The time has come for the music industry to face down the AI Music Bot! Music generated by AI “creators” is now popping up regularly on Youtube and Spotify with thousands of likes and shares. It is being used in games and on social media platforms such as Secondlife. What does this mean for musicians, songwriters, and singers in particular? It certainly isn’t good but I believe we can reach a reasonable accommodation that addresses the concerns of the music community and allows listeners to make their own choices with regards to AI in general and AI music specifically..
AI is not in and of itself a bad thing. If you face the task of writing an obituary for a loved one, using AI is a blessing in a time of grief and sorrow. If you have to create a Gofundme page for a friend or relative and you aren’t a great writer, AI is a huge time (and reputation) saver. If you are playing a game and come up with a great little lyric and want to generate a song by having AI give you the music and a “fictional” voice, more power to you as long as you let people know “hey I created this AI song about our last epic badass battle”. If you write blogs like I do and want to generate a cool feature graphic based on the phrase “new blues music”, again more power to you. In my case, I use a graphically enhanced photo of myself on some posts and it clearly shows in the bottom right hand corner that it was generated by Grok.
Some of the AI generated music is good enough that it has fooled me. And I have been asked, if it is good enough to fool you, why not spin it for everyone? Because it absolutely goes against everything that motivates me to help spread the word about all the great musicians, songwriters, and singers that populate the contemporary blues. I want to promote musical talent; not proficiency in using a computer program.
So what is a reasonable accommodation with AI when it comes to music? To me, it is pretty simple and straightforward. Any music generated, in any part, by use of an AI platform of any sort, should be CLEARLY labeled as such. As I have stated in a previous article, there are AI music videos on Youtube and songs available on Spotify by “fictional” artists (which translates as “AI music bot” to me). In a few cases, the “creator” states down in the comments that the music is AI generated. In most, they don’t mention it all. In the most egregious cases, they even include a real artist’s name (e.g. Chris Stapleton) in the “artist/song” title misrepresenting who is performing..
The reality is that AI software has probably at this point “trained” on every blues song ever created digitally. AI has also “trained” on every voice that it could grab from any source including anything ever streamed. Additionally, it has trained on every musical instrument known to exist. This AI power is now being harnessed by individuals sitting at a moderately priced computer or lounging on their sofa on an expensive cell phone. Putting aside the vast legal issues related to whether AI has used copyrighted content to “train”, the least that the AI content generator of music can do is to clearly state “this is AI music”. Then the listening public (and services such as Spotify and Youtube) can make their own informed choices about the music they choose to list and listen to.
This article first appeared on my personal blog and is reposted here with the kind permission of BMFR.
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Ben Vee started out spinning songs on terrestrial radio and at nightclubs back in the 1970’s in his home state of Louisiana. After a career in the construction business, he returned to DJing in 2011. He now hosts two shows each week on http://www.bluesmusicfan.com and writes about the blues for BMFR at http:/www.bluesbeats.com and on his own blog at http://www.benveeblues.com from his home in Connecticut.
Blues Beats is powered by Blues Music Fan Radio (BMFR), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, listener-supported station streaming the best in blues 24/7. We’re dedicated to sharing world-class blues — past, present, and future — and supporting the artists who keep the music alive.
