No choice, your voice can take me there
An AI cover of a Madonna song is topping the charts in Australia and teaching us about "compulsory licensing"
Two things are clear about the song at the top of the charts in Australia right now, with some 35 million Spotify streams: 1) It’s a cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” 2) It is almost certainly AI generated.
I’m ignoring this as a milestone for AI slop (at least, it sure sounds like slop to my ear) because I was curious about the copyright implications and did a little homework.
When a music artist’s song is covered by another artist, they are entitled to royalties from revenues earned by the cover. In the U.S. and Australia, among other places, there is a “compulsory licensing” provision that allows anyone to release a cover song, so long as they pay the royalties.
So if you’re Madonna, you can’t shut down this song just because it grosses you out. (She hasn’t publicly commented on it, but recently called the use of gen-AI in music the “complete opposite of making art.”) But if you’re Madonna’s publisher, you will for-sure be expecting your royalty payments.
Naturally, I have questions I’ll be keeping an eye on:
Will the inability to prevent people from legally making AI-generated covers of one’s songs have a chilling effect on artists, making them reluctant to release new works outside of live performance?
Will artists try to optimize their work for being easy for AI to make catchy covers out of?
Will the public wise up to AI covers and stigmatize them?
In the likely event that AI covers are stigmatized, how long will it be before a top artist sues the humans behind an AI cover on grounds that its existence constitutes defamation? Who will it be?
I welcome your predictions in the comments.
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.