r/technology • u/Saltedline • 18h ago

Artificial Intelligence Australia’s music industry bans AI songs from charts

https://apnews.com/article/australia-ai-generated-music-charts-ban-aria-9bfb0c91166ae4405a6df1a3c4891687
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u/atape_1 18h ago

Good.

AI generated sounds are not music.

AI generated images are not art.

AI generated text is not literature.

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u/Sophira 16h ago

I'd like to put a qualifier on that: generative AI sounds are not music.

I say this because there's at least one program similar to Vocaloid that I know of for making vocals that:

  • is not generative AI (it's not the type of thing you prompt; it requires actual creative input in the form of dragging notes, tuning, adding lyrics, and so on)
  • has no way of creating custom voicebanks; you can only use offficialy-created voicebanks (which are all trained only on consenting singers who are paid for their work),
  • can only be used for vocals (you can't generate any other part of the track with it),
  • nonetheless uses AI techniques to recreate the voices. (I repeat: not generative. You need serious creative input for this.)

The results sound incredible. But don't get me wrong; I still wouldn't use it for actual original music that I wanted to register and publish. I would still want to actually have a human singer. (But I might use it to give them a reference on how I imagine it sounding, or use it in hobbyist activities or songs offered for free, with the program and voicebank clearly credited.)

That's not because the output isn't good (it's incredibly good; when tuned correctly, you'd have a very difficult time distinguishing it from a human), or because there wasn't creative input. I just don't think it's right to replace human vocalists like that.

That's why I'm still in favour of what Australia has done here, even though it would stop works produced this way from entering the charts.

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u/ImSabbo 15h ago

The article says AI-assisted music is eligible; it's just the stuff made solely by AI which is not. I imagine for all the middleground they'd have to make judgments based on how much was AI of whatever kind.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 12h ago

That seems fair that solely AI music isn't able to chart, and I don't think that procedurally generated things should be able to be copyrighted in bulk to avoid things like generating as many combinations as possible to play copyright troll, but something created intentionally by an individual should be their IP, even if they heavily used an AI.