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Music Industry Shows Concerns About AI-Generated Vocals

Today, AIs generate text and images with astonishing ease. Now they also imitate voices. AI music still has its quirks, but it’s only a matter of time before it becomes almost indistinguishable from the original artist. Record companies are now warning of this.

There are now various videos on the Internet in which the voices of well-known artists present songs that are definitely not theirs. A good example can be seen and heard here on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where Eminem raps about cats – and the AI-generated work is actually hard to tell from the real Eminem.

Various questions are still unanswered because it is currently largely unclear how copyright will behave in such cases. But the music industry has been fighting tools for “extracting” voices for a long time, and that was before ChatGPT took over the headlines.

Piracy is not the bigger concern

The Global Music Report of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) also deals with the question of copyright. As TorrentFreak reports, this report has mainly dealt with piracy and stream ripping in recent years, but these topics have now receded into the background.

AI is also currently dominating the music world, and the topic is correspondingly intensive in the Global Music Report. The industry does not categorically oppose AIs and writes: “Some are used, for example, to discover artists, others to identify the audience. Still, others allow fans to get in touch with the artists in new ways, and some support the Creative Process.”

The music industry is realizing that when using AI, the human element should always be at the center while complying with strict copyright rules and regulations. “Unless creators are respected and properly compensated when their works are used to train AI, there is potential for great harm to the world’s creative community in the development of generative AI,” said Michael Nash, a chief digital officer at Universal Music group.

His Sony colleague Dennis Kooker is particularly concerned about AIs mimicking voices: “In particular, we have serious concerns about the potential for AI synthesized speech technology to be used extensively to cover songs and attempt to replace artists. This is something we need to watch very closely.”