AI Workers Urged to Demand Pay for Musicians in Training Data

@ednewtonrex I run the socials for a music management company & every single one of their artists had hundreds of their tracks used.

Judging by the replies to my emails yesterday, the sheer scale of it hadn’t been fully comprehended till seeing it broken down in tidy chart form.

@yungalgorithm If you think putting your music online gives people the right to use it however they want then I don’t know what to tell you

There are readers of my posts who work at AI companies that train on people’s music without permission.

To those people - I hope you are seeing the level of anger in the music community today.

You tell yourself what you are doing is justified. I implore you: read people’s reactions today. Seek them out. Then ask yourself whether you really believe that.

It is not too late to tell your millionaire / billionaire CEOs that they should be paying musicians instead of exploiting them.

Lawsuits are important. But AI company employees are the people in the best position to effect change.

@ednewtonrex *puts music on the internet for people to use*

*people use the music*

hey what the hell

@ednewtonrex I think sadly many of them have been brainwashed to believe what they are doing is relevant and that they aren't doing anything wrong.

They might believe they couldn't find another job as cool as the one they have now. Tough sell, I hope they hear you and listen to reason.

@ednewtonrex Given the level of sociopathy prevalent in the field of AI, it's no surprise that they justify their clearly harmful actions in the name of a self-proclaimed "greater good"

@Nicolethebear Yeah - this tool is super helpful

@JGarciaMartin Maybe. I think a lot of it is just groupthink and the comfort of a very well-paid job. It is hard to break free from that.

@ednewtonrex Hey, remember "You wouldn't steal a car" campaign? Where has this attitude gone now?

@ednewtonrex endgame is obvious: licensing deal.

Not justice. Not “AI goes away.”

Studios, labels, publishers, and platforms get paid. The tool stays online. Artists get a fraction of a fraction and everyone calls it solved.

like how spotify pays .0003c a stream

@ednewtonrex What is unbelievable is how many people I know who work adjacent to the music industry or who themselves have been in bands but who are quite comfortable, and without a single sense of irony, to generate songs via Suno

@Merkabah13 @ednewtonrex I don't think you fully understand how copying music files that you have no right to copy, is copyright infringement.

@Artm40 It seems to have died with the rise of billion-dollar AI companies

@thorn_neverwake @ednewtonrex I've been training my own models for awhile now & I make music so I understand the AI phobia but there is no law that prevents using copyrighted material for model training. A.I. doesn't "copy" your music, it learns from the data & makes something new. Grey area, not illegal.

@ednewtonrex I don't think you fully understand how machine learning & A.I. works. Nothing was "stolen" from you. You still own the copyright & are collecting royalties from your song. Training an AI model is like teaching yourself how to play guitar by playing popular songs. It's a grey area

@ednewtonrex if you think it doesnt i do know what to tell you

@thorn_neverwake @ednewtonrex If I download a song from a platform such as YouTube & use it as inspiration to create a new composition, I haven't "stolen" that song. You can't copyright chords & basic structural components of music. You still own the song & it's not stored on a server

@Merkabah13 @ednewtonrex Was the music file copied from the host server to the AI chatbot training server?

@ednewtonrex Come on, I've seen them justify stealing other people's art and even using things like child pornography to say they're going to "cure cancer"

@ednewtonrex Agreed, I've also been there myself.