Billie Eilish, Arkells among musicians pleading for protections against AI copycats

Musicians are confronting artificial intelligence as dig‐ ital copycats flood the in‐ ternet.

The Artist Rights Alliance, a non-profit advocacy organi‐ zation, issued an open letter this week calling on artificial intelligence tech companies, developers, platforms and digital music services to stop using AI to "infringe upon and devalue the rights of hu‐ man artists."

"This assault on human creativity must be stopped," reads the letter, signed by more than 200 artists includ‐ ing Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Arkells.

"We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists' voices and likenesses, violate creators' rights, and destroy the music ecosystem."

WATCH | Why these mu‐ sicians are demanding pro‐ tection against AI:

An AI song mimicking two of Canada's biggest artists, Drake and The Weeknd, went viral last year before stream‐ ing services pulled it, while Justin Bieber's digitally faked voice appeared in a viral song "featuring" himself, Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee.

AI vocal generating pro‐ grams have proliferated on‐ line, and versions of songs with other singers' voices swapped in are all over YouTube and other platfor‐ ms.

'I don't think we can put the genie back into the bot‐ tle'

The letter does not call for an outright ban of AI, and ac‐ knowledges the technology's creative possibilities while addressing its threats to hu‐ man artists. Those threats in‐ clude using pre-existing work to train AI models - without permission from the artists in an attempt to replace artists, potentially eliminating royalty payments that are a lifeline for some.

"It's really about kind of coming up with a framework for using it ethically," said Ar‐ tist Rights Alliance executive director Jen Jacobsen.

"I don't think we can put the genie back into the bot‐ tle, and nor would we neces‐ sarily want to, in that AI does provide some great opportu‐ nities if used responsibly."

Colin Linden, one of the letter's several Canadian sig‐ natories, says it's important for artists to be proactive in addressing AI before it gets out of control. When Napster launched digital music pirat‐ ing in 1999, he says many in the music industry "hid their heads in the sand."

"We should protect who we are," said Linden, who is a member of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings and has played with the likes of Bruce Cock‐ burn, Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan.

"The most personal thing that we have as artists is our personalities. Whatever our quirks are, whatever our characteristics are, that we've developed from all the good things and all the bad things and the scars that we have. It's all we have, in a lot of ways."

In March, Tennessee be‐ came the first state to pass legislation designed to pro‐ tect songwriters, performers and other music industry professionals against AI. Sup‐ porters say the goal is to en‐ sure that generative AI tools cannot replicate an artist's voice without their consent. The bill - dubbed the Ensur‐ ing Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act, or "ELVIS Act" - will take effect July 1.

'Robots do not get roy‐ alties'

The financial threat of AI comes after a challenging few years for musicians com‐ ing out of the COVID-19 pan‐ demic, when shows were cancelled and touring costs spiked. That's in addition to the popularity of music streaming services, which many musicians argue do not provide artists with adequate compensation.

Folk singer Tift Merritt says artists are worried their work will be lost completely if AI-generated content floods the market.

"I'm a career musician. I've spent 25 years honing my my touch, my voice, my point of view, my writing sen‐ sibilities, and that's now being used to train AI to imi‐ tate and replace me," she

said. "And robots do not get royalties, their content is free. So that is going to re‐ place me if we don't start talking about this and acting responsibly about it."

Richard Sutherland, asso‐ ciate professor in the depart‐ ment of Economics, Justice and Policy Studies at Calgar‐ y's Mount Royal University, says AI artist mimicry will "ab‐ solutely" lead to court cases, but notes that individual court actions, such as injunc‐ tions against use of artists' voices, can be "extremely la‐ borious and expensive" for artists to take on.

Other signatories include the estates of deceased artists including Frank Sinatra and Bob Marley. AI has con‐ troversially been used to gen‐ erate realistic videos of dead actors and musicians, and countless covers of modern songs featuring the digitally faked voices of dead singers.

LISTEN | Bringing the Beatles - and other music back with AI:

But AI has also proved its positive applications for some musicians.

As one example, the tech‐ nology was used to isolate an old vocal track from a John Lennon recording, which was used to create a "new" Beat‐ les song last year with the in‐ volvement and permission of the band's remaining mem‐ bers.

'We're here to enhance the human'

Some Canadian artists are working on tools to harness AI in a way they say will bene‐ fit musicians.

Daouda Leonard, who manages Grimes and worked with the Montreal musician to develop CreateSafe, a pro‐ gram that allows fans to use Grimes's voice and make their own songs, and then split with her any revenue they make from the songs.

"It was an opportunity for us to show not only the music industry, but also the different tech companies how to create a fair and equi‐ table way to involve artists and songwriters and produc‐ ers in the process of building these new generative AI tools," Leonard said.

For Leonard, consent is a central issue for musicians when it comes to AI.

"People want to be able to consent to having their name, image, likeness, sound, aesthetic essence, whatever you want to call it, included in these training da‐ ta sets," he said.

Jordan Young, a.k.a. DJ Swivel, a Grammy-winning producer from Toronto who has worked with artists in‐ cluding Beyoncé and Cold‐ play, co-founded Hooky, a platform set to launch in about a month that will allow artists to give or deny per‐ mission and collect royalties from AI songs.

"We're not here to replace the human. We're here to en‐ hance the human and give them more tools to to play with and make sure we do it in a legal and ethical way," Young said.

Like Linden, Young likened the music industry's battles with AI to Napster, and said attempts to shut down digital file-sharing in the 2000s amounted to a game of digi‐ tal whack-a-mole. Young says the only way to stop unfair use of artists' work through AI is to create a "consumerfriendly" solution.

"We're really hoping to sort of drive that home, that there is a friendly balance," he said. "We just have to make sure that everybody is at the table and everybody is part of the conversation about how we get there."