THE IMPACT OF AI ON MUSIC

For eons, music has followed a strictly organic process in the sense that it requires human creativity for its existence. Every now and then we come up with inventions to make things easier and more fun. 

We have however rapidly moved past  the invention of the Fairlight CMI (the first digital sampling synthesizer) and now exist in the digital era of AI.

 

Artificial intelligence is now in the business of music production, performance, marketing and voice cloning. We have YouTube videos showcasing AI’s ability to craft new songs using the voices of esteemed artists. In the recently concluded poetry slam featuring Kendrick Lamar and Drake, Drake made use of AI to mimic the voices of Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur in his diss track “Taylor Made Freestyle”. 

AI is indeed a series of software programs that has been built to replace the need for human participation or intelligence. It is a machine with The capacity to learn and adjust. 

Thus, its reception has not been smooth at all. On the one hand there are people that suggest that the use of AI in music is for the best. Music Journalists like Joey Akan, opine that the emergence of AI will result in avoidance of human shortcomings and unreliability. An AI artist will deliver songs when due, promptly appear at live performances and will only require subscriptions for use. 

On the other hand, it has been opined AI music lacks intention and passion thus resulting in the creation of bland music.  Human essence and involvement has been postulated to be the very core of music, it is why you can shed tears to music sung in a language you do not understand. This argument has bred resistance and lack of copyrightability to musical works that lack human authorship. The law is yet to catch up with the frenzy that is “AI and music” but some ground rules have been set in place in most advanced countries. 

The United States Copyright Office for instance has stated that the office will not register works produced by a machine or any mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any input from a human author. 

In Nigeria, neither the copyright commission nor the court has been opportuned to relegate AI's copyright issue. However, our copyright law emphasizes originality and human effort. It is safe to say that our legal system will most likely conform with international standards such as the position of the USA mentioned earlier. 

 

Apart from copyrightability, there’s also the issue of copyright infringement occasioned by the use of AI in music.

Recently global record labels such as Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group Recording and Warner Records have announced copyright infringement lawsuits against AI music generators such as Udio and Suno. The lawsuits claim Suno and Udio’s software steals music to “spit out” similar work and asks for compensation of $150,000 per work. 

 

These issues accompanied with several violations of people’s rights of publicity has made it impossible for AI usage to be outrightly acceptable. 

The music industry is hoping for sane digital regulations that will allow for harmony between AI and the artist‘s rights. 

Now more than ever we are looking forward to both international conventions and national legislations armed with the right tools to ensure the tackling of all technical issues associated with AI‘s usage in the music ecosystem.