What Do You Consider to Be Unethical Uses of AI in Music?

If it turns out a band or artist I listen to uses AI to help create music, lyrics, anything like that, I will permanently boycott them. Definitely won't listen to any just straight up AI created music imitating someone else's voice either.

I use ChatGPT as a tool for some things but artistic stuff is where I draw the line and why I'd be fine if it never existed. Do not want my songs, music, art being created by AI. Just lazy slop.

John P. Strohm (Blake Babies/Lemonheads) is now a lawyer and an artists rights advocate.. He's written a lot on this subject and I agree with him...

Suno: Bad for music, bad for AI (substack.. but I think this one is free)

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I’ve been consistent in my fierce objection to what I consider Suno’s original sin of training its model on tens of millions of scraped tracks and launching a commercial product without any licenses. As a music lawyer I regard this act as an egregious violation of intellectual property laws.

It’s evident that Suno’s rush to market without permission, licensure, or compensation has polarized the music community and often galvanized creative communities into hardened “anti-AI” positions

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The whole of AI has an unethical foundation, and unless we deal with that directly, all of these questions are moot.

I don't agree with shutterspeed, but he's right on "where is the line?" It's almost impossible to draw.

At this point, we should focus on giving consumers the tools to navigate authenticity more than anything else, and you can't trust a record label to do that.

Most things for consumers, and this goes from product to customer service, are going to have to start separating themselves on true experience vs. fake experience. Artists actually have the biggest challenge.

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If used in the creation process to provide a polished demo of an idea where hiring out a full band to convey the idea is not feasible....go for it. But if it's used to create in the sense of providing ideas, melodies, parts, etc....I'm out. Don't put that stuff into the world and pretend you made something.

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Thing is how would we ever really know. We know what keys sound like, we know what chord progressions are pleasing for the most part. It’s hard know if a group just plugs something in them plays it themselves as their own.

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The whole of AI has an unethical foundation, and unless we deal with that directly, all of these questions are moot.

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How long has it already been going on?

It would not surprise me if many big names in music have had access to this before now.

Like military weapons, they are years ahead of what we know they can do.
Lots of money to be made in the music industry.

Who was that one hit wonder band from the 70's that sang "How long has this been going on"?

What's the difference, or is it more unethical to create an A.I. generated song, or for a no talent hip hop act to rip off or "sample" a tune or an entire melody of a song that was popular before their birth?

I'd argue that it takes more skill to build a song using A.I. than the latter.

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In some ways I think you have it exactly backwards. Using AI to polish demos directly puts some people out of work.

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Appreciate your reply, but I’ll agree to disagree. I run a home studio as well and, sure, there’s not as much demo work to be done. But as someone else said, those who are using it to promote as something they organically built are going to be weeded out and the people who are serious are doubling down on real players, real engineers, real people.

I see the premise of your statement, but that is the premise of technology, and what it should be used for. It should be used to uplift steps in the process, such as a cotton picker agriculture machine as opposed to workers picking it by hand. But the cotton is still grown and developed and is “real”. A creative person can use plenty of styles of impetus to spark their creative wave, but they are still using a human brain to adapt the spark into a flame as opposed to a silicon brain “creating” a “flame” by taking shades of orange and yellow from other organic fires and rearranging it into a “new flame”.

Again, appreciate the reply and love the discussion, but overall AI is a detraction to the arts at the end of the day.

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Is paying a ghost writer ethical? They get paid a relatively small sum upfront in exchange for all of the credits and lucrative rights on the back end such as publishing, royalties, sync licenses, motion picture licenses, etc.

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Umm, yes. They made the choice to use their talents in that way. It took an actual persons talents to do it not entering in some prompt to spit out slop. A ghost writer can be a good way for someone to get paid for their talents where otherwise they would never have made it on their own. Don't see how that could possibly be viewed as unethical.

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What about musicians who create full songs, feed it through AI for ideas and enhancements, and then re-record the song as theirs?

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Are you feeding my answers into AI and it prompting you with a new question each time?

I don't want AI involved in any creative ideas for the artists that I listen to. Yes, I would stop listening to a band if they were using AI for ideas. I'm not saying I would not listen to older music from them but I would 100% stop supporting them. Too much good music out there to listen to people who use AI for ideas.