Producer Timbaland wants music producers to have exclusive rights to AI voices of dead singers

[highplainsdem]

This sickens me.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaredcouncil/2023/05/15/timbaland-hatches-ai-startup-that-will-give-music-stars-like-biggie-life-after-death/

“It’s going to really be a new way of creating and a new way of generating money with less costs,” the influential beatmaker told Forbes in an exclusive interview. “I’m already here. This is what I’m doing. I’m going to lead the way.”

Timbaland, born Timothy Mosley, said he believes AI voice filters — which allow an artist to assume the voice of another artist — will open up an unprecedented world of creativity in music. Up-and-coming artists with a good cadence or flow, but not a great voice, could use filters to achieve more success. Established artists will be able to share AI replicas of their voices with each other to test collaborations and save time. And a producer could get exclusive rights to use the voice of “a music legend who’s no longer with us,” he said, and fans will eagerly wait for the project to drop.

Mosley said there are a host of legal issues centering on copyright and revenue-sharing to resolve before the future of music can happen, but he’s already got a startup and AI voice filter technology that he wants to sell to usher in the new era.

AI voice filters could have vast implications on how revenue is generated and shared in the $26 billion music industry. They would be a new source of income for the owners of those voices, who could be part of the creation of new material unhampered by death. New pay structures would have to accommodate the fact that a song’s vocal artist could be a machine that mimics a human, and the artistic and financial value of collaborations could hinge on whether an artist lent their real voice or an AI replica.

-snip-

Found that article thanks to this tweet from a Huffington Post editor. The replies were pretty negative.

Link to tweet

Some of those replies:


Horrible endeavor


He should ABSOLUTELY cease and desist with this.

Very disappointed that he would encourage something like this.

It's disrespectful. 😡👎🏾


This is disgusting and disrespectful. I bet you money none of these artists family will get a fair share of the money made doing this.

This should be outlawed.


Why can't they let the dead rest? So much undiscovered talent existing to do this. They are legends for a reason


And one person replying there quoted what Prince had said about this sort of thing, and I tracked down articles with the quote to make sure it was correct:

https://pitchfork.com/news/longtime-prince-collaborator-sheila-e-disapproves-of-prince-hologram/

As the FADER points out, Prince also expressed disapproval over holograms in a resurfaced interview with Guitar World from 1998. When he was asked, “With digital editing, it is now possible to create a situation where you could jam with any artist from the past. Would you ever consider doing something like that?,” Prince responded:

Certainly not. That's the most demonic thing imaginable. Everything is as it is, and it should be. If I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. That whole virtual reality thing... it really is demonic. And I am not a demon. Also, what they did with that Beatles song ["Free As a Bird"], manipulating John Lennon's voice to have him singing from across the grave... that'll never happen to me. To prevent that kind of thing from happening is another reason why I want artistic control.

[MutantAndProud]

1. Fuck no.

No agreement: no production.

[Withywindle]

2. Ghoulish and exploitative

Lift up living artists and pay them a fair price for their work.

What a dystopian world AI can create: humans still doing manual labor for starvation wages while bots make music and art. Science-fiction optimism had it exactly the other way around.

[msongs]

3. got low talent? swipe some from dead people...they can't keep u from the cash grab nt

[keep_left]

4. There was a novel from the late '80s that predicted a lot of this...

...Little Heroes (1987) by Norman Spinrad. The creepy "AI dead people vocals" technology isn't in the book, but just about everything else is, including autotune (a decade before it was invented).

[lindysalsagal]

5. copyright infringement without family's approval

But that won't stop families from doing it. I don't like it.

[Whatthe_Firetruck]

6. It should be considered as part of the artists estate...

We probably can't stop it, but the main monetization should be to the families, and under their control, instead of some zombie voice thing abused by producers only after the $$$.

That way profits go to their inheritors to license as they choose.

[keep_left]

8. it sounds like Prince attempted some sort of legal strategy based on the interview...

...excerpted in the OP. Prince mentioned holograms, but what is described here could be considered a sort of "audio hologram". Hopefully some smart IP attorneys can come up with the legal language needed for this new world artists are now facing.

https://pitchfork.com/news/longtime-prince-collaborator-sheila-e-disapproves-of-prince-hologram/

[Mr.Bill]

7. I'm just glad I own about 300

vinyl albums. At my age that's enough music to listen to for the rest of my life.

And I'll know I'm not listening to anything tampered with by AI.

[bluesbassman]

9. This quote floored me...

“Up-and-coming artists with a good cadence or flow, but not a great voice, could use filters to achieve more success.”

It’s bad enough that marginally talented people who possess “good cadence and flow” or are physically attractive can use autotune to make up for lack of ability. Using AI to mimic the talent of dead artists takes that fraud to entirely new levels and is an insult to thousands of genuinely talented people working their hardest to make a mark in the world of music.

[flvegan]

10. One way to get a Tupac and Biggie collab...to sell you car insurance on tv.

Fuck Timbaland.

[Iggo]

11. I'm with Prince on this one.

[edisdead]

12. And then at the superbowl halftime in Minneapolis they put prince on a hologram

And then at the superbowl halftime in Minneapolis they put prince on a hologram

[highplainsdem]

13. It wasn't a hologram, and reportedly there were never any plans

to use a hologram.

See this article - all of it, since it's too lengthy an explanation of all the confusion for me to excerpt it:

https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/whats-the-truth-about-justin-timberlakes-prince-hologram.html

[edisdead]

14. Sure it was a projection and he would NOT have been cool with it

At all.

It was absolutely stupid to do it and most prince fans I know viewed it as a travesty. It is one thing to show a video of him. It is another to show him as part of the act whole another person is performing.

It sucked.

And I am a massive prince fan.

[edisdead]

15. Here is one if a bunch if articles on it from back the .

https://www.romper.com/p/twitter-reactions-to-the-prince-projection-at-the-halftime-show-prove-no-one-does-it-like-the-purple-one-8116987

You will have to go to the article to read the tweets and follow them if you care to.


But in a 1998 interview with Guitar World, Prince likened playing with a hologram of a deceased performer to "the most demonic thing imaginable." Prince said: "Everything is as it is, and it should be. If I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. That whole virtual reality thing … it really is demonic. And I am not a demon."

So, no: Prince wouldn't have been OK with a hologram of him performing with Timberlake during the Super Bowl LII halftime show. And, honestly, is a projection that much better? Twitter fans didn't seem to think so. Here are just a few tweets highlighting how put-off viewers were: