[INTRO] Unfair use? The ethics of generative AI for music 🗣️

Introducing an 8-part series of posts that dive deep into the PEOPLE, PRODUCT, & PLATFORM aspects of ethics PRINCIPLES on generative AI for 'creating' music. (Audio; 3:39)

TL;DR Just because we can generate melodies now with generative AI, that doesn’t mean we should turn these capabilities loose in the world (yet). 

We need to get the data and AI ethics right. As with planting a tree, the best time was 20 years ago, and the second best time is now.

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

---

INTRODUCTION

This 8-part article series tackles one of the key questions about the use of generative AI for music: Is it ethical, for musicians (writers and performers) and for music users? 

Prerequisites: No prior knowledge is required for how generative AI techniques use training data or how AI models work under the hood.

Audience: The expected audience for this article series includes executives, technical and product leaders, musicians, music publishers and copyright owners, music users and consumers, responsible AI teams, and legal advisors. 

This article series is not a substitute for legal advice and is meant for general information only.

Here’s the planned “table of contents” for the article series. For convenience, links will be added here after each PART is published.

July 2024 UPDATE: See this AI for Music page for an up-to-date collection of all music-related posts (27 so far, with many more to follow).

• BACKGROUND 

  • Part 1: Why & For Whom

  • Part 2: Ethical Risks & Challenges

  • Part 3: Who, What & When

• HOW & WHO (the deep dives on key players)

  • Part 4: Ethics - Training & Reference Data

  • Part 5: Ethics - Traceability & Fair Use

  • Part 6: Ethics - Bias Minimization and Diversity

  • Part 7: Ethics - Cost-Benefit Analysis

• CONCLUSION

  • Part 8: Current State of Ethics 

  • References (page)

In PARTS 1-3, we identify the PEOPLE affected by genAI music initiatives, identify key aspects of ETHICS of generative AI for music, and survey the landscape of recent PRODUCT and PLATFORM announcements and events in use of generative AI for producing and customizing (editing/controlling) musical melodies.

PARTS 4-7 are deep dives which include close looks at where the major players (e.g. OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Adobe) and their PRODUCTS and PEOPLE stand today on 4 pillars of AI ethics: 

1. PART 4: Respecting IP and legal considerations on generating and customizing melodies by:

   • fair use of sets of human-created songs for training models and enabling controls

   • fair use of user-provided ‘reference’ music and melody styles

2. PART 5: Supporting traceability of human-created sources to song outputs from the tools

3. PART 6: Minimizing potential for bias in use of Text To Audio (TTA) techniques for generating music

4. PART 7: Evaluating whether the benefits of these tools warrant the societal costs of using AI (including environmental impacts)

In PART 8, we will share our conclusions and some recommendations.

Look for PART 1 soon! (follow or subscribe to be notified when each of the articles in this series is published)

---

---