Paul Stenhouse: Record companies want AI music to be disclosed, EU holds position to increase tech competition

Record companies want AI music to be disclosed  

And they've got a bunch of other groups onboard too – American Association of Independent Music, the Grammys, SAG-AFTRA, and the Human Artistry Campaign. They want two different classifications:  

1) AI-Generated. 

2) AI-Assisted, which would mean it was created primarily by humans but used AI for some elements.  

They have designed a symbol too, which they would expect to be on the cover art like an "explicit content" warning.  

The recording industry says fans are open to listening to AI music, they just want to know it's AI generated. So, if we're being a purist... is a synthesizer generated?  

Spotify today will show AI usage in song credits and Apple Music has introduced “transparency tags”, but it seems this label requires someone to say it was AI generated, rather than proving it was human generated.  

The EU is holding its position to increase competition in the tech space  

The accounting and workplace software giant SAP is going to make it easier for companies to switch to a rival service, all because of the EU's competition rules. The decision means they avoid a massive fine. They're going to make it easier to cancel a contract, as well as export data.  

Apple too lost its latest court case challenging the EU Digital Markets Act. The court has ruled that the iOS operating system and the App Store are "gatekeepers". That means they'd be forced to allow alternative app stores, direct installs of apps, alternative payment systems, different web browsers, and access to hardware features like tap-to-pay and more.  

iMessage though is not designated as a gatekeeper, which means we won't see the EU force the blue chat bubbles to become more interoperable.  

Apple says this will "erode decades of privacy and security protections". 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from news Talks at b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Twenty one to eleven, non news Talks, The'd Be You
with Jactam through to mid day Today. Record companies want
AI music to be disclosed, and they've got a whole
bunch of other groups on board as well. Our Textbert
Paul Stenhouse has been looking at the developments and it's
with us this morning, get a.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Paul Good Morning. They want't basically a label on the
cover art. It's almost like that explicit content label. Yeah,
white Morning, things are about to get crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Did those things still exist? Yeah? Yeah, they do the
explicit warnings to Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
You still see them on I mean, we just don't
see cover art like we used to.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
This is my point. I just like, yeah, right, okay,
yeah yeah, I mean I think there are other songs
like that. I mean you learn this very quickly when
you're working in radio, like you've got to make sure
you choose the radio edit rather than the at home edit,
you know what I mean. And so there are you know,
there are labels on songs that kind of distinguish between
the ones that have explicit lyrics and the ones that don't.

(01:13):
But I wondered about that it would cover art anymore,
because cover arts not so much of a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
No, So what I mean they are looking at putting
some into the into the streaming platforms as tags or labels, right,
And actually Spotify already does some of it today. They
kind of bary AI usage in song credits, and Apple
Music puts some transparency tags in. But these these record
companies and the folks from the Grammys and SAG, EFTRA
and the American Association of Independent Music, they all want
these these labels now, and they've designed a little label

(01:41):
that they want to put on there, and it's quite nice.
And there's two of them. So one classification they're going
for is AI generated, so that means fully AI generated,
there wasn't a human involved at all.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
The second one is AI assisted, and they define that
to mean that it was created primarily by humans, but
that they used AI for some elements. Now I think,
what does some elements mean? And I mean this might
be controversial, Jack, but here we go auto auto tune, Hello, Like,
I know, it's not assisted. And if we're going to

(02:15):
be a real purist when it comes to music, I
know what what are our thoughts on some no, stir
the part a little bit.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Oh man, that is actually a very good point. It's
very hard to Yeah, I mean, what what is AI?
What is yeah? Exactly what is computing? I mean it
is actually quite tricky to draw a line in the
sand and say, in a musical context, what isn't isn't
powered by a machine learning at some level?

Speaker 3 (02:42):
A yeah, or just generation at some point, I mean,
you know, AI generated. We use sounds that are generated
that are not coming from actual instruments that have been recorded.
So yeah, I just think the line is a little weird.
But I think the other thing that's interesting about all
of this, and I think it's really important when we
talk about video especially and images and text, it's like

(03:05):
the onus is on you to basically say AI didn't
partake in this, right, Like, how do we turn that around?
How do we how do we assume that everything is
AI generated? And we have to verify that a human
actually created, actually played the instrument, had a camera actually
at the event, because until we do that, we're just

(03:25):
relying on someone telling us or checking the right box. Yeah,
and we all know how people are at checking boxes
to say No, you're right, there was some AI here.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah. That is actually a really really interesting perspective and
and a good point, and one that you sort of
just take for granted, right unless it's unless it's challenged.
I don't know if I rate their chances necessarily. My
problem is that with streaming music, you just kind of
have it on and it'll take you off in a direction.
You kind of don't even notice it's taking you off
in a certain direction, and you're probably listening to songs

(03:55):
that have AI components without even realizing it. But I
don't go back and check every song and say, oh, well,
hang on, this was this, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I was just made.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
A recording industry ceo. He said his fans that they
said that fans are open to listening to AI music.
So yeah, the research they've done says they're not against it.
They just want to know that it's AI generated. Maybe
it's silly you don't fall in love with the singer,
or maybe you don't get well, you don't get too
excited about seeing them live in concept, Yeah, the Gorillas
did that, didn't they? What about the trailers years ago?

(04:29):
Are they are they AI?

Speaker 2 (04:32):
I don't know how big. I don't know how to
draw a line. Yeah, yeah, these are the big philosophical question.
Thank you, Paul. Paul Stenhouse our textbook with us this morning.
Our resident GP is in in a few minutes time.
He's looking at carpal tunnel syndrome this morning, a surprisingly
common issue that really can have a significant impact on
people's quality of life. So he'll be here very shortly

(04:52):
sixteen to eleven.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
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