2023-04-21 21:12:15
“You can’t copyright someone’s voice,” Guadamuz, who teaches at the University of Sussex in Britain, told AFP.
Created by an internet user named @ghostwriter, the song “Heart On My Sleeve” had gone viral on the social network Tiktok and had been listened to millions of times on Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms, before being removed following a major’s request.
According to the professor, like a melody, lyrics or other elements of a song, the timbre of a voice might be protected “but this would be problematic” because “copyright protects the expression of an idea , which is not really the voice”.
However, this specialist believes that Universal probably obtained the withdrawal of the song by relying on copyright, which benefits from proven procedures with streaming platforms.
“Most of the time, these problems have not been solved thanks to the law but just because the record companies complain to the platforms and it is easier for them to comply,” says- he. Especially since Universal Music Group or Sony are, for example, minority shareholders in Spotify.
Image rights
However, other laws may already protect a musician once morest copies made by artificial intelligence and, if an artist has a particular personality or voice, these characteristics may be protected by the right to the image (“publicity rights”) in the USA).
In 1988, actress Bette Midler won a lawsuit once morest Ford, who had used an imitation of her for an advertisement. Singer Tom Waits won a similar case once morest chip giant Frito-Lay in 1993.
But the application of this right is “very random”, notes Andres Guadamuz, some countries interpreting it more strictly than others.
The legal battle might finally be over how artificial intelligence programs are trained. In the case of Drake and The Weeknd, they necessarily needed many works of these two artists to be able to imitate them.
“You need to copy the music to train AIs and this unauthorized copying might infringe copyright,” explains the professor.
“Defenders will say, however, that this is fair use. They use these copies to train the machine, teach it the music, and then they delete them. We’ll have to wait and see how these cases will be judged,” adds he.
In the meantime, it will be difficult to stop the avalanche of content generated by artificial intelligence. Just this week, an album impersonating Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher has been spreading across social media.
“The groups are going to have to decide if they want to sue this because copyright cases are expensive,” said Guadamuz.
“Some artists might also lean on the technology and start using it themselves, especially if they start to lose their voice,” he anticipates.
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