Post by @cwebber@social.coop

Spotify and UMG strike a deal: users can pay extra to make their own "AI remixes" of licensed artists https://www.billboard.com/pro/spotify-and-umg-strike-licensing-deal-for-ai-covers-remixes/

And so. What does this mean for FOSS?

What a question! What do I mean even?

Well what does it mean for projects which have accepted AIgen patches? UMG and spotify are going to want to make sure that users *have to* pay a premium for such a service. And so what do you think they're going to push for, copyright-wise?

That's right, if they can make a legal case that the slurry of inputs *can* result in copyrighted output, well...

What does that mean for AIgen patches applied to FOSS projects? What legal terms, from their slurry of inputs, carry forward? What about attribution, a requirement in even the most permissive of most FOSS licenses? To say nothing of copyleft, and also code released without a license, etc.

FOSS projects welcoming AIgen patches may be sitting on a ticking time bomb.

Billboard

Spotify and UMG Announce Licensing Deal to Allow for AI Covers and Remixes

Spotify and UMG striked a licensing deal that allows for AI covers and remixes on the streaming platform.

Drew Crecente (they/them)

@crecente@games.ngo · 3 hours ago

@cwebber

“Therefore, artists and rightsholders will choose if and how to participate to ensure the use of AI tools aligns with the values of the people behind the music.”

Can't imagine many #artists will opt-in -- it will only be those who've purchased rights to the music who are likely to engage in this space.

... Curious if moral rights arguably might apply if a musician is opposed to a rightsholder offering that musician's music to be #AI sloppified?

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 4 hours ago

We don't know what the courts will rule, what laws will pass. But we know what the incentives of Disney, the RIAA, have on the copyrighted *inputs* side.

And what about those running the models? What about them?

They might have a harder case, people bring up the monkey with a camera case, but this is a risk also. OpenAI's CFO explicitly said in an interview that it would like to pull a Unity, and suddenly upend the situation customers have come to expect and get a licensing cut of every piece of profit assisted by them. https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-cfo-sarah-friar-future-revenue-sources-2026-1

The problem with all this is that the legal area is *uncertain*. And it's even more uncertain because it will be ages before there is *international consensus* on how to handle these things.

Business Insider

OpenAI's CFO laid out new revenue sources to fund all that compute

CFO Sarah Friar outlines OpenAI's evolving strategy, highlighting expanded partnerships, subscription tiers, and outcome-based royalties.

Billy Smith

@BillySmith@social.coop · 2 hours ago

@cwebber

And will they pass that money on to all of the people whose work was stolen to create the training data?