You may have heard the pop sensation’s new song Drake And The Weekend Pop on social media last week.
“Heart on My Sleeve,” a song about The Weeknd’s ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez, went more viral than the song. 20 million views on TwitterAnd 11 million views on TikTok.
Only one problem – none of it was real.
song Created by an anonymous TikTok musician named Ghostwriter977 AI-generated Replicas of actors’ voices.
Universal Music Group (UMG) was not happy. The publishing company pulled the Deepfake track from all music streaming platforms on Monday. It was yanked from YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Amazon, SoundCloud, Tidal and Deezer earlier today.
In a statement, UMG said the use of generative AI in its artists’ music “represents both a breach of our contract and a violation of copyright law.”
The music publisher added that artists have a “legal and moral responsibility” to prevent their services from being used in a way that harms them.
Related: A Future Founder’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence
Legal and ethical questions arose
Using AI to copy an artist’s voice infringes on their IP, but it’s unclear whether a fake Drake song violates copyright law because the musical composition was original.
“We’re all waiting for some court decision that will tell us whether the training data is correct,” said Edward Claris, a media lawyer at Claris Law. told NBC News. “Here, they’re using all the songs that already exist to make new songs.”
He added that “the Supreme Court could decide that it’s not copyright infringement because it’s transformative … or they could say something different, like: ‘It’s copyright infringement. You can’t take people’s songs and create new ones.’ Can’t copy it to make it. Like it.'”
Aside from the song’s legalese, UMG questioned the ethics of those who created and consumed songs like “Heart on My Sleeve”.
“It begs the question of which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or the side of deep fakery, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.”