AI Amps up Trouble for the Music Industry
K-pop superstars Blackpink scooped up the Best Metaverse Performance at the 2022 MTV European Music Awards last November. The all-singing all-prancing K-pop quartet “graciously accepted the award with a pre-recorded video,” according to hypebae.com.
At least Blackpink — with Thai sensation Lalisa Manoban as one of the lissome four — are real people. Eternity, the brainchild of South Korean TV screenwriter Park Jieun, consists of 11 “virtual characters...non-humans, hyper-real avatars made with artificial intelligence.”
No humans allowed
There's no one home at Eternity, no one at all. And according to Park, that's a plus. "'The advantage of having virtual artists is that, while K-pop stars often struggle with physical limitations, or even mental distress because they are human beings, virtual artists can be free from these'," she told the BBC.
Does this matter to CDOs? Isn't K-pop so plasticized that it doesn't matter whether the sugary pop tunes are manufactured by humans or machines?
Maybe so. But virtual texts (music, art, writing) are game-changers in terms of copyright. Question: who owns the IP?
Deep real fakes
“Pulse9 used Deep Real AI technology which is very similar to Deep Fake technology, to create these AI Kpop Idols,” said the company. It aims to create the most realistic AI celebrities to lease their IP. Moreover, these IPs can be used by brands worldwide as virtual brand ambassadors.”
From a bottom-line perspective, it's tempting to trim costs by using AI
According to the BBC, Park currently serves as chief executive officer of Seoul-based AI graphics company Pulse9 and “says Pulse9 uses the European Union's draft ethical AI guidelines when making their avatars.”
Those guidelines are posted on the website of the European Commission. They call for “human agency and oversight: AI systems should empower human beings, allowing them to make informed decisions and fostering their fundamental rights. At the same time, proper oversight mechanisms need to be ensured, which can be achieved through human-in-the-loop, human-on-the-loop, and human-in-command approaches.”
Vet your firm's copy
Few CDOs ponder the intellectual property details of K-pop stars, either virtual or meatspace-based. But it's essential to understand the ramifications of IP within your business processes.
From a bottom-line perspective, it's tempting to trim costs by using AI to generate, for example, shareholder reports or similarly formulaic documents. But any and all copy under a specific firm's umbrella must be vetted by human eyes, preferably by an experienced sub-editor.
Putting out information that isn't aligned with your firm's goals and mission statement is less than ideal. But releasing statements that may be libelous or slanderous is hazardous to brand equity, to say the least.
AI in publishing today
The publishing industry already leverages bot-created copy. AI is used to create outlines for financial and sports stories: formulaic articles where plugging in numbers kickstart a publication's bots and create rough drafts. The drafts are then massaged by copy editors who are most assuredly human.
Take Bloomberg, for example. According to startup market research publisher State of Digital Publishing, the New York-based financial, software, data, and media company uses a content creation and management “solution called Cyborg” that “can generate thousands of articles about company earnings reports at the end of each quarter.”
“Forbes...[uses] an AI-powered CMS (Content Management System) called Bertie,” says State of Digital Publishing. “It’s an artificially intelligent publishing platform, designed specifically for the in-house newsroom of journalists, expert contributor networks, and partners.”
Fix it in the remix
Artificial intelligence will not replace human creativity any time soon, but humans have devised ways to use AI to remix pre-existing works.
In 1966, the Beatles released “Revolver,” an album described by Wikipedia as “one of the greatest and most innovative albums in the history of popular music.”
According to the BBC, “Unlike their later albums, the Beatles recorded Revolver's basic tracks direct to tape, standing in a circle, playing as a band. That made it almost impossible for future generations to separate and isolate the instruments and vocals.”
The publishing industry already leverages bot-created copy
Revamping “Revolver” revolved around producer Giles Martin's use of “machine-learning 'de-mixing' software capable of splitting up interlocked sounds” — AI-derived technology developed by film director Peter Jackson for the production of a Beatles documentary.
“Machine-learning de-mixing systems get smarter by studying fully mixed songs and comparing them to their isolated vocal and instrument tracks,” says the Vulture article. Everyone involved praises the technology, but Martin (son of legendary producer George Martin) also brought in Paul McCartney as the human-in-the-loop.
The BBC says that “the new Revolver is bristling with life, full of presence and attack.” '"People forget that it's just a young band playing in the studio," says Martin. "Everything is fairly aggressive...everything the Beatles recorded is a little bit louder than you think it is'."
Opting out
The use of AI technology to improve existing works doesn't have the IP implications of new AI creations. But creative situations can veer into new directions anytime humans are in the mix.
Singer-songwriter Mike Batt, who wrote the theme song for the 1970s television show “The Wombles,” wasn't interested in revamping the music he had created decades earlier. “'The Wombles pop group were my little furry version of The Beatles dressed up in silly costumes my mother made,” Batt told Music Radar. “'[Their recordings are] a faithful representation of what I offered to the world in 1974 and 1975.”
Batt said, “'I mixed them as I wanted them, not how some corporation or great-grandchild might like to remix them when I’m not around'.” With this in mind, the songwriter said: “'I’ve destroyed many of the original multi-track tapes for The Wombles and my solo albums...I went through the tapes and threw them in the skip.”
“Then they got taken away for landfill',” said the Wombles mastermind.
Stefan Hammond is a contributing editor to CDOTrends. Best practices, the IoT, payment gateways, robotics, and the ongoing battle against cyberpirates pique his interest. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/Evgeny Ostroushko
