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AI cannibals eat into $26 billion music market
Growth of AI music poses competition for human artists on streaming platforms.
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What's worrying is the extent to which AI music is overwhelmingly cannibalising, not feeding, the human artists on which it was trained without compensation, says the writer.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH
Lionel Laurent
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The song Echoes Of Tomorrow is a laid-back, catchy tune that might happily slot into summertime playlists on Spotify or Apple Music. Only the lyrics, which make curious references to “algorithms”, reveal its non-human creator: artificial intelligence (AI).
The track’s mimicry of flesh-and-blood pop is pretty unsettling. Yet, what’s really disturbing is the sheer quantity of similar AI tunes sloshing around online. Tools like Udio and Suno, trained on millions of songs crafted by human artists, are now churning out millions of their own tunes at the click of a button.
