YouTube Working With Record Labels To Use Artist’s Music To Train AI Programs

Google’s YouTube is currently negotiating deals with record companies to license their songs for AI tools that clone musicians’ songs by for licensing agreements – in an industry that has heavily scrutinized AI’s intrusion into the music scene.

The Verge reported:

According to the Financial Times, the Google-owned video platform is offering to pay Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records “lump sums of cash” in exchange for licensing their songs to legally train its AI music tools.

YouTube told the Financial Times that it’s not looking to expand Dream Track — which was supported by just ten artists during its test phase — but confirmed it was “in conversations with labels about other experiments.” The platform is aiming to license music from “dozens” of artists according to the report, which will instead be used to train new AI tools that YouTube is planning to launch later this year. The fee that YouTube is willing to pay for these licenses hasn’t been disclosed, but the report says these will likely be one-off payments rather than royalty-based arrangements.

Regardless, both artists and the labels that represent them will likely take some convincing. Sony Music has extensively warned AI companies against “unauthorized use” of its content, and UMG was willing to temporarily pull its entire music catalog from TikTok after inadequate protections against AI-generated music caused licensing negotiations to fall apart…