Today, Google released MusicLM, a text-to-music AI tool, to the public. This AI tool allows users to create unique and custom music with the use of a prompt. For instance, users can type “soulful jazz for a dinner party” and MusicLM will create variations of the song.
In January of this year, Google had previewed MusicLM, however, due to ethical concerns, such as the potential of the AI including copyrighted material from the training data. Google, in response to such concerns, have hosted workshops with musicians and have been exploring how the technology can benefit the creative process.
The invention of AI-generated music has led to some disputes. For example, Jay-Z’s record label filed copyright claims against a channel on YouTube, Vocal Synthesis, who was using AI to create covers of popular songs. YouTube, after taking down the videos, reversed their decision and allowed the reupload of the videos due to the incomplete takedown requests.
With the release of MusicLM, the implications of homemade AI-generated music cannot be ignored. Music labels should be vigilant in ensuring that any AI-generated music be restricted and streaming services, like Spotify, should remove any potential violations.
Google, founded in 1998, is an American multinational technology company. It offers a variety of services such as a popular search engine, an advertising platform, cloud computing, and various hardware products.
The co-authors of the MusicLM paper, David Bamman and Hazel Barron, are both researchers in Natural Language Processing and Machine Music Generation. They are vocal about the ethical implications of AI-based music creation, and have spoken on the topics of AI-generated music and copyright law .
