Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty
YouTube is in talks with record labels to license their songs to artificial intelligence tools that clone music from popular artists, hoping to win over a skeptical industry with upfront payments.
The Google-owned video site needs content from labels to legally train AI song generators as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The company recently offered lump sums to major labels — Sony, Warner and Universal — to try to convince more artists to allow their music to be used in training AI software, according to several people briefed on the discussions. .
However, many artists remain vehemently opposed to AI-driven music generation, fearing it could undermine the value of their work. Any move by a label to force its stars to sign on to such a project would be extremely controversial.
“The industry is struggling with this. Technically, the companies own the copyrights, but we need to think about how to distribute them,” said an executive at a major music company. “We don’t want to be seen as Luddites. »
YouTube last year began testing a generative AI tool that lets users create short music clips by entering a text prompt. The product, originally called “Dream Track,” was designed to mimic the sound and lyrics of well-known singers.
But only 10 artists agreed to participate in the testing phase, including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and John Legend, and Dream Track was only made available to a small group of creators.
YouTube wants to recruit “dozens” of artists to roll out a new AI song generator this year, two people said.
YouTube said: “We are not looking to expand Dream Track, but we are in conversations with labels about other experiments. »
Licenses or lawsuits
YouTube seeks new deals as AI companies such as OpenAI strike licensing deals with media groups to train large language models, the systems that power AI products such as chatbot ChatGPT. Some of these deals are worth tens of millions of dollars to media companies, insiders say.
The agreements negotiated in the field of music would be different. These would not be blanket licenses but would instead apply to a select group of artists, according to people briefed on the discussions.
It would be up to the labels to encourage their artists to participate in new projects. This means that the final amounts YouTube might be willing to pay labels are undetermined at this point.
The deals would look more like one-off payments made by social media companies like Meta or Snap to entertainment groups for access to their music, rather than the royalty-based deals that labels have made with Spotify or Apple , these people said.
YouTube’s new AI tool, which likely won’t be branded as Dream Track, could become part of YouTube’s Shorts platform, competing with TikTok. Talks are continuing and the terms of the deal could still change, the sources said.
YouTube’s latest move comes as major record labels on Monday sued two AI startups, Suno and Udio, which they say are illegally using copyrighted recordings to train their AI models. AI. A music industry group is seeking “up to $150,000 per infringed work,” according to filings.
After facing the threat of extinction following the rise of Napster in the 2000s, music companies are now trying to get ahead of disruptive technologies. Labels want to get involved in licensed products that use AI to create songs using their music copyrights – and get paid for it.
Sony Music, which did not participate in the first phase of YouTube’s AI experiment, is in negotiations with the technology group to make some of its music available on the new tools, said a person close to the company. case. Warner and Universal, whose artists participated in the testing phase, are also in talks with YouTube to expand the product, these sources said.
In April, more than 200 musicians, including Billie Eilish and the estate of Frank Sinatra, signed an open letter.
“If left unchecked, AI will trigger a race to the bottom that degrades the value of our work and prevents us from being fairly compensated for it,” the letter said.
YouTube added: “We are always testing new ideas and learning from our experiences; it is an important part of our innovation process. We will continue on this path with AI and music as we build the future.
© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
News Source : arstechnica.com
Gn tech
