At first, YouTube videos look like scenes from the popular Nickelodeon cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
SpongeBob, the cheerful yellow character of the title, appears outside a pineapple-shaped house, and SpongeBob's grumpy boss, Mr. Krabs, is in his Krusty Krab restaurant. But unlike the show, the characters in the video aren't singing upbeat songs about life in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Instead, they rap about drugs and guns.
The mastermind behind rap is an artist named Grove. Their music has been streamed millions of times on his Spotify and YouTube, and he appears to use artificial intelligence to recreate the voices of the iconic characters.
As AI tools continue to rapidly evolve, it's become easier for artists like Glorb to use generative AI to create music and become successful in their own right. But experts focused on AI and music said questions around copyright and ownership remain as a new era of technology dawns in the music industry.
“This opens up so many possibilities for people who essentially have a fanfiction version of a song because they like the artist,” said Josh Antonuccio, associate professor and director of the School of Media Arts. he said. He studied at Ohio University's Scripps College of Communication.
The SpongeBob SquarePants-inspired truck has become an online sensation for Grove, whose identity has been kept anonymous. On Spotify, Glorb averages just under 1 million monthly listeners, and her most popular song, “The Bottom 2,” has racked up more than 11 million streams for her. The artist's music videos featuring character models from the show also racked up millions of views on YouTube.
A SpongeBob character model appears in Glorb's animated music video “EUGENE” by ThrillDaWill.Glorb / ThrillDaWill via YouTube.
Mr. Grove, who declined to be interviewed, is not publicly affiliated with Nickelodeon. A spokeswoman for the Paramount-owned network did not respond to a request for comment. Representatives for YouTube and Spotify also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The music industry could see a huge influx of artists using some form of AI, especially as technology continues to advance, said Tracy Chan, CEO of generative company Splash. AI music company. Already, generative AI music programs like Suno, which allows users to enter prompts and generate songs based on text suggestions, have been hailed as his ChatGPT for music.
“I think it's important that we, as an industry, figure out how we balance creating more content. That's ultimately a good thing, but we're doing so. It also gives people some kind of reward. It's like source material, so to speak,” Chan said.
read more
Grove isn't the first to use this technology to create original music. In some cases, major artists are involved in AI representation of their work. In June, Paul McCartney announced that the Beatles would release their final record, Now and Then, which used AI technology to extract the voice of the late John Lennon. Singer Grimes, an AI advocate, has released elf.tech, a platform that allows artists to use his AI replication of Grimes' voice in their music. Terms of the deal include that Grimes will receive a cut of the royalties earned from her music, including AI versions of her voice.
However, there have been instances where AI-generated music using artists' works has raised concerns from those in the music industry.
In April 2023, an artist named Ghostwriter made headlines with his track “Heart on My Sleeve,” which used AI voice replications of rapper Drake and singer The Weeknd. The song was quickly removed from several platforms, including his YouTube, with the message “Due to copyright infringement claims by Universal Music Group, this video is no longer available.”
Shortly before Ghostwriter's songs hit the internet, UMG (no relation to NBC News' parent company, NBCUniversal) told the streaming service that its AI programs use copyrighted music to train itself. They requested that it be prohibited.
Recommendation
“We have a moral and commercial responsibility to artists to prevent unauthorized use of their music and to work to prevent platforms from incorporating content that violates the rights of artists and other creators. ” states UMG. Three of the world's biggest music companies said in a statement to the Financial Times: “We anticipate that our platform partners will want to prevent their services from being used in ways that harm artists.”
Part of the problem stems from the fact that music streaming platforms have few tools to detect and track how much AI music is included on their apps, Chan said.
There's an extreme generative remix culture out there, and we're just starting to get into it.
— Josh Antonuccio, Dean of Media Arts Studies, Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University
He compared traditionally created music to a fingerprint. The streaming platform can compare other songs to its fingerprint, and once a matching track is found, the upload can be evaluated and removed if necessary. Music generated by AI has no such virtual fingerprint. Therefore, it becomes very difficult to track and delete. Zhang said it's difficult to know how much music is out there because the technology to track AI music uploaded to various platforms is limited.
“You have to believe that it exists, but again, has it reached mass consumption? Probably not yet,” he said. “Because I think once it impacts the culture, so to speak, a lot of rights holders, like labels, are going to come there.” [will] Take action against those platforms and ask them to remove them. ”
Lawmakers have already begun considering ways to regulate the audio of AI-generated music.
Last month, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed the Portrait Rights, Sound and Image Security Act, also known as the ELVIS Act. The law, which claims to be the first of its kind, “[s] Lee's office said in a January news release that it builds on existing state rules that prevent unauthorized use of someone's likeness by adding “voice” to the scope of protection.
Many people in the industry Including Recording Academy and Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kinklepraised the bill.
read more
Antonuccio, an associate professor at Ohio University, said the wave of technology-enabled music should both excite and terrify the industry and consumers. Even if more laws are introduced, Antonuccio said attempts to curb the tsunami of content that uses generated AI voices will remain. Almost impossible.
“There’s an extreme generative remix culture that we’re just starting to get into,” he said. “And I think there are some exciting parts to that, but frankly I think there's a lot that we should all be concerned about about that.”