Speaker 1: We've been talking a lot about AI on the show.
Speaker 2: Last week, we did we did our experiment with Souno
dot com where we made some tracks, and apparently it
is even easier than I could have imagined.
Speaker 3: Too easy, stupid easy. Yeah, like really really too easy.
If you didn't hear the show last week, seriously, go
back and listen to it. Yeah, we didn't give it
a ton, just some basic info and it actually spit
out some decent music. And it's concerning because how do
you know that's AI? Right, Like, you need AI to
find out that it's AI, and then what music did
they use to learn that? You're right? Yeah, nothing coming
out of AI. Didn't have a human On the other end,
they're they're taking all of the art, all of the
creations from music genres across the spectrum, from artists everywhere,
throwing that in a computer and having it spit It's
to me, it's still using other people's work. So that's
my my. There has to be a way to tell
the difference between real human creativity and AI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you go back and listen to last week's show,
you can check out some of the tracks that we created,
just with a simple prompt and what it was able
to spit out. Suno dot Com is a service and
they're actually they're free. The free version of the service
is pretty generous. They give you, you know, you can make
ten songs a month, which might not sound like a lot,
but some of these services, you know, they they try
to get you into a free trial and get you
hooked on it so then you'll be willing to pay
for it every month.
Speaker 1: But what Suno does is.
Speaker 2: The free option that they offer is actually pretty good.
But if you want to hear, so you can hear.
What we did live on the air was something we'd
wanted to get to for a while, just kind of
an experiment of creating tracks using one of these AI services,
and we created several and and of course I did
put the the mc hammer distracts because of course my
long running feud with mc hammer going back six years now,
long time listeners, we'll know the six years now. Yes
we did, uh, I did the po. We ended up
making four distracts using Souno dot com and I did
post them all on YouTube as well, so in your
face Hammer, it's yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: So people did an article recently about Celine Dion uh huh,
So the AI is crossing all gendres as far as
what it's doing. But apparently Selene Dion did an Instagram
post this past Friday. Just yesterday calling out AI and
saying that her voice has been allegedly used in an
unsanctioned way that she did not approve of. That it
sounds like it's her giving a performance, But it's not
pretty upsetting when you can consider the fact that, I mean,
for one thing, she's an amazing artist, but this woman
is going through enough right now without this on top
of it all. I mean, look, can we just say that,
because I'm really this upset me to see, of all people,
you've got to go after somebody who's literally fighting for
their life. That's pretty down and low and disgusting if
you ask me, but to quota it said, It has
come to our attention that unsanctioned AI generated music purporting
to contain Celine Dion's musical performances and names and likenesses
excuse me and name and Likeness is currently circulating online
and across various digital service providers. Please be advised that
these recordings are fake and not approved, and are not
songs from her official discography.
Speaker 2: So we should clarify this because I think I understand
you know, I only had a chance to glance at
this before, but I so because my first thought was, well,
how do you prove that her copyrighted work has been
used to train these AI models? And then I realized
that's not exactly what's happening here, right, people are creating
AI versions and claiming it is her.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, yeah, this.
Speaker 3: Is actually they're putting stuff out saying it's her, yeah,
and it's it's not by any you know, so this
so she just got blindsided by this.
Speaker 2: Well you know what this reminds me of. And this
was over a year ago, I think now that we
talked about it, somebody created on YouTube they posted an
AI version of a brand new George Carlin album. Yes,
remember we talked about that, and and that was interesting.
We actually played a little bit of it. We played
the very beginning of it on the show because I'd
already listened to it, so I knew where the first
swear was, so I knew how far, how far into
it I could play because I wanted to give people
an idea of what it sounded like and very real sound.
It did sound very real, and not only that, I
ended up listening to the entire hour. It actually was
funny too, Like it wasn't like, okay, it sounded like
his voice, but the jokes were really lame. Like I
actually laughed listening to that special Which is part of
why some people at the time were a little bit
skeptical and probably still are that because the people who
created it claimed that it was entirely AI generated, but
some people listened to it and said, hmm, yeah, the
voice maybe, but some of those jokes, there's no way
those were written by AI. Those were inserted by who
ever made it, but who knows. But yeah, you can make.
Speaker 3: Very realistic That's something that anybody can really say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you can make very realistic work with it.
Speaker 3: That's smart of what you give it. So if you
fed everything to it of George Carlin, I actually don't
doubt that it could write George Carlin jokes because it
would have learned from that. You know, it's a computer.
What you feed it, Yeah, right, all the bigga ones
and zeros.
Speaker 2: But humor is Humor is different though. That's why I'm
also I'm one of the people who is skeptical but
who knows.
Speaker 1: We'll probably never know the truth.
Speaker 3: I got you, Yeah, but I mean in April of
last year, there were over two hundred artists that got
together and created an Artist Writes Alliance, and they sign letters.
And we're trying to get people to pay attention in
saying that you know that they want they want laws
to protect them, and they want AI developers to have
some freaking morals, I think, and not steal from them,
because it really is. It's stealing somebody else's are you're
stealing theon Celene Dion's voice. That's so wrong. It's more
wrong by because of who they chose to pick on
as somebody who's literally fighting for their If you don't know,
Selene Dion has what's called stiff person syndrome. That's why
she can't perform anymore. It only does so on very
very rare occasions. It's extraordinarily painful. She suffers immense, just
chronic every day suffering that you cannot even imagine. And
that's who they pick. They steal her voice, put music
out there, claim it's her trying to make money off
of her.
Speaker 2: Well, also want to make a clear distinction in here
again going back to what's really happening in this instance,
because you know, we've had a lot of conversations about uh,
generative AI, these large learning models. You know, they suck
up all this information and all this art, all this
creativity and then spit out what they spit out. And
we've we've had conversations debating about whether that's okay or not.
But this is different in that this because this is
not there's no there's no ambiguity here, because this is
fraud if you're creating something, because you can take the
AI completely out of it. Let's let's say it's just
somebody who does a really good impression of Selene Deon
recording a song and then claiming that it is Selene Deon.
Speaker 1: That's out that's outright fraud.
Speaker 2: If you create something and then and then and you
claim it's something that it's not, that's that's fraud. That
is there's no ambiguity there.
Speaker 3: But the only differences in this instance, because it's AI,
they can make it sound just like her. It's not
just kind of like it's just like you know, because
computers can imitate everything, right, and these and what the
Artist Rights Alliance is trying to do is protect each other.
So when I'm talking about over two hundred, like really
big names signed onto this, like Billie Irish and and
She's imagine dragons, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder, a whole lot
of people, and they they're from their perspective. And I
want to give this quote because I think it's a
great quote. They said quote, Unfortunately, some platforms and developers
are employing AI to sabotage creativity and undermined artists, songwriters,
musicians and rights holders. And I think that that's a
very very perfect statement. It is sabotaging their creativity. It's
theft and fraud to steal somebody else's labors turn it
into whatever you want to turn it into. You know
that it's and you know what, Artists have enough problems
these days making money off their own music. I mean
talk about that before. What they make less than what
is it.
Speaker 1: Whatever Spotify off right, Yeah, it's not even.
Speaker 3: In the old days, you printed an album you made
your money off of in part apples sales, album sales,
and then touring. These days you're making more of your
money off of touring because you can't make as much
money off of album sales.
Speaker 2: Although although what a lot of people don't realize is
it's kind of it's it's it's uh. In terms of
trying to earn revenue from streaming, it's kind of a
worse version of what was already the model, in the
sense that you never really made that.
Speaker 1: Much off of album sales. This is something people don't know.
Speaker 2: And I've given this example before, but I remember when
I was a kid when I first started to realize,
because I was fascinated by all you know, all this stuff.
When I mean AI, we didn't have yet. But when
I was a kid, I was always very interested in
the music industry and how it works. And I remember
reading an interview with meat Loaf and he was talking
about Back Out of Hell and of course, which by
now is probably sold and it might be it may
have surpassed one hundred million at this point, but he
was talking about how he didn't really make that much money,
like he said, you know, he got like a quarter
a quarter, like twenty five cents a quarter per unit sold.
Speaker 1: Wow, you know, And but that's that's not unusual.
Speaker 3: Although music didn't get in music how to be transferred
from one person or another in an album. Yeah, for
at a cassette. You couldn't just electronically, but it.
Speaker 2: Wasn't but it wasn't as much. That's why I like
sometimes every once in a while you'll hear very successful.
I remember Kurt Cobain, you know, uh, of course he
took himself away from us very young. But I remember
when Nirvana first got really big. He made he made
a comment in an interview about you know, people think
because we're famous, we're rich, and it's it doesn't work
that way. He said, you'd be surprised how broke we are.
And TLC we've talked about that a great example. They
were triple platinum and broke. The money has always been
in touring, the big money, and now even touring is
is as that has become more cost prohibitive. Now the
money really is in merch and and of course licensing.
You know, if you license your music, say to a
for a film or a TV series or something, then
you can make a lot of money. There's always been
a lot of money in licensing and that persists.
Speaker 3: But whatny do you think they make in licensing, Like
when you're a venue having a license to be able
to have an artist come in and play certain songs
venues can't have can only have certain music that they're
license for. Do they get the artists make money off
of that or are you really something that Well, yeah,
it doesn't get them much.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get them much.
Speaker 2: I mean those performing rights organizations like as CAP and BMI. Yeah,
they're supposed to make sure that you get paid. But
but but for that it's it's yeah, we're not we're
talking about yeah, Spotify money.
Speaker 3: The bottom line, it's really hard for artists to be
able to make money. So they have AI ripping off
artists voices or you know, creating songs that they didn't
even sing. Yeah, this is this is not good and
I I mean, I do believe and I do agree
with that. I do believe that it does. They are
correct in saying it's sabotage and creativity. It's stealing creativity.
It's stealing the life's blood of an artist. You know,
whatever I put on a piece of canvas came out
of my me, right.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: You think about when I think about it that way,
it's like a musician's song is their baby, that's their soul.
You know what it actually brings up is. I know
it's slightly off, but when with Wren the artist, Wren
the rapper Rent he used a piece of music, he
spent like tune of dollars to buy it, and Kujo
another rapper or something had ownership over that piece, and
when he saw Wren made so much money, he went
and tried to sue him for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a Yeah, we never really talked about it
on the show, but yeah, that turned into quite a mess.
Speaker 3: Oh but the But if you want to hear a
really great disk track, you got to listen to Wren's
disk track on Kuja.
Speaker 2: But that wasn't even even an AI situation. It was
over a sample was created.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was trying and in in the disk track
and what he would say and what Ren would say
off airs. He's trying to steal my creativity. He's trying
to steal my creat That song was so personable and
so much of his own soul and life blood in there.
To have somebody come along and say that's not your creativity,
it's mine. From this two second whatever that he bought
and paid for to use this it's just a sound bite,
it's just a clip, not the whole song. It didn't,
you know, it's nothing like that. It's just a particular
looping sound. Yeah, And he bought and paid for it correctly.
And this guy, you know, I want money, right, I
see you making money. I want that money. Trying but
he Wren said the same thing. You're trying to steal
my creativity, my creation, and that it so if you
look at it in all these different situations, it's it is.
It's stealing the very soul, lifeblood of an artist.
Speaker 1: Yeah,