Artificial Intelligence has entered the art world with a lot of controversy, especially surrounding Midjourney AI. However, the technology isn’t limited to pictures, with AI music generators able to create tracks in seconds.
The release of AI music has started to worry record labels, with some claiming that they will kill the music industry. Will generated music end independent artists? Or does it not match the vibe?
Will AI music generators become a threat to musicians?
Reported by Vice, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has targeted AI music generators as harmful to the industry. In a statement, the body claimed that online services to remix songs, create music and remove vocals from instrumentals are harmful.
“There are online services that, purportedly using artificial intelligence (AI), extract, or rather, copy, the vocals, instrumentals, or some portion of the instrumentals (a music stem) from a sound recording, and/or generate, master or remix a recording to be very similar to or almost as good as reference tracks by selected, well known sound recording artists,” the RIAA wrote.
It is somewhat humorous to see them acknowledge how the AI can make songs “almost as good as” other artists. Obviously, that’s the main reason why a lot of these industry veterans are angry since it would make their work worthless.
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Will AI replace musicians?
Odd techniques aside, the real disdain for these AI music generators comes from the fear of them outright replacing artists. From what the RIAA have to say, it seems that they’re worried AI engineers will try to profit from imitating these singers.
“To the extent these services, or their partners, are training their AI models using our members’ music, that use is unauthorized and infringes our members’ rights by making unauthorized copies of our members works. In any event, the files these services disseminate are either unauthorized copies or unauthorized derivative works of our members’ music,” says the RIAA.