• A group of 200-plus musicians have signed an open letter citing concerns over the use of AI in music generation.
• They have asked Generative AI companies to create tools responsibly as it threatens their livelihoods.
• The open letter, however, is missing the signature of one artist that moves the needle more than any other at the moment.

The Artist Rights Alliance recently shared an open letter which featured the signature of more than 200 musicians focusing on the proliferation of tools made for AI-generated music.

This has proved a contentious topic in the past year, with AI-generated music finding its way onto popular platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok, along with the likes of Adobe releasing specific tools to create music that sounds like other musicians.

Naturally this poses a threat to real-life musicians whose skills and creativity are being leveraged by generative AI platforms without the artists seeing a single cent.

The open letter is therefore urging generative AI firms like OpenAI to develop and release their tools to the world in a responsible manner.

“When used irresponsibly, AI poses enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, our identities, our music and our livelihoods… Some of the biggest and most powerful companies are, without permission, using our work to train AI models… For many working musicians, artists and songwriters who are just trying to make ends meet, this would be catastrophic,” the open letter posits.

It features the “signatures” of many major artists operating in the industry today, including Billie Eilish, Imagine Dragons, Jon Bon Jovi, Kacey Musgraves, Katy Perry, Mac DeMarco, Nicki Minaj, Pearl Jam, Sheryl Crow, Zayn Malik, and others, but it is crucially missing one signature in particular – Taylor Swift.

If her most recent Eras world tour has shown anything, it is that Swift moves the needle on issues outside of the world of music more than any other artist. As such, having her signature feature on this irresponsible AI open letter would carry significant weight.

Over the past year, Swift’s performances have seen the economies of some cities and towns improve dramatically, along with the NFL benefitting from her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

Swift has also had to deal with AI of late too, forcing X (formerly Twitter) to change its policies when AI-generated nudes of the artist surfaced on its platform. What is even more impressive is that Swift did not actually directly speak on the matter, but her influence proved so large that it compelled Musk and co. to act.

While this open letter on irresponsible AI is well founded, without the weight of a Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, it simply will not become an important enough topic for the average person.

With AI-generated music seemingly going nowhere, it is likely that Swift will speak her piece on the subject, especially given how hard she has fought when it comes to ownership of her master recordings.

[Image – Photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash]