And welcome to the second episode
of the Dumbest Timeline Series 2,
I wanted to tackle
something that I find fascinating.
This is easily one of my
favorite subjects when it comes to AI,
music production.
So I did say in the first episode,
one of the things I was
looking to discuss the most
was going to be AI and AI
with creatives in creative spaces.
For me,
I work in music,
for anyone who doesn't know.
And I know that there is a
world where... Because I'll
say it this way.
What I do for a living,
a lot of people believe you
could use an algorithm to do what I do.
And I've been doing my job
as a music programmer for...
seven years in my current
job before that I was a
radio host and produced my
own hip-hop music show is
it possible to just have an
algorithm or an ai generate
list yes would an ai be
able to possibly with more
information do a better job
than just an algorithm I believe so
Could an AI do a playlist
exactly the way I do one for a client?
No.
There are specific factors
that when I speak to a
brand manager and I do my job,
I take those into
consideration when I'm programming.
There are things that I
understand about culture, society,
and the industry that an AI
won't understand yet unless you teach it.
The idea is that the AI can
catch up and be faster,
but society is constantly changing.
For example, I'll give you one example.
In the scenario where an artist,
a pop artist was accused of
something and their music
was pulled from the system,
but this artist is so
famous and their content is
so popular that once a year,
some of their music is
iconic for the season and
almost always is used at
that time of year.
So I had clients that would
turn around and ask to
include that artist in
their playlist at that
specific time of year,
even though months before
we were asked to pull the
songs by that artist from their playlist.
But they got over it.
Now, sure, if they wanted to,
they could just ban the
artist in a system and then
unban the artist.
And there you go.
What I've seen on my end is this kind of
disconnect sometimes because
a lot of the times with the
brand managers and within the companies,
there's one person telling
me one thing and another
person telling me another thing.
And my job is to work with
both those people and try
and make sure everything connects.
Whereas if you have one
person dealing solely with
an AI programmer and isn't on the ball,
or I wouldn't even say it's their fault.
They have so many things going on.
Sometimes you need...
me to reach out to them to
make sure that we're still
on track for some of the
content that I have to do I
have to do seasonal
playlists I have to do
brand specific branding
things and if that person
is and a brand manager has
a lot of tasks so I don't
it's not it's not only for
them to have to do
everything and I think that
we work as a team to try
and set those goals
together and I don't see a
world where the ai is doing
that yet so when it comes to music
programming,
I still think you need a human element.
And I know, of course,
I sound biased because it's
my job and it's what I do.
But I can also speak from
literally inside the
situation to tell you, don't get me wrong,
there are definitely tasks
that the AI can do to help
make my job easier,
but I don't see it doing my
job completely.
And on top of that,
the production and creation of music,
that's the thing I want to
talk about specifically today.
So I'm going to try and keep it short.
Like I said,
I try to keep these under 20 minutes.
Ideally, the goal is 15 minutes max.
So let's get into it.
Suno and Yudio are two
programs that are used
currently in the world for
us to make music.
So I'm going to insert a
small clip of a song that someone created,
this DJ.
I'm going to put all the
information below because
I'm going to credit him.
And then I'm going to play
you a clip of a song I
created using Suno AI based
off of this person's work.
So that was the first clip.
That's the second clip.
What did you notice there?
My second clip sounds almost
identical to the first clip?
Right.
And that's a problem, isn't it?
The reason it sounds exactly
like it is because I was
able to upload the original
clip to Suno AI and ask it
to extend the song.
And it created a song based
off of a prompt I put in
where I described the original music.
And it took elements of the
original and what I asked
for with the prompt,
and it just made this new beat.
And I used the word new very
loosely because it's not a new beat.
It recreated the original beat.
And that to me seems like a problem.
It seems like a problem that
you can take a song, use Suno AI.
And yes,
I broke the rules for Suno AI to do this.
It was a test.
The reason I did it was to
show that it can be done
and that it's a problem in
my eyes that it was done so easily.
This all took me literally
two minutes to do.
I screen grabbed the
original song from this
person's Patreon that I paid for.
then uploaded the audio clip to Suno AI,
did everything I had to do, and told it,
extend the song, give me an instrumental,
and it gave me an
instrumental version of the song.
Two, maybe three minutes.
And I had a four-minute
version of the song I had already heard.
That, to me, seems problematic.
which is very interesting
because Suno AI and Yudio
are both being sued by the big three.
So I'll give you a quick summary.
A lawsuit filed against Suno
AI for copyright
infringement by the major record labels,
UMG, Capital, Sony, Atlantic,
Warner Music.
Sorry,
I'm just... Because this is a
34-page document,
so I'm trying to scan
through my notes that I have.
Suno is accused of using
copyright material to train its AI model.
Suno's AI generated music
files resembling copyrighted recordings.
The plaintiff seeks
injunctive relief damages and legal fees.
Suno's services poses a
threat to the music
industry by flooding the
market with machine generated content.
So this is what the
plaintiff is saying about Suno AI.
What legal action are the
plaintiffs seeking against
Suno for copyright infringement?
The plaintiffs are seeking
injunctive relief damages,
legal fees against Suno for
copyright infringement.
They are requesting a
declaration that Suno has
willfully infringed on
their protected sound
recordings and are seeking
equitable relief to prevent
further infringement.
Additionally,
the plaintiffs are pursuing
statutory damages or actual
damages and Suno's profits
from the infringement.
So one of the conversations
I've been having with some
of my friends with regards
to this situation is a lot
of people are saying that
Suno and Yurio will use the
idea that they are allowed
to scrape and train the AI
to create a model.
The problem is that in doing so,
Suno and Yurio turned
around and started charging
for subscriptions.
If you start charging and
making a profit and you scraped,
you shouldn't be making a profit,
first of all,
because the idea was you
scraped for training
purposes and fair use purposes,
but you can't claim fair
use and then make a profit
off of something.
And I'm sure they didn't
train their AIs on public
domain content only.
So, you know...
What are the allegations
against Suno AI and the
copyright infringement lawsuit?
The allegations against Suno
as a copyright infringement
lawsuit include Suno has
engaged in direct copyright
infringement of post-1972
copyright recordings.
Suno has copied and ingested
copyrighted sound
recordings owned by the
plaintiffs into its AI
model without authorization.
Suno product generates
digital music files that
mimic features of the
copyrighted recording,
indicating unauthorized use
for training purposes.
So that's the notes I have for Suno.
On the Yudio side,
Yudio's AI music generating
service launched in 2024 is
accused of copyright
infringement by training
its model on plaintiff sound recordings.
The plaintiffs in this one
are the same Sony and so on
on the other side.
Yudio's output, Sway With Me,
replicates Michael Bublé's Sway,
leading to legal action.
So one of the problems with Yudio,
from what I'm understanding,
is there's specifically sounds...
almost identical when people
are creating content.
Yudio, by the way,
is the service that was
used to create the original
sample for BBL Drizzy that
Metro Booming went on to make famous.
So someone used Yudio to make it.
The implication is that they
wrote the lyrics themselves
and used Yudio to make the music.
I think it's very easy to say that.
I don't know if they did.
That's not for me to decide.
I just find it interesting
that they used Udio to make that song.
And how does Udio's AI model
generate outputs that mimic
sound recordings in its training?
Udio's AI model generates
outputs that mimic sound
recording in its training
data through a process
known as overfitting.
This occurs when the model
is closely adapted to the data
it was trained on,
making it challenging to
generalize to new data sets.
As a result,
the model may replicate
portions of its training data,
leading to outputs that
closely resemble the
copyrighted recording used
during training.
This makes me think of when
everyone started making
those AI art pieces and the
AI art pieces would have
the signatures in the
bottom because everything
it was trained on would
show that artists were
signing their work and it
was including that
signature because it
understood the signature as
part of the art and not
people marking their work.
So similarly,
if you were to train this AI
on nothing but Dray Timberland beats,
you're going to notice that
even though it would create
a hybrid version,
it's going to have elements
of Timberland style and Dray style.
Suno and Yudio obviously
used all the music they
could get their hands on to
train their AIs.
And I do find Suno super interesting.
It is fun to play with.
However,
I do truly believe that the artist
should be paid for their work.
I think it's unfortunate
that we are in a situation where,
once again,
like I said in the first episode,
a very wealthy company.
Or I should say, well, I mean,
in this situation,
it really does feel like
all the big players are
fighting each other.
Because Sony, Warner,
Universal are going to end
up fighting with Suno and Yudio.
Meanwhile,
I would imagine that the music
on Bandcamp was also scraped.
because that music is available.
It's on the site.
If you have an account for
Bandcamp and you go in,
you can listen to a lot of
that music for free.
You can listen to people's songs,
like a streaming service.
So what would stop these two
companies from scraping
everything from Bandcamp?
It's very likely that they did that stuff.
But the majors are the ones
that are going to go after
them and the smaller
companies aren't
necessarily going to have
the same opportunities to
protect themselves.
So you, a young creative artist out there,
has to wait until these big
players make their calls
and play the game.
Do I think Suno and Yudio
are going to get shut down?
Not at all.
I 100% expect what happens
is some kind of deal,
some kind of arrangement
where the majors and these
two music AI creation
companies get to do whatever they want.
And I think that's unfortunate.
I hope that we see a world,
as I mentioned before,
where the creatives get more control.
But until we get there, unfortunately,
this is the situation we are in.
Once again,
this is The Dumbest Timeline Series 2 AI.
And I will be back with another one.
You guys can always check me
out at all my socials on at
Brian Holidae.
That's H-O-L-I-D-A-E.
And you can check out my other podcast,
Geek Cypha on geekcypha.com.
G-E-E-K-C-Y-P-H-A.com.
I'll be back with another one.
Peace.
The Dumbest Timeline, Series 2, AI,
hosted by Brian Holidae.
Produced by Brian Holidae
for Brian Holidae Productions.
Co-produced in partnership
with Free X Agents Media.
Theme song by Jasper Q. Jonze.
Mixing by Brian Holidae.
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