Over the last several months, the topic of AI has become a hot topic of discussion due to its potential to flawlessly clone major celebrity voices by using mere seconds of their voices. But recently after the creation of an AI-generated song, resembling the voice of Drake and The Weeknd, which surrounded itself with immense buzz, Universal Media Group came forward to make a statement.
Following the unreal resemblance of the melody with the original artists, Universal Media Group didn’t back away from addressing the serious issue that could endanger the talents of their artists.
Universal Music Group speaks out against the AI-generated Drake and The Weeknd song
Following the release of Heart on My Sleeve, the AI-generated song that shared an unreal resemblance to the voices of Drake and The Weeknd, Universal Media Group spoke out against the practice. They claimed that the misuse of this advanced technology to create the melody represents, “ both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law”. One spokesperson from UMG addressed the immoral practice and urged all platforms to ban the song by stating,
“A moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorized use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators. We expect our platform partners will want to prevent their services from being used in ways that harm artists.”
However, the copyright law isn’t the only issue that the media group addressed while requesting all major platforms to ban the song, as they further touched on the topic of how it can affect their artists in the future.
Universal Music believes that AI Voice cloning technology is a major threat to their artists
Considering that the practice of cloning celebrity voices by using specific AI tools has previously resulted in several controversies, Heart on My Sleeve has opened a whole new fear for the music industry. Following the creation of an AI-generated Drake and The Weeknd song, it’s reasonable to assume that there will be further cases like that in the future. UMG claimed that this can become a major threat to them and their artists in the future as the technology is difficult to control. UMG stated,
“UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists — as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already. However, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music … begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on.”
Although the song has been currently banned from major streaming platforms, that hasn’t stopped the AI-generated Drake and The Weeknd melody from making headlines.
Source: CNN
