The Council Of Music Makers recognises that AI presents opportunities for the music business. However, the rights of music-makers – including artists, musicians, songwriters and studio producers – must be respected by technology companies and rights-holders as music AI models are trained and new AI-powered products and services are developed.
That begins with AI companies respecting copyright and law-makers ensuring that no new copyright exceptions are introduced to reduce those obligations. In addition, the following five fundamentals must be met…
1. Where licensing deals are negotiated in respect of AI technologies, the explicit consent of individual music-makers must be secured before music is used to train AI models. Such consent cannot be inferred by rights-holders or technology companies.
2. The publicity, personality and personal data rights of music-makers must be respected. These rights belong to individual music-makers and cannot be exploited – by AI companies or rights-holders – without explicit consent. The UK government should clarify and strengthen these rights, and collaborate internationally to promote a robust global rights regime.
3. Where permission is granted, music-makers must share fairly in the financial rewards of music AI, including from music generated by AI models trained on their work.
4. As AI companies and rights-holders develop licensing models, they must proactively consult music-makers and reach agreement on how each stakeholder will share in the revenue from AI products and services.
5. AI-generated works must be clearly labelled as such and AI companies must be fully transparent about the music that has been used to train their models, keeping and making available complete records of datasets. Rights-holders must be transparent about all licensing deals that have been negotiated with AI companies and what works those deals include.
