We’ve been writing about calls from the music industry for artists and songwriters to have ‘personality rights’ protection that enables them to take action against unlicensed deepfake-tracks (or chatbots) that use their names, likenesses and/or AI-cloned voices.
Now WMG boss Robert Kyncl has backed those calls.
“Name, image likeness, and voice should have the same protections as copyright and the same simple protections as copyright, but it will take time,” said Kyncl during his appearance at the Code conference this week, according to TechCrunch.
“I believe it will get there, but it will take time. And in the meantime, we’ll work with the distribution platforms collaboratively to run ahead of that.”
Earlier this week, we reported on news that politicians in the US are preparing to introduce a bill that would create a federal [US-wide] right of publicity to address this issue. Currently, some US states have such a right, but others do not.
Kyncl returned to a previous theme: that the challenges posed by generative AI have many parallels with user-generated content (UGC) in the past – challenges he was dealing with in his previous role at YouTube.
“There’s a very clear analogy to user-generated content — we have a blueprint for this,” said Kyncl this week. “We built a multibillion-dollar business, which now is a multibillion-dollar business per year.”
“It was an incredible revenue stream for everyone. AI is that, with new super tools. We need to approach it with the same thoughtfulness and we have to make sure that artists have a choice.”
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…