Warner Music big cheese Robert Kyncl has penned a short blog post on music and AI following the news that the major has followed the lead of Universal Music in settling its legal battle with music AI start-up Udio, while also licensing a new AI-powered Udio service that will launch next year.
AI is “still in its early days”, Kyncl writes, but “investment is surging” and “talent is pouring in”, which means “this is the moment to shape the business models, set the guardrails, and pioneer the future for the benefit of our artists and songwriters”.
Capitalising on the AI opportunity means Warner Music needs to “legislate, litigate and license”, Kyncl goes on, basically summarising the policy embraced by the wider music industry when it comes to artificial intelligence with some sneaky alliteration.
The music industry has been lobbying hard for lawmakers around the world to clarify the copyright and transparency obligations of AI companies that make use of existing songs and recordings when training their generative AI models.
Meanwhile the majors, and others, have filed lawsuits against AI companies that are using existing music without getting permission first, most notably Udio and Suno, but also Anthropic and OpenAI.
However, the ultimate end game is licensing, where the AI companies enter into deals with the music industry that generate income for creators and rightsholders. Though that, of course, is where unity within the music industry on AI issues starts to fall apart.
Since Universal Music announced its big settlement and licensing deal with Udio, multiple creator organisations within the music community - including Music Creators North America, the US Music Artists Coalition and the UK Council Of Music Makers - have put out statements demanding that the majors guarantee transparency and control for artists and songwriters when entering into AI deals.
In his blog post, Kyncl does provide a little transparency about creator control. He states that “artists and songwriters will have a choice to opt-in to any use of their name, image, likeness or voice in new AI-generated songs”.
However, Universal boss man Lucian Grainge made a similar commitment - albeit via an internal memo to staff - before his company’s big Udio deal was announced, and that didn’t do much to placate the music creator organisations.
In its statement earlier this month, the Council Of Music Makers wrote that Grainge’s commitments regarding securing creator consent around likeness and voice “are welcomed”, but “the implication Universal is assuming consent in every other scenario is not welcome”.
Both Universal and Warner are presumably committed to securing creator consent when AI-generated content utilises an artist’s “name, image, likeness or voice” because such uses likely exploit the creator’s image, personality and data rights, and potentially trademarks too.
The deals between majors and artists and songwriters are usually focused on copyright, and don’t generally grant wide-ranging rights around image, data or trademarks. Therefore the majors and their new AI licensing partners might be legally liable for infringing those rights if explicit consent is not secured.
But many creators argue their consent should also be sought when their copyrights are exploited by AI. The CMM’s statement continued, “It is not enough to just seek consent when an artist’s voice or songs are key components of an AI output, explicit consent is also required whenever music is used for training on the input”.
So, Kyncl’s commitments on artist opt-in are unlikely to placate the creator groups on the issue of consent. And the very basic information about Warner’s AI strategy in the blog post - and the official announcement of the Udio deal - are unlikely to address the separate creator concerns about the lack of transparency regarding how these new deals will work - and how new AI revenue streams will be shared.
And those concerns are only going to increase as more major label AI deals are announced. Warner also announced a new deal with Stability AI yesterday, again following Universal’s lead, while earlier today it was announced that all three majors have agreed AI licensing deals with music tech company KLAY.