Sony Music has sent warning letters to over 700 artificial intelligence developers around the world and music streaming services in an effort to combat tech groups that are ripping artists off.
The Sony music letter, seen by many, prohibits AI developers using the music of artists like Harry Styles and Adele, and also opts out from any text or data mining for any purpose, such as developing, training, or commercialising AI systems.
According to sources close to the group, Sony Music sent the letter to companies that develop AI system, including OpenAI and Microsoft, as well as Suno, Udio and Google.
Separate letters are also sent by the world’s second largest music group to streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple asking them to adopt best practice measures to protect musicians and songwriters, and their music, from scraping, mining, and training without consent or compensation, by AI developers. The group has asked that they update their terms of services to make it clear that mining or training its content by AI developers is not allowed.
Sony Music has declined to provide any further comment.
The music group has escalated its efforts to stop tech companies from using the lyrics, melodies and images of copyrighted artists and songs to create new versions, or train their systems to produce their own music.
In the letter, Sony Music and its musicians “recognize the significant potential and advancements of artificial intelligence”, but they add that “unauthorised usage” is not allowed. . . “Sony is deprived of the control and compensation it deserves when [Sony] engages in the development, training or commercialisation AI systems”.
The letter says: “This is to inform you directly and reiterate that Sony’s labels expressly prohibit the use of their content.”
The executives of the New York group are worried that their music is already being ripped off. They want to define a clear legal position as the first step in taking action against developers of AI systems they believe have exploited it. The executives at the New York-based group argue that Sony Music is open to licensing music to AI developers, but wants to get a fair price.
The letter states: “Due your nature of operations and the information you have published about your AI system, we have reasons to believe that either you or your affiliates have already made unauthorised use [of Sony content] for the development, training or commercialisation AI systems.”
Sony Music has requested that developers provide all the content they have used to Sony Music by next Monday.
The letter also reflects concern over fragmented approaches to AI regulation across the globe. The global regulations on AI are very diverse. Some regions have new laws and rules to govern the use and training of AI systems, while others leave it up to creative industries to negotiate with developers.
Copyright owners in many countries, including the EU, are advised to publicly state that their content cannot be used for AI training and data mining.
The letter states that the use of any automated tool, programme, algorithm, code or process, or any robot, spider or scraper is prohibited. It also includes any “automated analytic techniques” aimed at analysing digital text and data to generate information including patterns, trends, and correlations.
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