Artist and producer Will.i.am has expressed his concerns over AI in music, questioning how the rights to his songs are protected, but not his own face or voice.
He hasn’t been opposed to all things futuristic in the past. His work in the Black Eyed Peas blazed a trail for the use of modern music technology in the ‘00s, with albums such as THE E.N.D (2009) being an example. But he is, however, concerned over the impact of AI.
Speaking on SiriusXM, he explained how in his belief, the music industry as a whole is actually split into three industries – touring, publishing and recording. He then went on to say he predicts a fourth industry is coming due to the rise in AI, which instead of protecting the musicians and artists, will protect the family of them.
“We all have voices, and everyone’s compromised because there are no rights or ownership to your facial math or your voice frequency.”
He warned how people could potentially use the voice of artists to and pretend to be them to phone family or friends. He added: “You’re getting a FaceTime or a Zoom call and because there’s no intelligence on the call, there’s nothing to authenticate an AI call or a person call.
“That’s the urgent thing, protecting our facial math. I am my face math. I don’t own that. I own the rights to I Got A Feeling, I own the rights to the songs I wrote, but I don’t own the rights to my face or my voice? Get the fuck outta here bro.”
Although he said the technology is “amazing” he believes that with this level of tech should come new regulations which are yet to be implemented.
