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YouTube is in talks with record companies to license their songs to artificial intelligence tools that clone popular artists’ music, hoping to win over an industry skeptical of upfront payments.
The Google-owned video site needs to tag content to legally train AI song generators as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The company has recently offered large sums of money to the majors — Sony, Warner and Universal — to try to convince more artists to allow their music to be used in training the AI software, according to several people at informed about the talks.
However, many artists remain fiercely opposed to AI music generation, fearing it could undermine the value of their work. Any move by a label to force their stars into such a scheme would be extremely controversial.
“The industry is struggling with this. Technically the companies have the copyright, but we have to think about how to play it,” said one executive at a major music company. “We don’t want to be seen as Luddites.”
YouTube last year began testing an AI generator tool that allows people to create short music clips by entering a text message. The product, originally called “Dream Track”, was created to imitate the sounds and lyrics of popular singers.
But only 10 artists agreed to participate in the testing phase, including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and John Legend, and the Dream Track was only made available to a small group of creators.
YouTube wants to sign up “dozens” of artists to launch a new AI song generator this year, two of the people said.
YouTube said: “We’re not looking to expand Dream Track, but we’re in conversations with labels about other experiments.”
YouTube is seeking new deals at a time when AI companies like OpenAI are reaching licensing deals with media groups to train large language models, the systems that power AI products like the ChatGPT chatbot. Some of those deals are worth tens of millions of dollars to media companies, insiders say.
The deals that would be negotiated in music would be different. They would not be blanket licenses but would apply to a select group of artists, according to people briefed on the discussions.
It will be up to the labels to encourage their artists to participate in the new projects. This means that the final amounts that YouTube may be willing to pay labels are at this stage undetermined.
The deals will look more like one-time payments from social media companies like Meta or Snap to entertainment groups for access to their music, rather than the royalty-based deals the labels have with Spotify or Apple, these people said.
YouTube’s new AI tool, which is unlikely to carry the Dream Track brand, could be part of YouTube’s Shorts platform, which competes with TikTok. Talks are ongoing and the terms of the deal could still change, the people said.
YouTube’s latest move comes after major recording companies sued two artificial intelligence startups, Suno and Udio, on Monday, which they claim are illegally using copyrighted recordings to train their AI models. A music industry group is seeking “up to $150,000 per infringed work,” according to the filings.
After facing the threat of extinction following the rise of Napster in the 2000s, music companies are trying to get ahead of the disruptive technology this time around. Labels are keen to get involved with licensed products that use AI to create songs using their music copyrights – and get paid for it.
Sony Music, which did not participate in the first phase of YouTube’s artificial intelligence experiment, is in negotiations with the tech group to make some of its music available for the new tools, a person familiar with the matter said. matter. Warner and Universal, whose artists participated in the test phase, are also in talks with YouTube about expanding the product, these people said.
In April, more than 200 musicians including Billie Eilish and Frank Sinatra’s estate signed an open letter.
“Unchecked, AI will set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it,” the letter said.
YouTube added: “We’re always testing new ideas and learning from our experiments; it is an important part of our innovation process. We will continue on this path with AI and music as we build for the future.”