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Originally Posted by Fuzz
So I guess copyright just has no meaning anymore, eh?
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It will when it actually makes money. I mean, rights holders probably aren't super worried about the hokey slop that people make with AI currently, but obviously if anyone starts to generate a lot of revenue off of it, then copyright holders will want their share.
That said, even when done legally, AI is currently helping undercut artists. I have some musician friends and they license their stuff to movies/TV/etc. pretty regularly; it's a good way to make a living with streaming basically eliminating sales as a healthy revenue source.
Recently they were negotiating with a company that wanted to license a cover version of their song to be used in a TV show, which sometimes happens, but the songwriters don't get nearly as much money because a big chunk goes to the performer. So they were a bit skeptical to begin with, but were going back and forth until the company sent them the final version and it sounded like absolute trash. So they did some digging and found out that the company basically just uses AI/Machine Learning to extract the track stems (each individual instrument) from their recording, and then regenerates a cover in a different style with little to no human performance.
So instead of the original artist getting say $50K, if they agree to this then the artist would get maybe $20K, and then this company would swallow up most of the rest without actually having to do much of anything. So they turned it down, but I'm sure we'll see more and more poorly done "covers" of songs in media.
The good thing is that songwriters retain their ownership of the song, so these companies can't unilaterally do this, but it certainly devalues it all. And obviously we'll see streaming companies start to push that kind of stuff more in order to save on performance royalties. Which has always happened to some degree with re-recordings. But instead of a low-budget "30 Hits from the 50s" CD you'd find in a truck stop bargain bin, it'll be Spotify and YouTube pushing it on users.