What the AI Drake Song Means for Music

have you heard the new AI Drake song it's  pretty convincing so much so that umg has had it removed from multiple streaming services  except as it stands legally right now this song should be able to be on streaming services the AI  Music Revolution is here and the music industry is never going to be the same again okay but how  specifically what kinds of things can you do with AI now what can you do with it soon how did we  get here and how do we get out one thing's for sure it's going to get a

lot worse before it gets  better look I'm not inherently against AI tools I did a soquarians video last year and I used an AI  image generator to make some Renaissance paintings of a few moments of recent music history the  results weren't good but it was interesting but that was almost a year ago and it's come so  far since then since then we've had the release of chat GPT it can write lyrics second right  chord progressions even if it's not that great imagine what it can do in a year and then

we got  AI generated voices using AI you can make pretty much anybody say sing or rap whatever you want  early examples of this are like the Drake beans and chili song or AI covers where like an artist  like Kanye sings Hey There Delilah they're mostly silly they're just a little bit of fun it kind  of reminds me of remember the auto tune the news it's kind of like that it's everywhere there's  a ton of them it's mostly funny mostly harmless and also not that valuable and then came the  Roberto

Nixon Kanye AI video basically he took a Kanye type beat off of YouTube recorded his own  vocal ran it through a Kanye AI generator and the result is very convincing if you listen really  closely and you know Kanye you can tell it's not him but on the surface it sounds pretty good  what's so interesting about this to me is Kanye has had a hell of a year to put it lightly and  in this verse Roberto's basically making Kanye not so much apologize but admit fault in the  situation but that's exactl

y what we need from Kanye he is basically an apology over a classic  fire Kanye beat except this isn't real Kanye is not actually involved in this at all but also  this song was made just to demonstrate what AI could do and then very recently the song heart on  my sleeve by Drake featuring The Weekend came out except it's not Drake or the weekend there's  also a Metro Boomin tag on that too but he's not involved either it's all AI processed voices  part of my sleep was released by ghostwriter977

and while the weekend voice is just okay the Drake  voice is very good it's so good that Drake's label umg is trying to squash it this song was first  removed from Spotify and apple music followed by YouTube and Tick Tock and granted there's been  re-uploads but those will probably be taken down as well but here's where this gets so interesting  and so I mean terrifying legally speaking heart on my sleeve should be able to be on Spotify  so the way the copyright works is that you the copyright

holder hold the right to make copies  of the song I mean hence the name right so like if I took a real Drake song and put it in this  video YouTube's Content ID system would catch it flag it and then monetize it and then send the  royalties to Drake or I guess via UNG right they could also choose to just ban it completely and  make my video not visible that's their right as the cop threat holder I make a copy of it they  say that's not right and they take it down or monetize it right that's what

they do and this  is how umg is justifying these takedowns it's copyright infringement except that it's not it's  a brand new song new music new lyrics new chords and it just happens to sound I mean exactly like  Drake but the way the law stands now this is not copyright infringement and the real problem  here is the impersonation I mean how do you know if it's a real Drake or if it's an AI drink  if only there was a system to verify who is real online and who is not maybe like a check mark  yo

u can make it blue except you can just buy blue check marks now and they're meaningless  and Google themselves are caught in the middle of this they've argued that even though their  Search Assistant Bard is trained on copyrighted material this qualifies as fair use so anything  that AI generates would be something new and therefore not subject to copyright but at the  same time they just took it on YouTube because umg is claiming that this is a copyright issue  and here's the thing this AI Drak

e song is not just about this one song this is just the tip  of the awful dystopian nightmare we're about to enter into using AI generated voices here's what  you could do I'm not saying you should do this but let's be honest someone is probably already  working on this right now instead of releasing a full song as Drake you could release a new song  under your own artist name featuring Drake then maybe I'm a second verse Drake comes in of course  it's an AI you get a boost of credibility becaus

e Drake is on your song but no one really knows if  it's him or not or you could under parody law make a new artist named fake Drake and it's all AI  but then it's parody songs of Drake songs this would be completely legal under parity law oh  if you want to get really meta you could make a Weird Al AI just call it weird AI it looks like Al  and then it's AI Weird Al versions of other songs legally no one could stop you also you could  just make a straight up AI cover of the song that sounds exa

ctly the same why would you want  to do this well let's talk about mechanical licensing if I want to record a cover of someone  else's song I have to get a mechanical license this is an already established system so that  I can make money but then also the original songwriter makes money and crucially the original  Artisan songwriter cannot deny me that mechanical license so imagine this I re-record a Rihanna  song I remake the instruments either myself or with AI then I get AI Rihanna to sing o

ver the  top of it and make it sound exactly the same and then I list it on Spotify as Rihanna what would  start to happen is some people would come across it thinking that it's the original Rihanna  song even though it's not it's technically an AI cover that I made therefore I would be  getting a cut of the money Brianna would be getting less and The Listener would have no idea  that it's not the actual song and I know maybe that seems far-fetched but that's absolutely  going to happen right no

w there are songs Spotify called Alexa play some music if there  is a loophole people will exploit it and then there's sampling if you want to sample someone's  music there's no system set up you have to go to them directly and ask how much of this song do you  want to take and they could say 50 75 a hundred percent or if you can't clear the sample you could  re-record it slap a mechanical license on it as a cover sample that and then they can't stop you uh  take the Kanye song All Falls Down or

iginally he wanted to sample Lauren Hill but he couldn't clear  the sample so he had Selena Johnson re-record it now though he could just use a Lauryn Hill AI  voice pay mechanical licensing fees which are less and have something that sounds just like  you're on the record even though she said no now all of the artists I just mentioned are very  big but if you're talking about small artists this is where it gets really frightening if you're a  small artist with a unique voice someone could hypot

hetically hear your voice go oh I want that  then make an AI version of it effectively stealing your voice little mermaid style then they could  slap their own artist name on it make new music with your voice on it and you couldn't do anything  about it and so I know you might be thinking oh but they couldn't perform live with my voice why  not if the technology is this good now and we can do auto-tune live right now you think in two  years We're not gonna be able to do this I mean we even have

live deep fake videos so it looks  like Simon Cowell is singing live on stage even though he's not so hypothetically someone could  steal your voice little mermaid style then steal your face face off style and perform to a cheering  Arena of fans as you no one can really see you on the stage so they're gonna look at the monitor it  looks exactly like you it sounds exactly like you what are you gonna do you got a little mermaid I  don't I don't know that's weird I mean now we're talking straight

up identity theft but this  is not a joke Jim you could legally do this I mean if not right now in like a year or two  all right the last one's a little extreme but this stuff is coming we gotta figure this out  where do we go from here how do we fix this I see two possible scenarios so some people argue  you should be able to copyright your own voice so only the real you that sounds like you should  be able to release music but even that starts to get tricky I mean these AI models are trained o

n  copyrighted material sure but so are musicians this is a learned process opera singers don't just  come out of the womb sounding like that you don't see little like toddler jazz singers running  around being like Oh that's not a thing you send to stuff you love you try and emulate  that and then you roll that into something new that's what musicians do so you're saying if  my singing voice sounds a little too much like Michael McDonald I'm gonna get sued I don't think  that's a path we want t

o go down the other option here is strict limits on the use of AI voices like  this Drake voice like if you're a human you can do whatever you want but if it's AI That's Not Gonna  Fly right now it's the wild west out there there is legally nothing to prevent that dystopian  Little Mermaid Face-Off situation we laid out a second ago but if we put limits on these AI tools  especially things like these AI voices I mean new laws are going to have to be written we can calm  us down a little bit in t

he last year it feels like they were just like hey let's open up the  AI fire hose and now everything is soaking wet maybe let's turn the hose down just a little and  dry off and decide whether or not we want to live in Water World look I'm not inherently anti-ai  but I am against it when it comes to replacing things that are very human you're face your voice  your creative expression these are human aspects of life so sure let's use AI as a tool to help I  don't know automate spreadsheets or co

me up with interesting ideas for things but let's not use it  to replace things that are quintessentially human like art and creative expression because otherwise  we're going to end up in that dystopian Little Mermaid Face-Off Water World situation let me know  what you think about all this in the comments and then go watch this video because it was made  not with AI you know the old-fashioned way