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Even UK industry body the BPI refused to go on the record with regard to how the industry will deal with this brave new world and what steps might be taken to protect artists and the integrity of their work.
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Roc Nation declined to comment on the legal implications of AI impersonation, as did several other major labels contacted by the Guardian: “As a public company, we have to exercise caution when discussing future facing topics,” said one anonymously. Jay–Z, who saw an AI version of himself rapping Shakespeare and Billy Joel. And while the videos were eventually reinstated “pending more information from the claimant”, the case – the first of its kind – rumbles on. (Both are incredibly realistic.) “This content unlawfully uses an AI to impersonate our client’s voice,” said the filing. Earlier this year, Roc Nation filed DMCA takedown requests against an anonymous YouTube user for using AI to mimic Jay-Z’s voice and cadence to rap Shakespeare and Billy Joel. Legal departments in the music industry are following developments closely. Ultimately, will streaming services, radio stations and others increasingly avoid paying humans for music? Streaming services could, meanwhile, pad out genre playlists with similar sounding AI artists who don’t earn royalties, thereby increasing profits.
#Frank sinatra radio echoes tv#
If you didn’t want to pay the market rate for using an established artist’s music in a film, TV show or commercial, you could create your own imitation. It’s not hard to foresee, though, how such deepfakes could lead to ethical and intellectual property issues. Even Spotify is dabbling its AI research group is led by François Pachet, former head of Sony Music’s computer science lab. Numerous startups, such as Amper Music, produce custom, AI-generated music for media content, complete with global copyright. Google’s Magenta Project – billed as “exploring machine learning as a tool in the creative process” – has developed several open source APIs that allow composition using entirely new, machine-generated sounds, or human-AI co-creations. We’re down in the Uncanny Valley.ĭeepfake music is set to have wide-ranging ramifications for the music industry as more companies apply algorithms to music. “The screams of the damned” reads one comment below that Sinatra sample “SOUNDS FUCKING DEMONIC” reads another. Input, say, Queen or Dolly Parton or Mozart, and you’ll get an approximation out the other end.Īdmirable as the technical achievement is, there’s something horrifying about some of the samples, particularly those of artists who have long since died – sad ghosts lost in the machine, mumbling banal cliches. Having trained the model using 1.2m songs scraped from the web, complete with the corresponding lyrics and metadata, it can output raw audio several minutes long based on whatever you feed it. Along with Sinatra, they’ve done what are known as “deepfakes” of Katy Perry, Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, 2Pac, Céline Dion and more. The song in question not a genuine track, but a convincing fake created by “research and deployment company” OpenAI, whose Jukebox project uses artificial intelligence to generate music, complete with lyrics, in a variety of genres and artist styles. Even the voice – that rich tone once described as “all legato and regrets” – is eerily familiar, even if it does lurch between keys and, at times, sounds as if it was recorded at the bottom of a swimming pool. With an easy swing, cheery bonhomie, and understated brass and string flourishes, this could just about pass as some long lost Sinatra demo.
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‘It’s Christmas time! It’s hot tub time!” sings Frank Sinatra.
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