Are AI-Generated Songs Ethical? Let's Talk About It.

[tonedef71]

Dang! I did not know this thread existed. This one delves along the lines of the kind of discussion I had wanted to engage in. Had I known about this thread, I would not have started my own thread in the "Everything Else (Music related)" forum.

My thread, by way of a blog posting from an internet music instructor, broaches the concern that A.I. platforms churning out complete songs of decent quality could discourage potential new music creators from learning the traditional craft of music making (because the A.I. platforms provide instant gratification) along with discouraging existing music creators as well who may feel outpaced or trampled by the new revolution of A.I. prompted music generation. With just one generation, the traditional craft of music making could fizzle out, and A.I. generated output could become the norm.

[jamcat]

Dont matter if its ethical ornot, not thats the main thing.
YOU DONT HAVE ANY RIGHTS over this generated music.
The lyrics may be yours if they don't obtain that too...
To sum things up: This is not your music, and its not your music legally.

There’s no court ruling stating that AI generated music like this is illegal, especially not for personal use. I’m simply enjoying the output privately. That’s not a legal violation and no copyright laws are being broken. So your claim simply isn’t accurate

I just say you dont own that music, you dont have owner rights.
You are just anAI user, and have such rights.

That didn't seem correct to me, so I looked into Suno, and if you pay for a plan you have this:

Commercial use rights for songs made while subscribed

So it's just a question of which part "while subscribed" belongs to. Does is belong to "songs made" or "commercial use rights"?

[ghettosynth]

Here's an interesting video on the topic. It comes with something of an unstated question, which version of the song do you like better?

[koalaboy]

Here's an interesting video on the topic. It comes with something of an unstated question, which version of the song do you like better?

To me, his version is better by far but I can see how the softer (albeit warbling) female vocal may be something that many like.

I agree with pretty much everything in his video, and it's a year old now so AI is even better, but I think it also demonstrates there is still a 'difference'. When AI can generate songs sung that sound exactly like his version, then commercially it's over.... to an extent...

... except he can still tour and provide other humans the 'reality' of his personal delivery, and sell music off the back of that. Will it likely become mainstream ? Maybe, but then that's the same for so many gigging musicians today. What it will mean is that 'radio play' will become largely AI driven.

I don't make money from music, so I appreciate I have far less 'skin in the game' but equally I think that most record 'publishers' exploit musicians so much and that the 'system' has been broken for a long time, much like the rest of industry and capitalism, so whilst it will be painful for many people (not just musicians), I think it may start rebalancing creativity to a better place overall.

AI is going away any time soon. Anyone who thinks 'it will pass' needs to look into how far it's already taken over.

Thanks for sharing - great video that I somehow missed (likely due to the AI algorithm).

[ghettosynth]

Here's an interesting video on the topic. It comes with something of an unstated question, which version of the song do you like better?

To me, his version is better by far but I can see how the softer (albeit warbling) female vocal may be something that many like.

Yeah, I agree. What strikes me about the female version is how the, essentially, flawless production mirrors today's pop.

The pop industry has often cared more about image than authenticity.







At times, the public has embraced music forms that they view as more authentic in some sense, e.g., punk, but this isn't really new. I think we have to be honest with ourselves in asking what we are connecting to when we listen to music? How much does the human standing their "performing" the song actually matter to us and in what ways? Is it always the same?

A lot of music is much less art than product. I think that we use the word artist in something of the same way that Subway uses it. It's not unlike referencing the garbage collector as a "sanitation engineer", part joke, part a genuine attempt to recover some dignity.

AI is going away any time soon. Anyone who thinks 'it will pass' needs to look into how far it's already taken over.

Thanks for sharing - great video that I somehow missed (likely due to the AI algorithm).

I assume that you meant "isn't" there. I agree, and I think that it might force us to reckon with human dignity and what value is in terms of work in new ways.

[Shabdahbriah]

A lot of music is much less art than product. I think that we use the word artist in something of the same way that Subway uses it. It's not unlike referencing the garbage collector as a "sanitation engineer", part joke, part a genuine attempt to recover some dignity.

[jancivil]

Do you think AI-generated songs are truly original?
Yes, they can be, taking bits of other music as inspiration and creating new output.

All you've done here is shown you don't know what the words you're using, salient to this assertion mean. "inspiration" - intelligence is a product of consciousness. Consciousness is not computative - Roger Penrose. A computing machine being inspired? what a joke.

AI is an averaging engine. It does not think, it has no capacity whatsoever for reasoning. It's a super fast parrot, a mimick with a high capacity for reordering what they've spit back out. Anything made by it is by definition totally derivative. Parrots when they regurgitate words are not inspired. They are fairly likely to not get the words of a sentence they've mimicked in their original order; this is not creating something new.

[jancivil]

as to ethics, if all you've done is enter a prompt but say you made the music, hard no.
The scrupulous move, before we get to this but just to go by your words - regarding, eg., "truly original" - will have been to examine the meanings of those words and have a thought.

I don't know if you don't quite understand what AI is, you are mistaken as to the meanings of 'truly' or 'original' as if having never encountered them, or you need to tell yourself something that isn't at all true for some reason

[koalaboy]

AI is an averaging engine. It does not think, it has no capacity whatsoever for reasoning. It's a super fast parrot, a mimick with a high capacity for reordering what they've spit back out. Anything made by it is by definition totally derivative. Parrots when they regurgitate words are not inspired. They are fairly likely to not get the words of a sentence they've mimicked in their original order; this is not creating something new.

You've just described most humans on most days. Congrats.

It's true that AI generally can't move *beyond* this, but the argument that humans don't work in the same way most of the time is highly disingenuous - you are a product of your experience... your 'training' if you will.

The discussion can easily fall into 'free will' and all of that, but I'll avoid it. I also agree that AI isn't going much beyond initial prompts, but I think too many people dismiss how humans largely function. Words like 'conscious' are useless because they're made up constructs to describe something we do not understand, in the same way we don't understand how AI achieves some of the things it does.

[whyterabbyt]

You've just described most humans on most days. Congrats.

If you want to be taken seriously, you might want to try not leveraging misanthropy as an argument.
Most humans on most days do not operate on experience which is wholly derivative, which is a very specific thing Jan said. I can only presume handwaving this away so crudely was deliberate, because its quite an important point.

It's true that AI generally can't move *beyond* this, but the argument that humans don't work in the same way most of the time is highly disingenuous - you are a product of your experience... your 'training' if you will.

Humans dont work in the same way because this 'experience' includes direct experience, including first-hand observation, and assessment of cause and effect via those observations. Its not just 'training', its 'learning.' I'll assume you can understand the difference.

I think too many people dismiss how humans largely function.

Ironic.

Especially since Jan is quite correct to point out that AIs operate on wholly derivative information. There is no first-hand observation, no first-hand assessment or derivation of causality. An AI does not learn by doing, it paraphrases combinations of output until the AI user accepts one that they confirm meet their requirements.

In other words, the way that humans work most of the time is that humans actually experience, and AIs do not. Even the parsing of some other human's experiences is intrinsically experiential for a human.

If you want to claim AIs do more than merely manipulate and resynthesise symbols which have been provided as representations of pre-sourced information, including direct himan experience, thought and observation, you'll have to do more than say 'nah, humans just do that too' whilst dismissing how humans largely function.

[koalaboy]

If you want to claim AIs do more than merely manipulate and resynthesise symbols which have been provided as representations of pre-sourced information, including direct himan experience, thought and observation, you'll have to do more than say 'nah, humans just do that too' whilst dismissing how humans largely function.

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/a ... lgorithms/

Even in the earlier days of AI with Adversarial Neural Networks, the process of 'training' is effectively the AI trying things and choosing the parameters that 'work best' over time.

These days, it's far more advanced.

I understand that AI does not switch itself on and think "today I am going to write music", at least not where we have it at the moment. However, dismissing that it cannot learn, or 'experience' things is trying to look at it from a human perception when we don't really understand how 'we' work at those levels.

You don't have to believe me or anything I say. Just listen to those who do know, and follow the direction they are showing as to how AI in research is not the simple 'regurgitate thing from training data' that many seem to think it is:

(also )

AI is 'working out' many things that humans cannot easily, and the way it does this is to 'try' and 'fail a lot' through direct 'experience'.

Modern robotics in industry is often build on this. Digital 'twinning' is a huge industrial research basis that NVidia and others make millions off because it allows robots to 'learn' from doing in a virtual environment. They aren't fed the solution in training data - they iterate and work it out through 'doing'.

I'll not say any more, as clearly my perspective on AI doesn't meld nicely with the way many see the world, but there is far more to what is happening than just 'copying' what it has seen before.

[whyterabbyt]

You don't have to believe me or anything I say.

The way you're saying it, I absolutely wont. Selective, handwaving, disingenious, fallacious.

Just listen to those who do know

...Like that kind of appeal to authority.

as clearly my perspective on AI doesn't meld nicely with the way many see the world

Its not your perspective on AI, its how you've chosen to argue your point. Duh, all the stoopid humanz aint doing the good thinkingz either, yuk yuk.

[koalaboy]

Its not your perspective on AI, its how you've chosen to argue your point. Duh, all the stoopid humanz aint doing the good thinkingz either, yuk yuk.

I'm sorry you took it in that way.

I'm not saying humans are stupid at all... just that AI isn't that much different from an 'experience' perspective. It's easy to think it's just a tool that only does what people ask, and only regurgitates what was in the training data.

Humans are certainly more complex and far less understood, but that lends itself even more to the fact that we don't really understand how we work - just on a superficial basis. Modern research has shown that so much of our 'being' is determined by the Mitochondria and the ~40 Trillion bacteria, viruses etc. in our bodies. Not so much the 'brain power' we think we own.

Humans have done amazing (and also devastating) things, but it would be madness to assume we are the 'top' of the tree and can't be surpassed. To believe that only humans can be 'creative' or 'conscious' is an extremely arrogant position to take. I'm not saying AI is definitively there (I could never say about consciousness as we don't know what it is), but at the same time I don't believe that we can say it isn't creative either.

That doesn't mean I'd rather listen to AI-generated music or see AI-generated art. It's all subjective.

[bermudagold]

Dang! I did not know this thread existed. This one delves along the lines of the kind of discussion I had wanted to engage in. Had I known about this thread, I would not have started my own thread in the "Everything Else (Music related)" forum.

My thread, by way of a blog posting from an internet music instructor, broaches the concern that A.I. platforms churning out complete songs of decent quality could discourage potential new music creators from learning the traditional craft of music making (because the A.I. platforms provide instant gratification) along with discouraging existing music creators as well who may feel outpaced or trampled by the new revolution of A.I. prompted music generation. With just one generation, the traditional craft of music making could fizzle out, and A.I. generated output could become the norm.

same...that's why I created these threads as well
viewtopic.php?p=9100928#p9100928
viewtopic.php?p=9095718#p9095718
viewtopic.php?p=9089963#p9089963
viewtopic.php?p=9088922#p9088922
viewtopic.php?p=9068375#p9068375

I thought ur thread was valid fwiw...there are many ethical questions...which then become legal questions...which then become economic impacts...which then become cultural/societal impacts...navel gazing and putting heads in the sand are both naïve responses IMO

[bermudagold]

Dont matter if its ethical ornot, not thats the main thing.
YOU DONT HAVE ANY RIGHTS over this generated music.
The lyrics may be yours if they don't obtain that too...
To sum things up: This is not your music, and its not your music legally.

There’s no court ruling stating that AI generated music like this is illegal, especially not for personal use. I’m simply enjoying the output privately. That’s not a legal violation and no copyright laws are being broken. So your claim simply isn’t accurate

I just say you dont own that music, you dont have owner rights.
You are just anAI user, and have such rights.

That didn't seem correct to me, so I looked into Suno, and if you pay for a plan you have this:

Commercial use rights for songs made while subscribed

So it's just a question of which part "while subscribed" belongs to. Does is belong to "songs made" or "commercial use rights"?

I believe in the USA the courts already have ruled that royalties cannot be earned/collected on completely/majority generative AI content...the open question is what percentage of human content is gonna be required to collect royalties...I asked in another thread what % do you think the courts will settle on