There are doubts about the copyright of AI-generated music.
Should AI music be subject to copyright?
If AI music is subject to copyright, imagine a scenario where AI generates billions of different random songs, across the scale of diversity, this music will be published, it will have maybe 0-2 listens, but it will be officially released.
In this way, the owner of this AI will reserve all possible new music in the world for himself.
He will be able to sue every new artist for plagiarism, because what is the chance that his AI did not generate something similar, at such a scale of generation?
What if AI music is not subject to copyright? If, for example, they were automatically in the public domain?
An almost identical scenario may occur, also AI will generate billions of various random songs, on the entire scale of diversity, this music will be published… but this time artists will no longer be able to profit from music that will be in some way similar to that generated by AI, and any new music, will be similar to those billions of songs generated by AI.
Even the artist’s sense of not having created something original could be demotivating for him, even if it were established that AI music is not in the public domain and it would be possible to duplicate and monetize music similar to that generated by AI.
And then another scenario may arise, that pseudo-artists will deliberately review finished AI-generated songs, and will “take over”/occupy the copyrights to these songs. It’s also not a pretty scenario.
So what, ban AI music and force it to be removed from the Internet? Drive AI music underground?
However, the current law is adapted to people who have limited ability to produce music.
In fact, even before generative music, there was a problem of songs being similar to each other, and about a hundred years of universal copyright was enough.
Now we’re firing up the roller skates.
The idea that AI-created music should just go into the public domain is I think the wrong kind of thinking. It is not simply that AI has no access to copyright, AI has no access to moral rights either. My understanding is that it didn’t actually create anything.
Now if an artist uses an AI as part of their work, they are doing some creating, but the AI has no more role in the process than a set of speakers. No one extends their creative credits to their amp. Moog don’t make music no matter how important their instrument was to the sound. If I make a random hole puncher and feed it’s output into a player piano the machine isn’t making art.
Yes, the rights to AI-generated music would possibly belong to the person who used AI to generate the music.
But there are situations where the human contribution is small, then the AI does most of the work, it does more work than the human.