Murray Wood: A special Grey Cup edition of who's hot... and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week, Wood is pre...
by Anja Karadeglija
OTTAWA — On Nov. 1, Xania Monet appeared for the first time on the Adult R&B Billboard chart. One week later, the song Walk my Walk by Breaking Rust topped Billboard’s country digital song sales chart.
While both performers look and sound human, they’re not. Both are generated by artificial intelligence.
Monet was the first AI-generated artist to debut on a Billboard airplay chart.
For human artists, it is immense cause for concern.
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“I’m seeing increasingly people are scared and they’re angry and they are upset about what’s happening here,” Arun Chaturvedi, president of the Songwriters’ Association of Canada, said in an interview when asked about the reaction to AI-generated artists.
“As it was, 100,000 songs are being uploaded to Spotify a day from human creators, and now that just is increasing exponentially with this sort of AI slop, which is making it even harder for artists to gain traction.”
Musicians aren’t the only artists who are worried. The House of Commons Heritage committee on Monday will begin drafting a report after completing hearings for a study on AI and the creative sector earlier this month.
MPs on the committee heard from groups and unions representing creative industries, including music, publishing and TV and movie production.
AI-generated content is only possible because AI systems ingest massive amounts of existing content. Creative groups take issue with AI’s use of copyright-protected works without permission and want to establish a licensing system covering such use.
A group representing Canadian publishers pointed out that not even the prime minister is immune from AI competition.
John Illingworth, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers, said during an appearance at the committee there has been a “deluge” of low-quality, AI-generated books on the big distribution platforms.
“An Amazon.ca search for ‘Mark Carney biography,’ for example, brings up a slew of purported biographies of our prime minister. Many have AI-generated cover art and some rank higher in search results than his own Value(s),” Illingworth said, referring to Carney’s book published in 2021.
“The average consumer has no means of distinguishing a properly researched book from incoherent slop until they buy it,” he added.
AI seen as a threat to artists’s livelihood
Victoria Shen, executive director at the Writers Guild of Canada, told the MPs generative AI is “trained on the work of artists and creators and now threatens their livelihood.”
Tania Kontoyanni, chair of the board at the Union des Artistes, said artists have been feeding a beast that now threatens to devour them.
Wyatt Tessari L’Allié, founder and executive director at AI Governance and Safety Canada, said platforms like Spotify and Google are already flooded with AI content — and that’s only the beginning.
“Within a few years, when we will likely have high-quality customized AI content available on demand at very low cost, we could easily be in a situation where over 90 per cent of what Canadians see on their platforms is AI-generated,” he said.
The CEO of Disney indicated this week that the Disney+ streaming platform could allow users to generate their own content.
The creative industry groups aren’t asking the government to try to stop their AI competition. They want the government to require transparency from AI companies so they can see when their works are being used, which would help move toward a licensing system.
“Transparency in terms of the ingestion of works into the training of a system is critical for artists to actually know what’s being used and what they’re able to license,” Access Copyright’s legal counsel Erin Finlay told MPs.
“Without that information, artists are left completely in the cold. Should I license? Can I license? Is it being used? I don’t know.”
Lisa Broadfoot, vice-president of industry and business affairs at the Canadian Media Producers Association, said the group “supports the development of a vibrant licensing market where producers and other rights holders can freely negotiate for the use of their intellectual property for AI training and other uses.”
The question of how copyright law addresses the use of copyrighted works for training AI is currently in front of the courts in both Canada and the United States. Creative industry groups urged MPs not to add new exceptions to the Copyright Act that would benefit the AI companies.
The question of whether to add a new text and data mining exception to the legislation was one of the issues the Department of Heritage considered in a consultation two years ago. The tech industry is in favour of the exception, which would apply to the use of material for training.
Michael Geist, Canada research chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, told the committee that AI development will move out of the country if Canada makes it more difficult or expensive to develop the technology.
“It’s therefore essential to ensure that our copyright frameworks are globally competitive,” he said.
“That’s why we need copyright laws that continue to strike the balance through effective fair dealing rules and, given the use of text and data mining exceptions elsewhere, including the EU, the appropriate exceptions that position Canada as receptive to AI opportunities.”
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