Financial Times reports that the record label Universal Music Group has sent emails to several streaming services demanding that they stop artificial intelligences from listening to their services.
Universal suspects that AIs developed to create music are being trained by listening to music streamed from services such as Spotify and Apple Music. This is something the record label wants to prevent, as they believe AI-generated music risks reducing revenue for music made by human artists. It also seems that Universal believes that AIs that create music could potentially infringe on Universal and their artists’ copyright.
The debate about whether artificial intelligences that create images infringe on the copyrights of photographers and artists is already in full swing. Some of the companies that have created AIs that can generate images have previously been sued by the image agency Getty Images.
As far as AIs that can create music are concerned, there are currently no legal disputes that I am aware of. However, it is not entirely impossible that such disputes will also arise in the future. Universal is one of the world’s three major record labels and currently has over a third of the music market. The company represents artists such as Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, and Lana Del Rey.
