UMG orders Spotify and Apple to stop AI data scraping
April 13, 2023
Universal Music Group, one of the largest music distributors, ordered streaming services to put a stop to AI data scraping.
AI-generated songs based on UMG artists like Elton John and Taylor Swift have become increasingly common, threatening the rights of the original creators.
"We have a moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorized use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators.," a Universal Music Group spokesperson said.
Earlier, UMG filed takedown requests against the songs’ creators, but now they want such bots to be completely banned.
Spotify and Apple haven’t released a statement yet regarding UMG’s request to scrap the usage of AI for data collection.
However, if the streaming services abide by the requests, it will have direct implications for Google's MusicLM, which generates music based on a text description.
AI-based tools like GPT-4, Bard, etc. have been making waves in the market but it is yet to be seen how they are going to be regulated.