Hundreds of music artists – many of them household names – have written an open letter expressing concern about the use of AI to “steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem”.

The signatories recognise the potential value of AI in the creative industries, but fear that it is being employed by platforms and developers to “sabotage creativity and undermine artists, songwriters, musicians and rightholders”, including by using their work to train AI models. The letter calls on “all AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to pledge that they will not develop or deploy AI music-generation technology, content or tools that undermine of replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or deny us fair compensation for our work”.

The letter comes as many in the music industry – as well as those in other creative industries – have expressed concern about the threat posed by AI . The UK Musicians’ Union recently introduced a motion at the TUC’s Young Worker’s Forum which was passed unanimously, urging that:

1. Copyright law is upheld in relation to AI
2. New rights are introduced to protect musicians and music creators from any unauthorised use of their works and performances
3. Any new licensing solutions developed to permit the use of human-created musician works to train AI:
   • give the original human creators the right to decide whether their creations can be used; and
   • give the original human creators a fair share in any remuneration should they agree to such use.
4. These rights are non waivable and remain with the creators.

Further afield, Tennessee has become the first state in the USA to pass legislation aimed at protecting musicians from the challenges posed by AI. The Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act (or, appropriately for Tennessee, ELVIS Act) replaces and extends the state’s old right of publicity law to prohibit the unauthorised use of artificial intelligence to replicate an individual’s voice.

To read the letter from the Artist Rights Alliance in full, click here.