Over 200 artistes including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Metro Boomin, and Pearl Jam have signed an open letter from the Artist Rights Alliance calling on artificial intelligence companies to cease using artists’ music without permission to train their AI tech.
The letter has the signatures of Stevie Wonder, Kacey Musgraves, Katy Perry, Imagine Dragons nd others.
It reads: “When used irresponsibly, AI poses enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, our identities, our music and our livelihoods.”
It stares that “Some of the biggest and most powerful companies are, without permission, using our work to train AI models. These efforts are directly aimed at replacing the work of human artists with massive quantities of AI-created ‘sounds’ and ‘images’ that substantially dilute the royalty pools that are paid out to artist. For many working musicians, artists and songwriters who are just trying to make ends meet, this would be catastrophic.”
The Artist Rights Alliance, a non-profit group focused on advocacy for music creators, is asking AI companies and other tech platforms “to pledge that they will not develop or deploy AI music-generation technology, content or tools that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or deny us fair compensation for our work.”