Australian musicians lack legal protection against AI training on their songs
There's this massive AI training database with 12 million music tracks that includes big names like Kylie Minogue, John Farnham, INXS, and AC/DC. Interestingly, Kylie has 182 tracks in there. A lot of Australian artists are not happy with AI services like Suno, which churns out music on par with Spotify's entire library every couple of weeks. Dobe Newton has raised alarms about the ethics of music created by AI. The situation is tricky legally since the database only has download links. Universal and Sony are suing Suno for copyright violations. Meanwhile, 4,000 artists in Australia are pushing for better protections, and starting next August, the EU's AI Act will enforce local copyright laws.
Key facts
- Database of 12 million songs used to train AI includes Australian artists.
- Kylie Minogue has 182 songs in one database.
- Suno generates as much music as Spotify's entire catalogue every two weeks.
- Dobe Newton says there is 'no real ethical nor moral underpinning' to AI music practices.
- Caitlin Yeo felt 'violated' discovering her work in AI databases.
- Copyright law protects specific expressions but not general style, allowing AI to create pastiches.
- German music royalties society successfully sued OpenAI.
- Universal and Sony sued Suno for infringing copyright of over 60,000 songs.
- 4,000 Australian artists signed a petition for increased protections.
- EU's AI Act will require AI models to declare training data sources from next August.
Entities
Artists
- Kylie Minogue
- John Farnham
- INXS
- Midnight Oil
- AC/DC
- Tones and I
- Gotye
- Ben Frost
- Nick Cave
- Tame Impala
- Parkway Drive
- The Living End
- Vance Joy
- Dobe Newton
- Jesse Pattinson
- Caitlin Yeo
- Andrew Cullen
Institutions
- The University of Melbourne
- APRA
- OpenAI
- Universal Music Group
- Sony Music
- Suno
- NVIDIA
- Australian Strategic Policy Institute
- European Union
- The Conversation
- ArtsHub
- ScreenHub
Locations
- Australia
- Canberra
- Germany
- European Union