Artificial Intelligence is on the cusp of solving a lot of problems, and perhaps causing many more. Plagiarism is one of the big problems for artists. If an AI is being trained by work already produced, it opens all sorts of legal issues. SCOTUS isn’t helping, with somewhat conflicting rulings in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc v. Goldsmith (which ruled in favor of the the original photographer and narrowed how “fair use” is defined) and Google v. Oracle (which sided with Google’s innovative use of Oracle’s proprietary code).
AIs are creating new work using (stealing?) the styles of other artists that the AI was trained with. Litigation is already happening regarding this.
In the 90’s there were two applications (or apps in the modern vernacular) that did something sort of similar: Push Button Bach, and 1-Minute Mozart. I can’t find them currently to confirm those names, maybe you can. 1-Minute Mozart applied the dice-rolling method of composing that Mozart used to create new work in his style. These two apps were really basic tools and probably were pretty horrible copies of the composers’ style, so didn’t merit any copyright claims either real or imaginary.
Contemporary computing resources make it much easier to cross over the line into outright theft. The Frostbite Orckings are a way to avoid that.
Check out http://metalverse.world/ for more information, but for a great interview with the Metalverse team check out the Nik Nocturnal Podcast:
To overly simplify, musicians train the AI with how music is performed and composed. There are great discussions on the pros and cons of this approach. I fall on the side that this is going to require humanity upping our creative game.
—AL