Two weeks ago, the record company Hallwood Media signed a contract with Telisha “Nikki” Jones after negotiations, which allegedly covered the offer of $ 3 million, Billboard Reported. Jones is a highway based in Mississippi standing behind the artist R&B “Xania Monet”, whose most popular song on Spotify has approached 1 million listensand whose reels regularly 100,000 Instagram views -Tomimo her similarities, vocals and music are generated by AI.
Many copyright experts talking to The Verge They were quite clear: the law is not established at all, but in general you cannot independently generated by AI works protected by copyright without human intervention, but you can be able to secure copyright in which there are expressive elements that are texts in this case. So what exactly does Hallwood media buy? What can they licended? What does this mean for the future of music as a product for sale? The more questions, the more obvious it became that we are in the face of a cultural change after the flood of content generated by AI. The law is simply trying to keep up.
Although the final amount of payment of the record agreement is unclear, it seems quite obvious-but not clearly marked-that the avatar coin on Instagram and covers album is generated AI. If you look closely at her films, sometimes you can even see her fingers.
“Well, why do I pay for this if you don’t have copyright claims?”
On the other hand, the music of the coin is somewhat passing, probably due to the huge amount of material in which the AI model was trained. Jones prompted music to the AI Suno music generator, one of the two popular AI music generators, which is currently sued by the trio of the main record labels for the alleged “mass” copyright violations. In response to the claim in 2024, Suno Confirmed in a court assembly to operate the music found on the Internet to train your model.
Jones’s manager, Romel Murphy, claims that other companies from the label withdrew from Jones after learning that Suno was used to create songs. When asked about the possibility of infringement of copyright, the manager of Jones, Murphy, addressed the question to his lawyer who refused The VergeA request for comment.
Hallwood media seems to be in a doubtful position. Although the record agreement means that coins are potentially a product earning money, the current protection of copyright potentially includes only expression elements produced by man, which, if we know, are only Jones’s texts. If the expressive elements not made by man, the ability to copyright of the rest of the music-composition and full sound recording that include vocals-are not subject to copyright, if it is completely generated by Suno.
Lack of copyright protection does not stop anyone from selling his art or music, said Kevin Madigan, SVP Politics and Government Affairs at Copyright Alliance The Verge. They may simply not have a way to enforce a claim for copyright if someone breaks music and uses it, for example, in advertising.
An experienced buyer who knows about copyright, will ask why he should buy something when they can get it for free, Madigan said, “well, why do I pay you for this if you don’t have copyright claims?”
The Apple Music Monet Profile is attributed to vocals, engineering and production, while Jones is attributed to the highway. (Apple Music and Spotify did not respond to requests for comment.) But the loans themselves are not one -off – to enforce their own rights through court disputes, it is often a key registration of copyright. No copyright registrations appear in an online database in the American author’s office under the names “Telisha Jones” or “Xania Monet”.
Nora Scheland, a public specialist for author’s affairs, repeated The Verge that only human authorship can be granted copyright protection. In the case of work assisted by AI, only human elements can be registered on the protection of copyright, and today more than a thousand works have been protected by copyright. The office does not comment on specific claims or original matters, but according to his The latest tips Issued in January, encouraging the AI system does not give people authorship. Keith Kupferschmid, general director of Copyright Alliance, he said The Verge The same: “If a man did it, he is protected, if AI did it, it is not. I mean, this is the final line.”
We are in the era of “restless” law regarding the protection of copyright.
In the case of coins, music Is Apparently, leaving the AI system, which, if it is true, means that music would not be protected by copyright. It leaves the lyrics. Record companies generally sign the songwriter’s agreements. Murphy directed questions about the details of the contract to Hallwood Media that did not answer The VergeMany requests for comment.
Similarly, Murphy did not determine whether Jones sang at all before using the Suno template, which “You Put on Your Voice” to generate songs with its texts. Murphy claims that artificial intelligence is another tool available to musicians, such as Autotune: “uses artificial intelligence as a tool to which it was to be used.”
But Autotune and AI are a “false comparison,” said George Howard, a music business professor at Berklee College of Music, he said The Verge. He said that autotune is much more similar to a elementary reverb. Howard said that the key problem related to AI music generators is training data used to create AI models on platforms such as Suno.
Howard said that we were in the era of “restless” law regarding the protection of copyright. Congress draws attention to the fears of copyright holders regarding AI models feeding their work. Senator Peter Welch in July He introduced the invoice Enabling the owners of copyright access to the training data of AI models to check if their work is used.
“They suspect efforts, but you always have to remember that the law delays culture,” said Howard. “Because technology moves faster than the law can accommodate, there is such a delay between the set law and technology, and that’s where we are there.”