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> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. You can sue someone for Financial/ID th
by winternett 3y ago
> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice.
You can sue someone for Financial/ID theft and impersonation though. Many shady artists were (and still are) using celebrity names in their track titles to get attention for their music releases prior to this. The problem is services like Spotify and YouTube (content search) primarily working based on keywords, and also in those same types of music services only being geared towards major industry artists rather than giving everyone an even playing field to have their music heard... It encourages scam and spam environments, as well as impersonation by artists accounts for the tiny profit they pay.
By posting music with the "emulated" voice in it (which is actually tiny samples of the artist's actual voice), the Ai tools allow and encourage people to create songs and title them as if they were made by the actual artist. In the emulator, they list the authentic artist's name as an option, which technically highlights that they are complicit in facilitating production of music that impersonates the named artist.
Imagine if you're an emerging artist and beginning to gain traction in your career, then all of a sudden, because of an Ai web site, hundreds of people start flooding streaming services with low quality, parody, and even good music using your name, while also collecting royalties off of it... That can ruin a musician's brand and cause damage to the artist's reputation that they can't recover from. There are legal protections against that, even without copyrights, but it can often involve a lengthy court battle.
I'm a musician myself, I am not a lawyer, I do my best to stay out of court.
It's better for everyone if everyone simply puts out their own original music, or properly credited samples and/or remixes with artist consent and permission.
- soulofmischief 3y agoThis wasn't illegal already if you were a good impersonator provided you're not making money from someone's image and likeness. There's no difference here. I'm not saying there won't be lawsuits but they'll be in bad faith.
- winternett 3y agoThe condition that absolves impersonators from responsibility is that they must clearly present that they are impersonators.. That doesn't quite apply here, as the tracks were posted to streaming services as if they were published by the actual artists. If the fake/imitation song makers are required to label their releases as parody or impersonation, then they'll get no streams, as most of the bootleg streams they got were due to putting out a mimicked (pseudo-authentic) release as if it was done by the actual artist. Reputational harm is also a serious case that can also be filed... With an artist as popular as Drake (for example) that can lead to a financially devastating judgement.
- soulofmischief 3y agoIf it's non-commercial and not making false accusations then I'm not sure it matters (in the US)? Happy to hear otherwise. Anyway, ghostwriter clearly demarked Heart on My Sleeve as being AI-assisted. Furthermore, the tracks were first sung and then AI was used to transform the voices. It's hardly more than another tool in the audio production toolbox.
- tediousdemise 3y agoI wonder if indicating likeness would be legally safe, i.e., “Song name - Artist [Drake-like/Drake-style]”