The artists say AI "poses enormous threats" to their work and livelihoods
Some of the biggest names in the music industry — Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Billie Eilish, Camila Cabello, and a whole bunch of others (more than 200 in total) — signed a strongly-worded open letter calling on tech companies, AI developers, and music platforms to pledge they won’t make or use AI music-generating tools.
The letter was also signed by the likes of legacy artists like R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Q-tip, Darius Rucker, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and the estates of Frank Sinatra and Bob Marley.
With charged language — verbs like “sabotage” and adjectives like “predatory” — and a specific call to action for the entire tech sector, the letter’s been noted as one of the firmest stances the music industry’s taken on AI.
Quartz breaks down what they said.
We, the undersigned members of the artist and songwriting communities, call on AI developers technology companies, platforms and digital music services to cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.
This is far from the first time artists have called out tech companies for their use of AI. Universal Music Group, which represents Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny, has been arguing with TikTok for developing tools that enable AI-generated music — something UMG said in its own open letter was “nothing short of sponsoring artist replacement by AI.” In fact, UMG is no longer allowing its music on the social media platform.
Make no mistake: we believe that, when used responsibly, AI has enormous potential to advance human creativity and in a manner that enables the development and growth of new and exciting experiences for music fans everywhere.
It’s true: AI is making music creation more accessible for example, by allowing people with disabilities to play instruments they otherwise couldn’t.
Unfortunately, some platforms and developers are employing AI to sabotage creativity and undermine artists, songwriters, musicians and rightsholders. When used irresponsibly, AI poses enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, our identities, our music and our livelihoods. Some of the biggest and most powerful companies are, without permission, using our work to train AI models. These efforts are directly aimed at replacing the work of human artists with massive quantities of AI-created “sounds” and “images” that substantially dilute the royalty pools that are paid out to artists. For many working musicians, artists and songwriters who are just trying to make ends meet, this would be catastrophic.
Music publishers Universal Music Group, ABKCO, and Concord Music in 2023 sued the AI company Anthropic for using its artists’ song lyrics to train its chatbot Claude.
Unchecked, AI will set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it. This assault on human creativity must be stopped.
We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem. We call on all AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to pledge they will not develop or deploy AI music-generated technology, content or tools that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or deny us fair compensation for our work.
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