AI companies are looking to get as much data as possible to train their models. And it’s clear that too often this data comes from copyrighted content that the companies haven’t obtained permission for—rather, they’re pilfering it.
Music is hard
In their defense, these groups claim “fair use.” But more than once, their chatbots generate content that’s very close to the original content, whether it’s news articles, images, or audio. In June 2024, the startup Suno was targeted by a complaint from the American music industry, with possible penalties of several billion dollars.
Mikey Shulman, CEO and co-founder of Suno, came out of the woodwork for the podcast 20VC, to explain the goal of his company: "We didn't want to just create a company that would make current creators 10% faster or make music creation easier for 10% of people. If you want to impact the way a billion people experience music, you have to create something for a billion people."
Everyone should have the opportunity to create music. So far, so good, but as any amateur guitarist can tell you, music is hard, frustrating and complicated. “It’s not really fun to make music today […] It takes a lot of time, a lot of practice, and you have to master an instrument or production software,” the executive says. “I think most people don’t really enjoy the majority of the time they spend creating music,” he adds.
Mikey Shulman laments that the music industry is attacking his business because he firmly believes that it allows more people to create and enjoy music, which ultimately can only benefit the industry itself. And he may be right, but that doesn't exempt him from asking permission to exploit the catalogs of record companies, paying the rights if necessary...
The argument that making music is something painful is nonetheless astonishing. Because as with any intellectual activity (singing, writing, developing an app/video game, etc.) or physical activity (sport, DIY, pottery, etc.), it takes time to arrive at something decent, and even more sacrifices to be good! But the journey is just as important as the destination, and there is also something of the order of pleasure in learning a musical instrument.
The CEO seeks to shift the debate on the exploitation of data not on the plundering of works - which the music industry accuses him of - but on that of the accessibility and democratization of musical creation. A line of defense that fails to address the crucial question: Is it ethical and legal to build a business model based on copyrighted works, without adequate compensation for their creators?
Source: 404media
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