After years of work, the SGA - along with Outside Counsel Charles
Sanders and the ACG Advocacy Group - are seeing progress in their
attempts to protect songwriting as a career in the age of artificial
intelligence.
"The SGA and its allies are very grateful to the Biden-Harris
administration for their work in addressing the dangers inherent in AI
technology - especially for creatives," said Rick Carnes.
Like many in creative roles, songwriters stand to lose earnings to AI
creations while AI, itself, uses creators' songs to train itself. Unlike
other creatives, though, songwriting as a career has already been hit
by technological advancements that grew faster than laws could catch up
with them.
Major music piracy nearly wiped out the music business
beginning in the 90s (read: Napster and other massive, illegal
downloading services). Streaming services then dealt a double-tap to
songwriters by paying less than promised (if at all), while copyright
rates floundered and failed to keep up with the cost of living. Should
AI technology be allowed to supplant songwriters, it could mean the end
of songwriting as a career path.
However, some good news came on Monday, October 30, when the
Biden-Harris Administration issued an Executive Order to establish "Safe,
Secure and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence" standards for the U.S.
Though the Order is wide-sweeping, it does speak to intellectual
property rights and copyright protections that are so inherent to
songwriters and their efforts to make a living from their craft. You can
view the text of the Executive Order here. But, if you want the
abbreviated version, here are some excerpts from the Order that apply to
songwriters:
"This effort requires... tackling novel intellectual property (IP)
questions and other problems to protect inventors and creators."
And another: "In the workplace itself, AI should not be deployed
in ways that undermine rights, worsen job quality, encourage undue
worker surveillance, lessen market competition, introduce new health and
safety risks, or cause harmful labor-force disruptions."
Definitions in the Executive Order also show a willingness to identify,
for example, songs created by a songwriter and those created by AI. The
Order cites: "The term “synthetic content” means information, such as
images, videos, audio clips, and text, that has been significantly
modified or generated by algorithms, including by AI." The Order goes on
to define: "The term “watermarking” means the act of embedding
information, which is typically difficult to remove, into outputs
created by AI — including into outputs such as photos, videos, audio
clips, or text — for the purposes of verifying the authenticity of the
output or the identity or characteristics of its provenance,
modifications, or conveyance."
Finally, The Order addresses specific issues of importance to songwriters including:
