Deezer, a popular streaming service, has announced the development of technology aimed at detecting and potentially removing songs that utilise artificial intelligence (AI) to clone the voices of pop stars. The French company intends to use this technology to combat illegal and fraudulent content in order to protect artists.
Deezer CEO Jeronimo Folgueira emphasised the importance of the current time in the music industry, saying, “We need to take a stand now.” The emergence of AI-generated songs has resulted in a number of recent examples in which tracks were constructed without the knowledge of well-known artistes using generative AI that imitated their vocals. Universal Music successfully petitioned streaming services to remove “Heart On My Sleeve,” a song attributed to Drake and The Weekend. Although the legal ramifications of this practice have not been addressed in court, the label asserted that training AI with artistes’ music violates copyright regulations.
Musicians have voiced conflicting feelings about AI-generated music. While some musicians, such as Grimes, have made their voices available for use in AI compositions, others, such as Sting, have expressed reservations about retaining control over their music.
Deezer, which has a strong presence in France and parts of South America, has devised a new tool to identify music generated with generative AI, with a particular emphasis on songs that use synthetic voices of existing artistes. The music that has been identified will be brought to the notice of labels, artists, and other rights holders, who will be able to take appropriate action.
While Folgueira favours the ethical use of AI in music, he believes it is critical for the industry to ensure compliance with regulations and intellectual property rights, as well as fair recompense for artists. He made a link between the rise of AI-generated music and the spread of misinformation on social media platforms, emphasising the risks.
Although the number of tracks using “deepfake” vocals is currently tiny, Deezer expects a big growth in AI-generated music during the next six to nine months. Given the volume of content posted to the service each day, it is hard to manually check all of it, making AI technology indispensable in discovering phoney artists and fraudulent behaviour.
Deezer is also collaborating with Universal to explore changes in royalty payment calculations to more accurately reflect individual listener preferences and support smaller-level artists. Currently, artistes are paid based on their proportion of overall streams, meaning that listeners who do not listen to a particular artist still contribute to their royalty payments.