AI
Madame - Mama 2024-47 (C) THOMAS BARTEL
For decades, musicians have embraced technology as a creative partner. From digital recording and sampling to AI-assisted composition and mastering, music creation and technological developments have been walking side by side. However, recent advances in generative AI have created an urgent ethical, legal, and economic crisis for musicians. It is the steamroller turning years of efforts and countless moments of musical brilliance into a digital dataset ready to be mined and exploited for nothing.
AI is developing at a dazzling pace. It only took five years to render the most modern regulatory solutions obsolete. Now AI can create ‘music’ by itself by utilizing an immeasurable volume of already existing data and synthesising it anew. For this, performances, voices, likenesses, and names are being used to train and promote AI systems without consent, credit, or compensation. Moreover, the problem extends beyond AI training and data mining. Music generated from such apps is being streamed, broadcasted and downloaded without any consent, credit or compensation. AI systems can now replicate an artist’s voice, style, and performing fingerprints with alarming accuracy. Entire tracks are being generated and circulated as if they were created by specific musicians — misleading fans and damaging the reputations of those whose artistic identities are being mimicked.
Picture of Roch Dupervil a.k.a Cerveau @longlife_photography et @HITstory.official
AI is using musicians’ voices, styles and everything that makes them artists; that is exploitation. That needs to change before we are deprived of everything unique and artistic.
IMARA advocates for transparency, for integrity and fair remuneration in an AI-dominated landscape. We call on all involved parties to put in place and uphold fair and usable remuneration and transparency mechanisms. No musician’s work, likeness, or name should be used in AI training or output without explicit consent, and when consent is given fair credit, compensation must be guaranteed and accessible. Companies and developers must be held legally responsible for unauthorized use of musicians’ intellectual property, likeness, or identity. Join the movement, shape the future of AI.
