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You’ve probably heard this about 1,000 times before, but YouTube has a major problem on its hands. People are taking AI-generated clones of music artists’ voices and making music with them. This makes listeners think that they’re listening to the actual artists. Well, YouTube is cracking down on AI musicians with a new set of strict rules, according to a new report.
We’re all still reeling from the AI-generated song “Heart On My Sleeve”, the song that used AI-generated vocals from Drake and The Weeknd. This was a bit of a wake-up call for the music world because most of the people who heard the song thought it was legitimate. Now, anyone could realistically emulate their favorite music artist and generate songs.
YouTube is cracking down on AI musicians
The company is going to be unveiling two sets of rules targeted at people posting AI-generated content. For starters, if your video uses AI content, you’ll be required to label it as such. Labels will appear within the video’s description. For content covering serious matters, the labels will appear on the actual videos themselves.
If you don’t label your content, YouTube says that the punishments will vary, but they should be similar to consequences for general violations of YouTube’s ToS. This includes video takedowns and demonetization. We’re not sure if YouTube will take down entire channels.
How will YouTube know that someone didn’t label their content? Well, even YouTube doesn’t know the answer to that question. It’s still working on tools to help it identify AI-generated content. We’re at a point where AI-generated content is so realistic that it’s almost impossible to tell the difference at times.
AI music will get a different set of rules
The company is also going to unveil a stricter set of rules that apply to AI “musicians”. These are people dumping AI-generated music onto the platform. This is something that’s really been upsetting record labels. Though this isn’t information that’s been officially stated, we can guess that record labels have put some heat on YouTube for this.
For other content, there’s the chance that it could get a pass if it’s considered to be parody or satire. In the case of music, there will be no exception. If your music is AI-generated, and it uses AI-generated versions of artists’ voices, you’re going to suffer the consequences.
Right now, this is still pretty new, so we’ll need to see how this pans out. The rules will roll out next year.