Over 1,000 musicians release silent album to protest AI copyright changes

Tempus said:

This is one thing I don't understand about the AI learning process. Writers and musicians have been reading/listening to others since the beginning of time and influenced by those other creators. Bach is a classic example of taking music from others and enhancing it to be a new composition so what makes AI doing the same thing so bad? If I read a bunch of submarine action books and then write my own that was strongly influenced by those I've read, how does that make me better than AI doing it?

If the training content is free for me to consume and be influenced by, why not an LLM?

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A human can listen to music every day, gets inspiration for creating his won. Even if he listens to music every day, he will never hear even a tiny percentage of all the music there is.
AI can "get enspired" or rather devour every last bit of music available and then spam more music than all musicians and singer exist on earth. It benefits the most powerful and rich few who are able to afford to develop and maintain this AI.
It is not that AI is bad for music, the biggest problem it seems to me that is skews the balance and economy to benefit a small group of people while further cutting access to earning money for small musicians.

A man listens to a song and it inspires him to create his own. Then the song brings him money. Then another person listens to his song and creates his as well. The chain is good for everybody, it is self balanced and allows for new people to keep getting into the industry and to feed themselves.
Then AI lstens to a song, or rather ALL of them within minutes. Now one entity or rather its owner, a very rich person, can create many many more pieces benefiting not people in a chain but himself and himself only.
I am not creator, but I think I understand very clearly why musicians are concerned. This f**g thing can take their income for itself. And to achieve it, it will use THEIR own work. I think everyone remembers how META's employs chatted between themselves about scanning terabytes of copyrighted materials from torrent site for their AI. These music AI owners will scan entire Spotify or Deezer library without caring whether it is legal or not.

At the end, one or few very rich person will earn even more money while the rest will have it much harder to earn money with their music. Bad for the people, bad for economy. It is bad because the richest can get even richer, which is not wrong. What is, is that they will do it at the expense of the less fortunate ones. If they want to do it, they must share what they earn, and do it very generous.

mgwerner said:

Your reply erroneously presumes that the output of current artists is not "low quality garbage" already. It mostly is.

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It doesn't really matter. Amongst those thousands of useless "artists" there still are a few hidden gems that we should defend.

mgwerner said:

Your reply erroneously presumes that the output of current artists is not "low quality garbage" already. It mostly is.

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Really? Have you listened to literally all the artists? Because I'm finding great stuff all the time on my own.

"Popular" music is always going to be lowest common denominator tripe that's heavily promoted to the masses. The really good stuff doesn't get that treatment.

Go out and find good music you actually like.

Let's regulate AI and defend the income and royalties of millionaires like Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and others. And by others I mean Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony.

Let's demand from the British government to stop this theft. Or at least make them pay royalties, mainly to the 'Big Three' music corps and the big artists - like we did back with Napster.

Because we had a good thing going on in the music industry prior to AI with no theft of ideas or injustice at all

While coders, writers, graphic designers etc. struggle as always, especially after the dawn of AI, jobs getting cut, careers being killed off, but we don't care because those people, while being the real victims, are not recording a media widespread protest album or demanding a thing from the public. Those nameless and countless people just go on with their lives and their private struggle to pay the rent.

When will they release the album on vinyl?

Cry as much as you want, but the genie is out of the bottle. Maybe some countries will regulate AI in some ways, training, output, usage. But there will always be places where it will not be regulated. The output will find its way to the regulated world in products, albums and so on.

Raskakoochy said:

I'm Cuban. I listened to it, the instrumental was very good, the lyrics were average, generic. Most wouldn't catch that it's AI if you put it on a Hispanic radio station.

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I also listened, and I understand why artists are so afraid. The instruments don't sound very natural (yet) but most productions are pretty synthetic nowadays anyway. The spelling of the "singer" sounds very latino.

Sadly, those companies are draining human knowledge to make us lazy and incompetent (we already are, but it's gonna be worse). On the long term, people would rely on AI for anything as we already do with Internet. For those of us who saw before and after the Internet, we know that it has made knowledge more accessible but also more volatile. Humanity is going back to a stone age mind but using high-tech, what an irony !

If AI can create music as good as yours, quite honestly your music is shlock and really doesn't need protecting but needs erradicating.

wizardB said:

If AI can create music as good as yours, quite honestly your music is shlock and really doesn't need protecting but needs erradicating.

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That is absolute crazy talk. Grip on reality much?

ZedRM said:

That is absolute crazy talk. Grip on reality much?

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Firm grip: Most of the music "created" these days is mostly pure schlock and could be written by your average early high schooler, with no originality of feel or music. I for one will be glad if 3/4 of these supposed musicians have to get a real job.

wizardB said:

Firm grip: Most of the music "created" these days is mostly pure schlock and could be written by your average early high schooler, with no originality of feel or music. I for one will be glad if 3/4 of these supposed musicians have to get a real job.

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Your opinion about the state and quality of modern music does not stand as any level of justification for blatant theft by way of AI. My previous statement continues to be valid, your grip on reality needs drastic improvement.

There are only so many notes and so many orders to play them in todays musicians us past music to influence their writing same as AI does only AI is better at it and that is what burns their butts. Get over it and get a real job.