US recording industry adds sound cloning site to its official flu piracy list

The Recording Industry Association of America has added unauthorized artificial intelligence sound cloning services to its piracy flu list, urging the U.S. government to include such services in its next Notorious Markets report. Especially vocalization.

Artificial intelligence models that can be used to create new tracks that mimic the sounds of famous artists have become a hot topic this year.

Legally speaking, assuming the models were trained using songs and recordings of the artists being imitated, the music industry would argue that the creators of the models need to obtain a license from the person who controls the copyright to the existing music.

Still, some AI companies argue that this is not necessarily the case, often relying on copyright exceptions in certain jurisdictions or the U.S. concept of fair use. Copyright owners insist that no exceptions exist and that training an AI model in this way does not qualify as fair use, although those arguments are still being tested in court.

With voice cloning AI, there is also the legal concept of advertising rights. Even if a copyright exception does apply – or the artist does not own the copyright to their music – the artist’s consent may still be required in many countries because the AI ​​is exploiting their rights of publicity, personality or publicity.

How these rights operate varies from country to country and the concept does not currently exist in the UK.

Regardless, the RIAA believes that voice cloning services should join the ranks of stream scraping sites, unlicensed download and streaming platforms, and the old Pirate Bay on the Notorious Markets list. This is an annual document from the U.S. government that outlines websites and physical markets outside the U.S. where intellectual property rights are often violated.

The RIAA always files a report to report, and its latest filing notes that this year has seen an “outbreak of unauthorized AI sound-cloning services, infringing not only the rights of the artists whose voices were cloned, but also the rights of those whose voices were cloned.” The rights of artists whose voices have been cloned.” Featuring a recording of every underlying musical track”.

“This has resulted in a proliferation of unauthorized derivative works of our members’ recordings, to the detriment of recording artists and copyright owners,” it continued, adding that “some of these services are located outside the United States.”

These include Voicify, run by a British company, which also has streaming scraping elements. Double the fun!

“The site markets itself as ‘the number one platform to create high-quality AI covers in seconds!’ – and includes AI vocal models for recording artists.” Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift artists such as Ted, Elvis Presley, Bruno Mars, Eminem, Adele and Ed Sheeran.

“The service streams a user-selected YouTube video,” the RIAA explains, “copies the acapella from the track, modifies the acapella using an AI sound model, and then delivers the unauthorized modified version to the user. Copies of acapella, stems, basic instrumental beds, and modified remix recordings. This unauthorized activity is a violation of copyright and a violation of the recording artist’s right of publicity.”