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by gazebo64 480 days ago
I think we intuitively allow for artists to derive and interpolate from their influences because of a baseline understanding that A) it is impossible to create art without influence and B) that there is an inherent value in a human creating art and expressing themselves. How that relates to someone using unlicensed music from actual humans to train an AI model in order to profit off of the collective work of thousands of actual human artists, I have no idea.

edit:

> I think that bringing the sum of human musical knowledge to anybody who cares to try for free is a moral good

Generative AI music isn't in any way accomplishing this goal. A free Spotify account with ads accomplishes this goal -- being able to generate a passable tune using a mish-mash of existing human works isn't bringing musical knowledge to the masses, it's just enabling end users to entertain themselves and you to profit from that.

> Is it really consent for those artists signing to labels

Yes? Ignoring the fact that there are independent labels outside the ownership of the Big Three you mention, artists enter into contracts with labels consensually because of the benefits the label can offer them. You train your model on these artists' output without their consent, credit or notification, profit off of it and offer nothing in return to the artists.
1 comments
zaptrem 480 days ago
A) Agreed! B) So I guess the argument here is that this doesn't apply to AI music. I think that if someone really pours their soul into the lyrics of a song and regenerates/experiments with prompts until it's just right, and maybe even contributes a melody or starting point that's still a human creating art and expressing themselves. It's definitely not as difficult as creating a song from scratch, but I've been told similar arguments were made regarding whether photography was art when that became a thing.

btw, if the user of the AI doesn't do any of the above then I think the US copyright office says it can't be copyrighted in the first place (so no profiting for them anyway).

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gazebo64 480 days ago
> if the user of the AI doesn't do any of the above then I think the US copyright office says it can't be copyrighted in the first place (so no profiting for them anyway).

Am I understanding right that the point here is that while you are able to get away with using copyrighted material to turn a profit, your end users cannot, so no worries?

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