Artificial intelligence is the trending topic of the moment. With ChatGPT or the “new” Beatles song, it’s become a subject of discussion in the general public.
A recent survey by GEMA and SACEM (the German and French performance rights organisations) and the research company Goldmedia examined how creative professionals use AI and what opportunities and risks they see in it. 13% of the respondents stated that they see potential in the use of AI, 35% of respondents already use AI for their work. An interesting fact is that the number of users is increasing among respondents younger than 45. This means that almost half of the younger generation is already using AI – even though 64% of respondents believe that the risks of AI outweigh the opportunities. One concern, for example, is the fear that songwriters or composers will no longer be able to make a living from their work because of AI.
The survey shows that AI is on the rise, particularly in the creative sector – not least because of the wide range of applications for AI in music production. These two examples show the variety of ways in which AI can be used in music production:
One of last year’s headlines was the announcement of the “new” Beatles song “Now and Then”. More than 40 years after the death of John Lennon, AI has made this possible. The song was recorded by John Lennon back in 1978. Paul McCartney received the recordings from Yoko Ono in 1995 but discarded them because there was too much noise on them. The technology to remove that noise was not available at the time. It wasn’t until the release of the documentary film “The Beatles: Get Back” that McCartney decided to work on the recording again. For the film, the dialogue editor had trained an AI to recognise the Beatles’ voices and separate them from background noises and their instruments in order to create an audio signal free of interference.
Is AI-generated music protected by copyright?
For the German jurisdiction, a distinction must be made between the copyright protection of the work or composition as such and the copyright in the recording.
According to Section 2 (2) UrhG, a work is protected by copyright if it represents a personal intellectual creation. This work requires human artisic activity by an originator. In addition, a minimum of human creativity is required. Therefore, works that were created autonomously by AI, i.e. purely by machine, cannot be protected by copyright.
The legal situation in America is very similar, as can be seen in the example of the comic “Zarya of the Dawn” by the American Kris Kashtanova. This comic was illustrated with the help of the AI image generator Midjourney. Kashtanova applied to the U.S. Copyright Office for copyright protection. The Copyright Office only accepted that Kashtanova was the author of the texts, but not that she had created the images. She was therefore refused registration. The changes she had made to the images were too insignificant to be protected by copyright.
A distinction can be made between creation by AI and using AI………..
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