Photo Credit: Vocal Remover
Major labels are turning their eye to AI-based music extractor and mixer tools popping up online.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has submitted its most recent overview of notorious markets to the U.S. Trade Representative. Most of the well-known culprits are present, from torrenting to cyberlockers. A new addition in this report is ‘AI-based’ music mixers and extractors as something to watch as an emerging threat to the industry.
“There are online services that, purportedly using artificial intelligence (AI), extract, or rather, copy, the vocals, instrumentals, or some portion of the instrumentals from a sound recording, and/or generate, master or remix a recording to be very similar to or almost as good as reference tracks by selected, well-known sound recording artists,” the RIAA’s report reads.
“To the extent these services, or their partners, are training their AI models using our members’ music, that use is unauthorized and infringes our members’ rights by making unauthorized copies of our members works,” the RIAA continues. That’s because an AI learning model needs copies of the original works to serve as a training model.
“In any event, the files these services disseminate are either unauthorized copies or unauthorized derivative works of our members’ music,” the RIAA report continues.
Some of the AI-based extractors and mixers referenced in the RIAA report include:
- acapella-extractor.com
- remove-vocals.com
- songmaster.com
TorrentFreak reached out to the owner of Songmastr and Acapella-Extractor to ask if they received any complaints from the RIAA. According to them, the music group has not contacted them with any complaints about either service. According to them, Songmastr only receives around 200 visits per day over the last year.
The RIAA is still listing several popular torrent sites, YouTube stream rippers, cyberlockers, and music download sites as avenues to watch. The addition of AI-based tools will be interesting over the next few years. Already AI-based visual art is creating a few interesting situations in terms of copyright.