The track, heart on my sleeve, credited to the ‘artist’ ghostwriter, has racked up more than 230,000 plays on YouTube, and more than 625,000 plays on Spotify.
In addition to AI-replicated vocals of Drake, the track – a seemingly original composition – also features AI-replicated vocals of The Weeknd’s voice.
Both Drake and The Weeknd release their (real life) records via UMG and its Republic Records.
Said UMG in a statement to MBW in the wake of today’s news: “UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists–as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already.
“With that said, however, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.
In which I have my first exchange with ChatGPT about Spotify royalties.
you know, you're right. Spotify royalties are much more difficult than solving for π. We'll be quoting you, thank you for that clarification. https://t.co/bkYUlIXInN
It’s like the antichrist without the morals. Voice over actors are being attacked by purveyors of artificial intelligence so that the actor’s voices can be re-used without consent or compensation even if they did consent or at least didn’t object. Not only that, but voices can be used to train AI to speak in a completely different context. This is way worse that Netflix composer buyouts.
Check your name/image/likeness clauses folks–voice actors will not be the only ones caught up in the AI hellscape.
AN OPEN LETTER FROM NAVA AND THE VOCAL VARIANTS TO THE VOICE OVER COMMUNITY
AI or Synthetic Voices are on the rise. We’re a group of concerned voiceactors working with union and non-union performers alike to make sure we don’t lose our voices forever by signing away our rights to various companies. Long story short, any contract that allows a producer to use your voice forever in all known media (and any new media developed in the future) across the universe is one we want to avoid.
So we have put together some things we can all do to avoid the decimation of our industry.
While we await proper legislation, it's time composers added clauses to their commissioning contracts to protect against unauthorised use of their scores and stems for AI data mining, at least not without express permission, credits and compensation. @IvorsAcademy@ECSA
Artist Rights Watch--News for the Artist Rights Advocacy Community 