stories, style, and ideas.