TorrentFreak reports: The controversial Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has just revealed its latest feeling about market movements.As usual, the music industry group continues to name various torrent sites and streaming services as familiar suspects. At the same time, the RIAA also sees certain “AI-based” music mixers/extractors as emerging threats.
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword often used by start-ups/established businesses in the tech industry. In some cases, AI refers specifically to advanced algorithms. But complex self-learning computer systems with human-like characteristics are also under active development.
In addition, AI raises some interesting questions from a copyright perspective. For example, can the content it creates be copyrighted like any other work? Or, does it have the potential to infringe the copyrights of others?
TorrentFreak reports that the RIAA has apparently filed a complaint against certain AI music extractor/mixer services, although legal experts have yet to negotiate a definitive opinion.
At the request of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the music organization highlighted several representative sites in its annual overview of the ‘notorious’ piracy market.
“Certain online services purportedly use AI technology to extract or reproduce vocal/partial instrumental accompaniment from recordings, as well as generate or remix, and ultimately produce musical compositions of similar style,” the RIAA wrote.
Take Songmastr, for example, the platform promises to “master” the repertoire of any well-known artist, such as Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Coltrane, Bob Dylan and James Brown.
The bottom layer is powered by open-source Matchering 2.0 code (available for free on GitHub), and it’s chanted on the site’s slogan.
In addition to Songmastr, the RIAA considers Acapella-Extractor and Remove-Vocals to be the same raccoon dog. As the name suggests, these services all claim to separate vocals from accompaniment.
For the RIAA, it clearly doesn’t want third parties to do this with copyrighted tracks, especially as these derivative works are further shared with others.
After all, the files distributed by these services are unauthorized copies, or derivative works, of the music of RIAA members.
However, in terms of traffic, AI music mixers have not yet become a major threat to the music industry. In the past 12 months, it has even received less than 200 daily visits.
In contrast, Acapella-Extractor and Remove-Vocals are more popular, with hundreds of thousands of monthly visits.