More than 200 Artists Urge on Tech Platforms to Stop Devaluing Music

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The letter, titled "Stop Devaluing Music", published by the non-profit organization Artist Rights Alliance, urges on technology platforms to Stop Devaluing Music. The letter specifically highlights that AI, if left unchecked, has the potential to "steal the voices and likenesses of professional artists, violate the rights of creators, and destroy the music ecosystem."

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The letter states: "We believe that, when used responsibly, AI has tremendous potential to enhance human creativity and enable the development and growth of new and exciting experiences for music fans around the world. But unfortunately, some platforms and developers are using AI to sabotage creativity and undermine artists, songwriters, musicians, and rights holders. When used irresponsibly, AI poses enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, identities, music, and livelihoods."

"Some of the largest and most powerful companies are using our work to train artificial intelligence models without our permission. and these efforts directly aim to replace the work of human artists with massive quantities of AI-created "sounds" and "images" that greatly dilute the royalty pools paid to artists. This would be catastrophic for many working musicians, artists and songwriters just trying to make ends meet. For many working musicians, artists and songwriters who are just trying to make ends meet, this would be catastrophic. Left unchecked, AI will initiate a race to the bottom that will devalue our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it. And this assault on human creativity must be stopped. We must guard against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists' voices and their likenesses, violate creators' rights, and destroy the music ecosystem."

And finally, the letter specifically emphasizes that "We call on all AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services 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". I couldn't find the written version of the letter, so I apologize if there are any mistakes in what I wrote about the letter. The full letter is available click here.

In short, the letter addresses some of the threats to human artistry while acknowledging the creative possibilities of AI technology and highlights the need to stop irresponsible artificial intelligence practices, an assault on human creativity, must be stopped. I think it is a very justified request, I love using artificial intelligence apps, but I completely agree that the rights of artists, songwriters, musicians and rights holders should be protected.

Additionally, among those who signed the letter are artists such as Billie Eilish, Jon Bon Jovi, Ryan Tedder, Robert Smith, Stevie Wonder, Nicki Minaj, R.E.M., Peter Frampton, Jon Batiste, Katy Perry, Sheryl Crow, Smokey Robinson.