AI Can Actually Help Protect Creativity and Copyrights: Guest Post by Reservoir Music CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi
In meetings, conferences, and headlines, artificial intelligence is the phrase on everyone’s lips. There are worries about everything from the infiltration of businesses and the takeover of jobs, not to mention the extinction of humanity. How do we stop it, control it, and reap the benefits without standing in the way of technological advancement?
The music community is at the center of the AI conversation, partly because at this stage it’s one of the easiest art forms to understand the impact of AI —everyone’s heard a fake Drake or a fake McCartney by now. But it’s not the end, just the beginning of something new. There is a great opportunity to understand it, collaborate with it, and seize the opportunities it generates.
More from Variety
Music Industry Moves: Sonny Rollins' Music Catalog Acquired By Reservoir Media
De La Soul's Music Is Finally Coming to Streaming Services in March
As a music publisher, there are already real-world applications of AI as a data-driven tool that I am enthusiastic about. AI can create — and already is creating — efficiencies across the industry. Creators can employ the variety of technologic enhancements AI offers to automate time-consuming studio tasks like mixing and sound engineering, find efficiencies across those tasks, and effectively refine and execute on their ideas, all of which will propel them and their art into new territories, sounds, and intersections of genres.
Used correctly, AI can actually help us preserve and protect copyright — versus the present fear of usurping it. Through audio fingerprinting, AI tools that verify authorship in real time will help reduce the unnecessary litigation that can be based on subjective interpretations or human error. AI will also equip both owners and distributors of content (i.e. streaming services) with significant changes in how we classify and catalog music (e.g., the micro categories that we can use to further define characteristics and attributes of songs). Not only can we then better understand the music, but we can also be more efficient at micro licensing, delving into why listeners love what they love, both in the moment in the context of a trend, and over time when it comes to standards and classics.
At Reservoir, we spent the better part of the past two years clearing samples for De La Soul to get the music ready for streaming platforms. It is not hard to conceive how that process might be better and faster with an AI-driven tool that could catalog and organize the music and information.
As a record label owner, I’m also not panicking. I do have little doubt that this technology will put an end to an entire subset of creators whose work falls in the category of commodity music and commodity product. But when we think about what it means to create and to infuse meaning and emotion into music, AI tools and technologies will continue to fall short.
Take again a group like De La Soul. The kind of remixing and ingenious inclusion of a range of sounds paired with their lyricism and fresh hip-hop sentiments were foundational for the genre as we know it today. That seed of creation came from the specialized human elements and contributions of three budding rappers and friends from Long Island.
Or take John Denver, another catalog we represent at Reservoir. Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” a song written in 1971, is consistently among our top earners today. There are over 600 covers on Spotify, and it has been synched endlessly. Look at top karaoke songs across the globe — “Country Roads” is a staple. Why? Denver and his co-writers so effectively captured the inextricable relationship between music and humanity that transcends language, time, and geography. The song, an ode to the roads that lead you home, has an eternal message that resonates with people: their identities, longings, and desires — all innately human experiences and emotions.
Could AI create a catchy song that has a moment? Probably. Can it create something as impactful or enduring as “Country Roads?” Emphatically, no. We are already living in a world in which authenticity drives value — and part of that is the authentic connection between artist and audience. The ingesting of copyrights in generative AI tech cannot replace the human connection of art and music. In some artist-sanctioned cases, it may well enhance it. But I believe it will, in most cases, lead to the dilution of art.
In any event, we first need to make sure that the ingestion of copyrights that enable AI is adequately policed and paid for, which is where a lot of important discussion and focus is today. Advocating for rights holders and copyright protection is a routine part of our business, and regardless of whether an infringer is human or artificial doesn’t change our steadfast mission in upholding creators’ rights.
Overall, I’m inclined to trust the history of the industry to help us navigate the relatively uncertain waters. Technology, as both disruption and ultimately advancement, is at the very crux of the music industry and has been for hundreds of years. Think of the synthesizer and its impact on music, dating back to organs in the late 1930s. Synths and drum machines have enhanced some music and proved useful tools to creators, but real musicianship is alive and well.
I have faith that the creators who have built this industry will continue to be the human driving force behind the art and connections we experience. I have faith the tools will help propel those creators and rights holders to new heights. I have faith in the protection of copyright through policy and legislation, and I have faith in the industry’s historic precedence of uncharted progress and success achieved in the face of technologic disruption.
So to those who fear the AI invasion, I say: keep calm, meet it head on and create something totally new, as only we humans can.
Best of Variety
New Movies to Watch This Week: 'Jockey,' 'The Lost Daughter'
Final Oscar Predictions: Who Will Win in the Major Categories?
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
