9 ms·

how did you create this without committing grand theft musica

zaptrem 2y ago
In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. If the above is true we might as well shutdown OpenAI and delete all LLM weights while we're at it, losing massive value to humanity.
- wryoak 2y ago
  I’m skeptical about how much value AI art is going to really contribute to humanity but as a lifelong opponent of copyright I have to roll my eyes when I see people arguing against it on behalf of real artists, all of whom are thieves in the best case and imitators in the worst.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    Yeah every musician has a story of writing a new song, bringing it to the band, and they say "oh, this sounds just like [song]." It's almost impossible to make something truly novel.
    - dleeftink 2y ago
      > almost impossible to make something truly novel But beyond the originality !== novelty discussion, I'm not sure how we've come to equate 'creativity' (and the rights to retaining it) to a sort of fingerprint encoding one's work. As if a band, artist or creator should stick to a certain brand once invented, and we can sufficiently capture that brand in dense legalese or increasingly, stylistic prompts. How many of today's artists just 'riffing' off existing motifs will remain, if the end result of their creative endeavours will be absorbed into generative tools in some manner? What's the incentive for indies to distribute digitally, beyond the guarantee their works will provide the (auditory) fingerprints for the next content generation system?
    - naltroc 2y ago
      I have written and performed many songs over many bands. At no point did anybody compare my work to any other artist's work, because it is genuinely unique.
      - slater- 2y ago
        Citation needed. Where can I hear some of your work?
      - bongodongobob 2y ago
        Let's hear it.
      - slater- 2y ago
        This is you, right? https://cmahoney.bandcamp.com/track/deck-the-halls https://cmahoney.bandcamp.com/track/deck-the-halls
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    The problem is that techbro corporates trying to make megabucks of profit off of using other people's art. Intellectual property laws for thee but not for me, I guess.
- Xelynega 2y ago
  Megacorporations owning copyrights to the majority of IPs(music, games, etc.) is a capitalism/monopoly problem. How does getting rid of copyright and allowing your company to profit off other peoples work in any way solve that issue?
- gazebo64 2y ago
  The difference being that a musician being influenced by other musicians still has to work to develop the skills necessary to distill those influences into a final product, and colors that output with their own subjective experiences and taste. This feels like a conveniently naive interpretation to justify stealing artists' work and using it to create derivative generative slop. The final line in your comment is pretty telling of how seriously you take this issue (which is near-universally decried by artists) -- some other massive company is doing a bad thing, so why shouldn't I? edit: I have to add how disingenuous I find calling out corporations owning "all of humanity's musical knowledge and history" as if generative AI music trained on unlicensed work from artists is somehow a moral good. At least the contracts artists make with these corporations are consensual and have the potential to yield the artist some benefit which is more than you can say for these gen-AI music apps.
  - zaptrem 2y ago
    I don't see how the amount of work that went into it changes the core fact that all art is influenced by that which came before, and we don't call that stealing (unless you truly believe that "all art is theft"). My point re: LLMs wasn't meant to exclusively be a "they're doing it" one, the hope was to give an example of something many people would agree is super useful and valuable (I work much faster and learned so much more in college thanks to LLMs) that would be impossible in the proposed strict interpretation of copyright. edit responding to your edit: Re: moral good: I think that bringing the sum of human musical knowledge to anybody who cares to try for free is a moral good. Music production software costs >$200 and studios cost thousands and majoring in music costs hundreds of thousands, but we can make getting started so much easier. Is it really consent for those artists signing to labels when only three companies have total control of all music consumption and production for the mass market? To be clear, artists absolutely have a right to benefit from reproduction of their recordings. I just don't think anyone should have rights to the knowledge built into those creations since in most cases it wasn't theirs to begin with (if their right to this knowledge were affirmed, every new song someone creates could hypothetically have a konga line of lawyer teams clamoring for "their cut" of that chord progression/instrument sample/effect/lyrical theme/style).
- braebo 2y ago
  It’s intellectual property laundering. A company selling a button that launders the blood sweat and tears of generations of artists is not the same as a person being inspired and dedicating themselves to mastery. Humans create value. AI consumes and commoditizes that value, stealing it from the people and selling it back to their customers. It’s unethical and will be detrimental in the long run. All profit should be distributed to all artists in the training set.
  - unraveller 2y ago
    It won't be detriment to consumers who ultimately decide the value. If I could AI gen a better tasting cocacola for cheaper that would be beneficial to consumers and coke wouldn't deserve a cut. Get gud, as they say.
- code_for_monkey 2y ago
  no one can actually explain the value OpenAI adds to humanity. What massive loss? What have we gained from this entity other than another billionaire riding a hype cycle?
- relaxing 2y ago
  > In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I beg of you, speak to some real life musicians. A human composing or improvising is not choosing notes based on a set of probabilities derived from all the music they’ve heard in their life. > I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. Your impoverished worldview of music as an artistic endeavor is depressing. Humanity’s musical knowledge extends far beyond the big 3. > If the above is true we might as well shutdown OpenAI and delete all LLM weights while we're at it Now we’re talking. > losing massive value to humanity. Nothing of value would be lost. In fact it would refund massive value to humanity that was stolen by generative AI.
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
The first 80s song I heard was a literal copy of Phil Collins. But there are no emotions attached to it (for me), and the lyrics are random. It’s more like supermarket background music IMHO, not something I would pay for, especially when we have centuries of music to discover already, why make fake stuff like that? Edit: I have just heard the funniest most ridiculous metal song ever without a touch of metal inside. Breathe of Death, it’s like a bad joke. If thats the future of anything, I’m going back to plain C (code) when I retire and I’ll never approach the internet ever again.
lexandstuff 2y ago
These high-quality music models require pirating many, many terabytes of music. Torrents are the main way to do it, but they likely scraped sites like Bandcamp, Soundcloud and YouTube. AI music is a weird business model. They hope that there's enough money peddling music slop after paying off the labels (and maybe eventually the independent music platforms) whose music you stole. Meanwhile, not even Spotify can figure out how to be reliably profitable, serving music people want to hear.

In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. If the above is true we might as well shutdown OpenAI and delete all LLM weights while we're at it, losing massive value to humanity.

wryoak 2y ago
I’m skeptical about how much value AI art is going to really contribute to humanity but as a lifelong opponent of copyright I have to roll my eyes when I see people arguing against it on behalf of real artists, all of whom are thieves in the best case and imitators in the worst.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Yeah every musician has a story of writing a new song, bringing it to the band, and they say "oh, this sounds just like [song]." It's almost impossible to make something truly novel.
  - dleeftink 2y ago
    > almost impossible to make something truly novel But beyond the originality !== novelty discussion, I'm not sure how we've come to equate 'creativity' (and the rights to retaining it) to a sort of fingerprint encoding one's work. As if a band, artist or creator should stick to a certain brand once invented, and we can sufficiently capture that brand in dense legalese or increasingly, stylistic prompts. How many of today's artists just 'riffing' off existing motifs will remain, if the end result of their creative endeavours will be absorbed into generative tools in some manner? What's the incentive for indies to distribute digitally, beyond the guarantee their works will provide the (auditory) fingerprints for the next content generation system?
  - naltroc 2y ago
    I have written and performed many songs over many bands. At no point did anybody compare my work to any other artist's work, because it is genuinely unique.
    - slater- 2y ago
      Citation needed. Where can I hear some of your work?
    - bongodongobob 2y ago
      Let's hear it.
    - slater- 2y ago
      This is you, right? https://cmahoney.bandcamp.com/track/deck-the-halls https://cmahoney.bandcamp.com/track/deck-the-halls
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  The problem is that techbro corporates trying to make megabucks of profit off of using other people's art. Intellectual property laws for thee but not for me, I guess.
Xelynega 2y ago
Megacorporations owning copyrights to the majority of IPs(music, games, etc.) is a capitalism/monopoly problem. How does getting rid of copyright and allowing your company to profit off other peoples work in any way solve that issue?
gazebo64 2y ago
The difference being that a musician being influenced by other musicians still has to work to develop the skills necessary to distill those influences into a final product, and colors that output with their own subjective experiences and taste. This feels like a conveniently naive interpretation to justify stealing artists' work and using it to create derivative generative slop. The final line in your comment is pretty telling of how seriously you take this issue (which is near-universally decried by artists) -- some other massive company is doing a bad thing, so why shouldn't I? edit: I have to add how disingenuous I find calling out corporations owning "all of humanity's musical knowledge and history" as if generative AI music trained on unlicensed work from artists is somehow a moral good. At least the contracts artists make with these corporations are consensual and have the potential to yield the artist some benefit which is more than you can say for these gen-AI music apps.
- zaptrem 2y ago
  I don't see how the amount of work that went into it changes the core fact that all art is influenced by that which came before, and we don't call that stealing (unless you truly believe that "all art is theft"). My point re: LLMs wasn't meant to exclusively be a "they're doing it" one, the hope was to give an example of something many people would agree is super useful and valuable (I work much faster and learned so much more in college thanks to LLMs) that would be impossible in the proposed strict interpretation of copyright. edit responding to your edit: Re: moral good: I think that bringing the sum of human musical knowledge to anybody who cares to try for free is a moral good. Music production software costs >$200 and studios cost thousands and majoring in music costs hundreds of thousands, but we can make getting started so much easier. Is it really consent for those artists signing to labels when only three companies have total control of all music consumption and production for the mass market? To be clear, artists absolutely have a right to benefit from reproduction of their recordings. I just don't think anyone should have rights to the knowledge built into those creations since in most cases it wasn't theirs to begin with (if their right to this knowledge were affirmed, every new song someone creates could hypothetically have a konga line of lawyer teams clamoring for "their cut" of that chord progression/instrument sample/effect/lyrical theme/style).
braebo 2y ago
It’s intellectual property laundering. A company selling a button that launders the blood sweat and tears of generations of artists is not the same as a person being inspired and dedicating themselves to mastery. Humans create value. AI consumes and commoditizes that value, stealing it from the people and selling it back to their customers. It’s unethical and will be detrimental in the long run. All profit should be distributed to all artists in the training set.
- unraveller 2y ago
  It won't be detriment to consumers who ultimately decide the value. If I could AI gen a better tasting cocacola for cheaper that would be beneficial to consumers and coke wouldn't deserve a cut. Get gud, as they say.
code_for_monkey 2y ago
no one can actually explain the value OpenAI adds to humanity. What massive loss? What have we gained from this entity other than another billionaire riding a hype cycle?
relaxing 2y ago
> In my opinion training on all music is no more theft than Taylor Swift listening to the radio growing up (as long as we don't regurgitate existing songs which would be bad and useless anyway). I beg of you, speak to some real life musicians. A human composing or improvising is not choosing notes based on a set of probabilities derived from all the music they’ve heard in their life. > I think an alternative legal interpretation where all of humanity's musical knowledge and history are controlled by three megacorporations (UMG/Sony/Warner) would be kinda depressing. Your impoverished worldview of music as an artistic endeavor is depressing. Humanity’s musical knowledge extends far beyond the big 3. > If the above is true we might as well shutdown OpenAI and delete all LLM weights while we're at it Now we’re talking. > losing massive value to humanity. Nothing of value would be lost. In fact it would refund massive value to humanity that was stolen by generative AI.

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago

The first 80s song I heard was a literal copy of Phil Collins. But there are no emotions attached to it (for me), and the lyrics are random. It’s more like supermarket background music IMHO, not something I would pay for, especially when we have centuries of music to discover already, why make fake stuff like that? Edit: I have just heard the funniest most ridiculous metal song ever without a touch of metal inside. Breathe of Death, it’s like a bad joke. If thats the future of anything, I’m going back to plain C (code) when I retire and I’ll never approach the internet ever again.

lexandstuff 2y ago

These high-quality music models require pirating many, many terabytes of music. Torrents are the main way to do it, but they likely scraped sites like Bandcamp, Soundcloud and YouTube. AI music is a weird business model. They hope that there's enough money peddling music slop after paying off the labels (and maybe eventually the independent music platforms) whose music you stole. Meanwhile, not even Spotify can figure out how to be reliably profitable, serving music people want to hear.