ARTISTS WARN THAT THE IA CAN DESTROY HUMAN MUSIC
By Anahí Di Santo / Escudo Digital
Concern about the scope of artificial intelligence has permeated the music industry and has been expressed in a letter entitled “Stop devaluing music”, in which nearly 250 artists, composers, performers and copyright holders question the indiscriminate use of AI models as they believe it puts their work and income at risk.
Just a year ago, tech leaders made headlines for publishing an open letter calling for a pause on major AI experiments.
The recent initiative, promoted by the Artist Rights Alliance, has the signatures of internationally renowned musicians from around the world, including Billie Eilish, Camila Cabello, Elvis Costello, Imagine Dragons, J Balvin, Jon Bon Jovi, Jonas Brothers, Juanes, Katy Perry, Laura Pausini, Luis Fonsi, Norah Jones, Pearl Jam, Peter Frampton, R.E.M., Raphael, Stevie Wonder and many more. Also among the signatures are representatives of the legacies of Bob Marley and Frank Sinatra, among others.
The artists’ statement is a concrete and brief text in which they call on AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to “commit to not develop or deploy technology, content or artificial intelligence music generation tools that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or deny us fair compensation for our work.”
While they acknowledge that, with responsible use, AI can foster human creativity and generate new musical experiences for music lovers, they question some platforms and developers for using these technologies to sabotage and destroy the work of songwriters, musicians and artists. And they express concern about their use to manipulate the voice and image of professional artists, which includes but is not limited to deepfake.
The first claim is that tech companies train their AI models on artists’ works without their consent or payment of royalties. The second is that unchecked AI, “will degrade the value of our work and prevent us from receiving fair compensation for it.”
The undersigned artists denounce that all this threatens their privacy, identity, music and livelihood, and makes it possible to replace human labor with sounds and images artificially created by machines.
And they say this is catastrophic for those who make a living from their music and struggle to make ends meet. They call for the protection of voices and copyrights from the “predatory use of AI,” which threatens to destroy the music ecosystem.
While more and more AI tools have been appearing since the ChatGPT boom, recently the amazing capabilities of Adobe’s Project Music GenAI Control and Microsoft’s Copilot platforms to generate musical pieces with simple text instructions and modify their tempo, intensity, style, structure and more details became known. Some researchers indicate that this tool surpasses Photoshop in terms of its capabilities, as it not only composes and edits, but also creates and customizes each project, giving the user “pixel-level” control over the music.
————
This text was originally published in Escudo Digital, with whose authorization we reproduce it here.
