--- title: "Expert: AI-Generated Music Is A “Total Legal Clusterf*ck”" description: "The legal industry isn't ready for AI-generated music, leading to all sorts of new questions about copyrights in the age of creative machines." date: "2019-04-18" modified: "2019-04-18" authors: - name: "Kristin Houser" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/kristin" url: "https://futurism.com/ai-generated-music-legal-clusterfuck" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "copyright" - "creative ai" - "music" --- # Expert: AI-Generated Music Is A “Total Legal Clusterf\*ck” ![The legal industry isn't ready for AI-generated music, leading to all sorts of new questions about copyrights in the age of creative machines.]() *\Image: Pexels/Victor Tangermann\* ## AI-Generated Music If you train a music-generating artificial intelligence exclusively on tracks by Beyoncé, do you owe the pop star a cut of any resulting songs' profits? And is it even legal to use copyrighted songs to train an AI in the first place? Those are just a couple of the questions *The Verge* poses in a fascinating [new story]() about AI-generated music published Wednesday. And while the publication consulted numerous experts from the music, tech, and legal industries for the story, the input of one person in particular — Jonathan Bailey, CTO of audio tech company iZotope — seemed to most concisely sum up the issue. "I won’t mince words," he told *The Verge*. "This is a total legal clusterfuck." ## Imitation Game Despite the U.S. Copyright Office bringing up the potential problems that could arise from computer songwriters [way back in 1965](), U.S. copyright law has yet to nail down exactly who owns what when a computer is involved in the creative process, according to *The Verge*. As it stands, the Beyoncé-trained AI could crank out an entire album of "Lemonade"-esque tracks, and as long as none of them sounded too much like any specific Beyoncé song, the AI-generated music wouldn't be infringing on her copyrights — and the AI's creator wouldn't legally owe the artist a penny, lawyer Meredith Rose told *The Verge*. Less clear is the use of copyrighted songs to train an AI. Several of *The Verge's* sources said there isn't a straightforward answer as to whether buying a song grants a person the right to then use it to train a machine learning system. ## Clock's Ticking Of course, programmers [have yet to come anywhere near]() creating AIs capable of autonomously churning out hit songs in the key of Bey — or anyone else for that matter — but that doesn't mean they won't be able to one day. "It’s like the future of self-driving cars," media-focused venture capitalist Leonard Brody [told *Fortune* in October](). "Level 1 is an artist using a machine to assist them. Level 2 is where the music is crafted by a machine but performed by a human. Level 3 is where the whole thing is machines." We've already seen several examples of those first two levels — tech-forward songstress Taryn Southern shared songwriting credits with AI on her ["I AM AI" album](), released in September, and that same month, Iranian composer Ash Koosha [released an album]() on which he sang songs composed by AI-powered software. If Brody's prediction is correct, the next step will be AIs creating music by themselves — and if we're already in the midst of a "legal clusterfuck," who knows what sort of legislative nightmare that will be? **READ MORE:** [WE’VE BEEN WARNED ABOUT AI AND MUSIC FOR OVER 50 YEARS, BUT NO ONE’S PREPARED]() \[*The Verge*\] **More on AI songwriters:** *[This Musician Created an AI to Write Songs for Him, and They’re Pretty Strange]()* ### Author social links [LinkedIn]()