Actual Intelligence On The Artificial Kind
POWER 100 EXECUTIVES WEIGH IN ON THE PROS AND CONS OF MACHINE LEARNING
“We fully embrace artificial intelligence across the entire business, with a responsible approach to foster opportunities for artists and labels through a set of engagement rules: consent, control, compensation and transparency. We produced a survey of nearly 1,600 independent artists via TuneCore, whose opinion was very much aligned with ours.”
—Denis Ladegaillerie, Believe
“AI will bring a massive period of dislocation and fundamental societal, systemic change over the next five years, and that will change music and everything else in both good and bad ways. What won’t change is humans’ desire for a soundtrack to their lives, for the role that music plays in their lives and for their connection to the artist behind that music. The reason Taylor Swift is the biggest artist in the world, the reason people are filling up stadiums for Beyoncé, is that at a time of so much division and confusion, we love these monocultural moments to come together with other people who are different than us and celebrate the same thing.” —Nat Zilkha, Firebird
“AI is an important tool used by songwriters to augment their work. However, we must ensure that platforms using copyrighted songs to learn and create new music are properly licensed. AI should be a tool to enhance songwriting, not a device to create derivative works to compete with the songwriters it is imitating.”
—David Israelite, National Music Publishers’ Association
“At this point, it only helps us. AI provides songwriters, producers, artists, marketers, content creators, etc., more tools to work with. We have embraced it from day one and are constantly experimenting with new tools. Long term, we believe in copyright law and that new technology will eventually be mostly licensed and benefit creators on both ends with tools and additional income streams.” —Mike Caren, APG
“While the music industry has undergone a technology-driven transformation over the past two decades, the [performing rights organization] space has been slower to evolve. There is an incredible opportunity to modernize this critical part of music infrastructure.” —Mike O’Neill, BMI
“Lawyers have an ethical obligation to be cognizant about new technologies and educate themselves as to how they impact the legal profession/ business. Recently, lawyers who cited fake cases obtained through ChatGPT in a brief were sanctioned by a federal court in the Southern District of New York. Their rush to rely on materials as the quick-and-easy answer got them in major hot water. And they ignored even the disclaimers as to accuracy on the site. Thus, while AI technology can be used as a tool, it can never be a substitute for a lawyer’s independent verification of the accuracy of materials presented to a court or replace human judgment and nuanced legal analysis.”
—Christine Lepera, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp
“Pryor Cashman, like many other law firms, has established an interdisciplinary group, chaired by music litigator Ben Semel, that has worked with our clients in submitting detailed statements of position to the Copyright Office in response to its NOI [notice of inquiry]. We are tracking every case around the country and have established relationships with U.K. firms to exchange and share information. We expect that the issues in AI are likely to play out in the courts and in Congress, even as the Copyright Office attempts to develop a position based on the submissions.”
—Don Zakarin, Pryor Cashman