Musicfy and ethics of genAI for music
Summary of a vocal cloning tool with red flags on ethics of the data sources used for training its "celebrity voices" and other AI features
Musicfy
Description from site: “Change Your Voice with AI. Use AI to create music with your voice or other voices and make music like never before.”
Description from PitchBook: “Developer of an AI tool designed to enhance the music creation process. The company's platform uses all of the copyright-free vocals in songs and assists in adding an artificial intelligence feature that can be uploaded to any streaming platform, enabling users to save time, streamlining collaboration, and ensuring a seamless alignment of artistic vision.”
History and Partnerships
Musicfy was founded by Subraiz Ahmed, Arib Khan, and Hamed Rabah in April 2023 with headquarters in San Francisco. They are privately held (early VC) with ~5 employees.
Key Features
According to its home page and blogs (ref), Musicfy offers:
TTM (text to music) and voice-to-instrument generation,
tools to 'Create Your Own Original Songs' or 'Create Your Own Royalty-Free Album',
use of “celebrity voices” or a voice model based on recordings you provide, and
a bunch of free tools including an AI Karaoke Maker (vocal remover), Stem Separation, removal of echo, removal of background audio or music, separating vocals, removing drums, an “audio cleaner”, acapella extractor
Training Data
The Musicfy site is silent on the underlying data and techniques it implements to generate its supposedly “copyright free”, “royalty free” music.
Given that the site promotes an extremely lax view of “fair use” doctrines (ref), and says nothing about training data or licensing, it’s highly likely that the content used for training its AI capabilities has not been properly licensed.
Ownership, Pricing, and Usage Rights
The Musicfy site promises its users unfettered rights to “copyright free”, “royalty free” tracks. The pricing plans limit the number of custom voices and generations a user can have, starting with 2 and 500 in the $9/month plan.
Given this information, Musicfy cannot be assumed to be ethically safe for use.