The world's biggest music publisher has sent letters to Google, Microsoft and OpenAI demanding to know whether they used its songs to develop artificial intelligence (AI) systems. .
Sony Music, which represents artists such as Beyoncé and Adele, is prohibiting anyone from training, developing or monetizing the AI using their songs without permission.
In a letter sent to more than 700 firms, Sony Music said it had “reason to believe” that audiences “may have already made unauthorized uses” of its music.
The BBC has contacted Google, Microsoft and OpenAI for comment.
Sony Music has given the firms a deadline to respond and has said it will enforce its copyright “to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law”, such as the EU's upcoming AI Act.
Trained on AI
Sony Music's complaint is part of a larger debate that has been ongoing since the emergence of this latest generation of AI-powered tools: What data were they trained on, and did they get permission to use it?
For example, a chatbot can “learn” to respond in a certain writing style by being shown billions of books, while a photo-making tool can be fed millions of existing photos.
Similar software exists to create music – Sony Music's complaint is that it is only able to do so after being exposed to millions of songs, some of which it owns the copyright to.
Both Google and OpenAI have developed AI tools that can produce music – although it's not known what data they used to train them.
No copies.
In a letter spanning several pages of demands, Sony Music asks each of the hundreds of addressees to send it:
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Details of his songs were used to train the AI system.
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How the song was accessed – such as through online streaming services
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The number of copies of songs made, whether copies still exist, and how long they have been around.
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Why was it necessary for such copies to exist as long as they did – assuming they existed in the first place?
He said in the letter that a copy can contain only a portion of a song – and that he is open to licensing agreements for future use.
But it's unclear whether any of the contacted AI firms trained their tech on music owned by Sony Music — and even if they did, whether any laws were actually broken.
In both the EU and the US, there are questions about whether training AI tools on such content is copyright infringement, or whether it falls under fair use and “temporary copying” exceptions.
Nana Novachko, a lawyer at AI ethics firm Saidot, said training AI models with copyrighted music “could lead to copyright infringement” under current EU laws.
It said there are “exceptions” for businesses with “legal access” to music, as long as it's either in the public domain and not behind a paywall, or is licensed for AI training.
But the upcoming EU AI Act will change that.
“The legislation will mandate that all general-purpose AI models … must comply with strict documentation and transparency requirements,” he said.
“This includes an obligation to publicly disclose detailed summaries of the training data used, to comply with the opt-out of copyright holders, and to ensure that all data use complies with EU copyright laws. Is.”
The issue will be tested in court in the U.S. in several legal cases representing the likes of Game of Thrones author George RR Martin, comedian Sarah Silverman, and the New York Times.
Meanwhile, on the music side, Sony Music rival Universal Music has taken legal action against Entrofik in the US, claiming the AI firm has infringed its copyright on hundreds of song lyrics. .