Who Will Own Copyright Tomorrow? RIAA, A2IM, Recording Academy Hit Back at ‘Falsehoods Asserted by AI Companies’

The American Association of Independent Music, the Recording Academy, and the Recording Industry Association of America hit back at falsehoods asserted by AI companies in recent court filings.

In response to the United States Copyright Office as part of the ongoing discussion around and inquiry into “Artificial Intelligence and Copyright,” the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), the Recording Academy, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) hit back at false “binary choice” and other unsubstantiated claims asserted by AI companies in recent filings.

Together, the organizations asked the Copyright Office to reject “the false and dangerous dichotomy posed by some of the tech companies and their supporters (…) suggesting that humanity and, by extension, the Office and Congress, is faced with a binary choice to either reap all the benefits that AI promises or respect the long-established legal rights of human creators.”

“There is no reason that implementations of AI cannot both reach their full potential and protect and respect the rights of creators at the same time. In fact, the application of a clear and predictable legal framework to AI is likely to foster, rather than hinder, its development by eliminating legal and business uncertainty; limiting the risk of litigation; and, most important, ensuring that our society continues investing in human creativity.”

“(The first principle) of copyright is to promote human creative endeavors,” the music organizations added, responding to AI companies’ claims that copying of creative works in the training of AI constitutes fair use.

“That purpose is served by protecting human creators from having their works used to develop generative AI models that threaten to displace human creators by producing outputs that do not embody human creativity while supplanting works of human creativity in the marketplace. Such uses will rarely, if ever, be fair uses.”

The filing urges “support for federal legislation that creates a uniform, nationwide baseline to ensure that AI systems cannot unfairly exploit artists’ expression, creative contributions, voices, and likenesses without their consent.”

Legislation which seeks to protect against AI voice cloning and deepfakes is currently under consideration in the United States Senate, with similar legislation expected to be introduced shortly in the House of Representatives.

These companies jointly ask:

• Reaffirm that only works of human authorship are entitled to copyright protection, not synthetic content output by an AI system based on prompts.
• Support non-copyright legislation that creates mandatory record keeping and disclosure standards so that copyright owners will have access to the data they need to enforce their rights.
• Support legislation to create an administrative subpoena process, as well as evidentiary presumption to acquire such records.
• Support market-based licensing solutions and reject government-driven approaches such as statutory or extended collective licensing for AI developers.
• Oppose any proposed text and data mining exceptions for AI.