UK music industry body wants to adopt these five key principles for regulating AI
Written by WOM writer on September 20, 2023
The Council of Music Makers has also produced a template letter that artists can tailor and send to record labels about the use of AI.
The Council of Music Makers has shared five key principles for AI use that they want policymakers to adopt when considering how to regulate AI for use in music.
The council – which represents UK songwriters, composers, artists, musicians, producers and music managers – has unveiled five fundamentals that it says should be fully embraced by the music industry as AI technology develops.
They have been developed by CMM’s five member organisations – The Ivors Academy, the Featured Artists Coalition, the Musicians’ Union, the Music Producers Guild and the Music Managers Forum. The five principles will be officially unveiled at The Ivors Academy Global Creators Summit on music and AI in London later today (20 September).
In addition to the proposed principles, the CMM has also produced a template letter that artists can tailor and send to record labels about the use of AI.
“We all recognise that AI presents opportunities for the music business,” says a representative for the Council of Music Makers. “However, the rights of music-makers – including artists, musicians, songwriters and studio producers – must be respected by technology companies and rights-holders as music AI models are trained and new AI-powered products and services are developed.”
The five principles can be seen below. We’ve simplified the wording a little, so if you want to the principles exactly as the Council of Music Makers proposes, you can head to the organisation’s website.
- Consent must be acquired by the individual music-makers before music is used to train AI models.
- All publicity and personal rights of the music-maker must be respected and cannot be exploited by AI companies or rights-holders. The UK government should strengthen these rights.
- Music-makers must fairly share the financial rewards of the music AI.
- AI companies must proactively consult music-makers and reach an agreement on how each stakeholder will share the revenue.
- AI-generated works must be clearly labelled, and AI companies must be fully transparent about the music that has been used to train their models, keeping and making available complete records of datasets.
