It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.

The Open Source Pop Star: How Grimes Shows the Way Forward for Artists in the Age of AI

-- By KieranSingh2001 - 20 Feb 2024

Introduction

Two things have bothered me for the last two years: First, we expected Artificial Intelligence (AI) to replace menial labor and leave time for creative work, and yet it is replacing creative work instead of menial labor. Second, music artists often sit on their hands when their music is leaked, rather than taking advantage of the situation by posting it to streaming platforms themselves. Both phenomena are a result of a certain denial of the nature of technology: we ignore AI's impact on art because we don't consider it "real art," and music artists ignore leaks, possibly because they think it's feasible to take it down from the internet (it is not).

Music Leaks (Real and AI)

When music leaks, public sentiment splinters. The first camp, normally die-hard fans of the artists whose music leaked, desperately tries to hide the leaks, either by spamming search results, using social pressure to prevent other fans from listening to the leaks or talking to the posters of the leaks themselves. The second camp of people listens to the music, decides the artist made it, and gives their opinion on said leak, whether good or bad. The third and final camp are those convinced that the songs are made using AI. The latter camp does not believe that AI created the entire song, more so that someone created the song, and then covered it using an AI-generated replica of the artist's voice. The debate then devolves into people who like the song arguing that it is a legitimate leak, and those that do not arguing that it is AI.

Legal Safeguards

Real Leaks

There are several unconfirmed reports of leakers being fined, and many threats from artists to pursue legal action against people who have leaked their unreleased music. Of the legal proceedings that have been confirmed by journalistic sources, one stands out. A blogger was criminally charged for leaking unreleased Guns-N-Roses songs in 2015. He was sentenced to a year of probation and 2 months of house arrest. Yet, according to The Week, the criminal proceedings only amplified the existence of the leak -- and it caused more people to download the song themselves. [4] At any rate, even when these proceedings cross the line from civil to criminal, they do not end up getting rid of the leaked music.

AI

According to Louis Tompros at Harvard Law, it is not completely clear how to legally justify taking down a song that uses an AI version of a singer's voice. In one famous case involving the rapper and singer Drake, Universal Media Group was able to take an AI-cover song down from TikTok? due to its use of a copyrighted producer tag (a short audio or voice track laid onto the song to give the producer credit) [1]. Moreover, arguing that the act of training the AI was a copyright violation, or arguing that the output itself is copyrighted, may be legally tenuous, according to Tompros [1]. What he proposes, rather, is using the legal right of publicity, the idea that imitating a singer and presenting a piece of media as though it was a singer's work, is illegal, at least according to California and Ninth Circuit precedent [1]. Even then, the process of taking down these songs based on the right of publicity is much lengthier than that of the DMCA, and the songs will be able to spread to all corners of the internet in the meantime.

However, YouTube? 's own policy, unrelated to copyright law, has now stated to disallow AI covers of music. An artist or label can request a takedown of any song that mimics the artist's voice using ai [6]. Yet, Youtube is just one website, and in the absence of broader regulation, its policies will not do much to stem the spread of AI-covered music. TikTok? 's AI policy, for example, mentions only videos and photos, not music [7]

What happens when they're indistinguishable?

Leakers go to great lengths to prove that they have released artist-made music, as opposed to AI covers. Some leakers will admit that certain (bad) tracks are AI, to prove that the better tracks are authentic. Debates over the authenticity of the music on the internet are fascinating, but the artists' predicament is more so. If a certain song is real, and from an upcoming album, and the artist or label decides to pursue a DMCA takedown of the song, it could prove the authenticity to the internet, "spoiling" the album and disincentivizing people from listening to it when it comes out. In other words, leaks may be more costly if people know that they have already heard the artists' coming release. Trying to take down the leak could backfire, since DMCA action is relatively swift, and difficult to do with AI covers (outside of youtube). In fact, being able to claim that a leaked song is "just AI" may be an asset to artists, as the general public will not have their expectations set by the leak.

Profiting From Artistic Misfortune

Licensing Your Voice -- GrimesAI?

Grimes, the controversial indie-pop artist, has come up with a way to deal with the phenomenon of AI covers without going through complicated copyright battles, or simply rolling over and allowing unauthorized use of her voice across the internet. She allows producers to use her voice, along with a specific AI trained on it, to make music, provided she gets to keep 50% of the royalties. The producers of the song can have it published on mainstream streaming platforms, and take the other 50% of the royalties.

Releasing Leaked Music

Conclusion

Cites

1. https://hls.harvard.edu/today/ai-created-a-song-mimicking-the-work-of-drake-and-the-weeknd-what-does-that-mean-for-copyright-law/

2. https://www.stlamerican.com/arts_and_entertainment/hot_sheet/st-louisan-sza-takes-legal-action-against-suspects-who-leaked-her-music/article_9f8f9af2-b804-11ee-8140-3b28bf73f520.html

3. https://www.complex.com/music/a/complex/the-dangers-of-leaking-music-5-cautionary-tales

4. https://theweek.com/articles/503661/kevin-cogill-punishing-guns-n-roses-leaker

5. https://www.404media.co/harry-styles-one-direction-ai-leaked-songs/

---

You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:

• #Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, KieranSingh2001
• #Set DENYTOPICVIEW = TWikiGuest

Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list.