RAPPIN’ A.I.

WHO OWNS THE SOUND of a voice? Or a theme of music? The concept of copyright is to define “a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression,” this description from the U.S. Copyright Office. 

However, Artificial Intelligence and its development of Large Language Models have clouded the meaning of copyright. 

LLMs and Copyright. Wikipedia describes, “Though the term large language model has no formal definition, it often refers to deep learning models with millions or even billions of parameters, that have been ‘pre-trained’ on a large corpus.” Containing literally trillions of words, an LLM is designed to predict what comes next: “To be or…” likely leads to “not to be.” 

LLMing a Voice. A person’s voice, for instance, can be analyzed sonically, with the LLM offering a well nigh perfect imitation: Have a chatbot compose John Wayne’s voice for your smart phone, “I can’t take your call, Pilgrim….” What  about Mae West programmed into your car’s nav system: “It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any.” Or President John F. Kennedy’s characteristic accent used in political satire? 

Those of us of a certain age may recall this last one. Vaughn Meader’s The First Family comedy album, Wikipedia notes, “spoofed President John F. Kennedy—who was played by Meader—and became the fastest selling ‘pre-Beatles’ album in history and went on to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1963.”

Wikipedia continues, “Meader’s career success came to an abrupt end after President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. Producer Bob Booker quickly pulled The First Family from stores so as not to appear to be profiting from the deceased President, and Meader’s bookings were cancelled…. Meader eventually returned to his native Maine where he resumed performing music and managed a pub.”

Drake and The Weeknd. By contrast, in The New York Times, April 19, 2023, Joe Coscarelli writes, “An A.I. Hit of Fake ‘Drake’ and ‘The Weeknd’ Rattles the Music World.” He notes, “A track like ‘Heart on My Sleeve,’ which went viral before being taken down by streaming services this week, may be a novelty for now. But the legal and creative questions it raises are here to stay.”

Coscarelli observes, “Universal Music Group, the largest of the major labels and home to both Drake and the Weeknd, had already flagged such content to its streaming partners this month, citing intellectual property concerns. But in a statement this week, the company spoke to the broader stakes, asking ‘which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.” 

Coscarelli continues, “Artists and their labels are confident, at least for the time being, that the social and emotional component of fandom will separate the work of the real Drake from a fake one, even if an A.I. version can nod at his emotional preoccupations and musical tics.”

The newspaper followed up with “What Students Are Saying About A.I.-Generated Music,” The New York Times, May 11, 2023. It asked students from Westlake, Ohio; Vancouver, Washington; Kentucky; and Washington, D.C., “Will A.I. replace pop stars? Would you listen to music made by this technology?” 

Generally, the students felt that A.I. would not have the emotional pull of music made by humans. In particular, pop concerts have a special attraction. Others, though, sensed a new era coming in pop. And, tellingly, some raised ethical concerns about using existing—and thus copyrighted—music to computer-generate new songs.

It ain’t over ’til the stars stop rappin’. And, by the way, “A.I. and classical music” is another topic for another day: Wagner’s Ring Cycle performed as a Bach cantata?? ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023