YouTube has published its first set of ‘AI Music Principles’ and launched a YouTube Music AI Incubator with artists, songwriters, and producers from Universal Music Group.
It has been laid out that UMG, alongside YouTube, that they will be exploring ways to maximise AIs upside to the music industry, whilst trying to prevent any downside. UMG Chairman Sir Lucian Grainge posted a YouTube blog that further explores these intentions.
But exactly how UMG can monetize content created using AI is still a tricky question made all the more difficult by last week’s ruling that AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted. The level of help from AI in the creative process to meet a copyright threshold is unclear at this time.
Principle #1: AI is here, and we will embrace it responsibly together with our music partners. “As generative AI unlocks ambitious new forms of creativity, YouTube and our partners across the music industry agree to build on our long collaborative history and responsibly embrace this rapidly advancing field. Our goal is to partner with the music industry to empower creativity in a way that enhances our joint pursuit of responsible innovation.”
Principle #2: AI is ushering in a new age of creative expression, but it must include appropriate protections and unlock opportunities for music partners who decide to participate. We’re continuing our strong track record of protecting the creative work of artists on YouTube. We’ve made massive investments over the years in the systems that help balance the interests of copyright holders with those of the creative community on YouTube.
Principle #3: We’ve built an industry-leading trust and safety organisation and content policies. “We will scale those to meet the challenges of AI. We spent years investing in the policies and trust and safety teams that help protect the YouTube community, and we’re also applying these safeguards to AI-generated content. Generative AI systems may amplify current challenges like trademark and copyright abuse, misinformation, spam, and more. But AI can also be used to identify this sort of content, and we’ll continue to invest in the AI-powered technology that helps us protect our community of viewers, creators, artists and songwriters–from Content ID, to policies and detection and enforcement systems that keep our platform safe behind the scenes. And we commit to scaling this work even further.”
Why Should YOU Care?
In the past few days alone, big steps have been taken concerning the future of AIs place in music making. With YouTubes ‘AI Music Principles’ a big player in the industry has now laid out a solid road map for the route forward for themselves and potentially other major DSPs.