AI Ethical Risks In the Music Industry Are Accelerating And We Are Not Ready For What Is Coming Our Way

I wrote two articles over the weekend researching the impact of AI on the Music Industry as one of the art domains being impacted by AI. You can read both of these blogs here:

The first article focuses on Google’s recent MusicLM announcement and the risks without increased copyright law in place.

The second article continues this discussion but broadens it with other examples.

The more I dug into this area, I realized how much is at stake and the risks to our Arts Community and to all the musicians who bring so much joy to our lives.

However, there is trouble afoot and it’s increasing.

Why do a career in music and spend years mastering a craft when an AI model will eventually be able to consistently produce an award winning master piece?

It’s simply a matter of time.

Yes, I appreciate that creative capabilities of an AI model is not close to reality as Meta Chief Data Scientist, Yann Lecun, said to me last week that “ AI is NOT as smart as a CAT.” and its weakness is for sure planning ahead with full sensory capabilities.

So how do we start getting this right?

Why not bring leading musical AI Ethicists and leading AI Copyright lawyers together and have an open dialogue? Inspire them with a challenge to write draft legislation and work collaboratively? Give them only have five days to draft all the considerations and have the USA President Joe Biden support the campaign, with leading music industry players like: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group as they dominate the music industry. Note: These three companies are the world’s largest record companies, and they earned 32.1%, 20.6%, and 15.9%, respectively, of the revenue from global streaming and physical music sales in 2022 (source: Zippia). Perhaps my alma matter at Accenture can be inspired by this post to rally the industry or my dear special global AI friends at EY and Deloitte we really must get this right.

We don’t need to research this problem – we need to simply advance thoughtful dialogue with new legislation. I am sure its looming somewhere in different states, but with announcements like ChatGPT3 and now with Google’s MusicML, not yet released, due to copyright laws, surely Pandora is out of the box and leadership is imperative.

The reality is AI is not going to go away, so can we not identify the best solutions that we need to architect to get this industry moving in a direction where the North and South can actually align on new legislation.

I need to do more research in this area and if you have any ideas, please send me a message on my Linkedin Channel @drcindygordon