RIAA Reports AI Vocal Cloning Site 'Voicify' to the U.S. Government | Hacker News Reader

RIAA Reports AI Vocal Cloning Site 'Voicify' to the U.S. Government

torrentfreak.com

50 pointsgslin53 comments

Framing it as a "right to publicity" argument is interesting, though it invites comparison to celebrity impersonators which exist and don't seem to infringe.

A relevant opinion:

> The purpose of the portrayal in question must be examined to determine if it predominantly serves a social function valued by the protection of free speech. If the portrayal mainly serves the purpose of contributing information, which is not false or defamatory, to the public debate of political or social issues or of providing the free expression of creative talent which contributes to society’s cultural enrichment, then the portray generally will be immune from liability. If, however, the portrayal functions primarily as a means of commercial exploitation, then such immunity will not be granted.

from Estate of Presley v. Russen via https://ripl.law.uic.edu/news-stories/celebrity-impersonatio...

I think the biggest difference is that impersonators are using humanly creative acting skills, whereas this tool's model is built mechanically from the original artist's recordings.

How is what an AI does any different?

The degree of human involvement and human creativity involved is a very critical part of copyright law.

That degree generally being the fine line between "none" and "some". The simple act of holding the camera, even if you don't really know where you are pointing it, can qualify resulting images for copyright protection. But is the monkey at the zoo grabs your camera and snaps a pic, no copyright for anyone. So for an AI-generated song, a court will probably be able to hang its hat on the smallest of human input in the lyric or musical process.

You're confusing different concepts:

"qualification for copyright eligibility" (what you're referring to)

and "qualification for fair use"

and "qualification for (un)authorized use of likeness/personality"

... are all different things, with different laws, and different standards.

What is the difference between human creativity and something that looks just like human creativity?

Human authorship is legally protected and the other is not, whether that’s an AI or a bunch of monkeys on typewriters.

Aren't we all just a bunch of glorified monkeys on glorified typewriters?

Not according to the law, and that's what is being discussed?

No, to start with, humans are apes, not monkeys ;)

Sure, but is the pre-AI law still adequate? We can discuss what the law says, but we can also discuss what the law should be.

It will need to be further refined to determine more clearly how it applies when humans are transforming another human's work with AI.

But in general, the overarching concept that humans have rights and machines do not still very-much-so is applicable. With any law (not just IP), the end goal should be to protect the rights of humans in the context of how humans are human and do human things, regardless of the tools they use.

At one point in time it was unclear whether things like tape recorders were legal. This is just that, with a different technology. Eventually we'll have better case law, and we'll know exactly how we can and can't use this one to protect the rights of other humans.

This isn't about copyright though- it is about the "right to publicity", which is distinct from copyright.

edit: I just noticed in the article the RIAA mentions both copyright and the right to publicity. So perhaps the site in question violates copyright in the original recordings. My guess would be if the person was listening to a recording they had a right to and using this tech, it would not be a copyright infringement, but if they are transforming a recording and redistributing it, it would be. But if this site is doing any distribution, it might itself be found infringing.

What if there is an AI built from the best impersonators without the input of the original? What if someone goes through enough effort to even get them to agree for their voice to be used as such?

Then there's certainly no DMCA argument, but the above commenter's citation about publicity rights might still be an open question.

Impersonators are recognizable, and assuming an identical one can be found, it would require a lot of time, during which the most money would have been already squeezed from the artist repertoire. In contrast, they're probably aware that it's just a matter of time until AI technology will allow to build an identical copy with new seemingly authentic material in one day or less. They're fearing the day powerful AI can be freely used by everyone in uncontrolled way, so that piracy won't even be necessary anymore, because one could simply ask to their local AI terminal: "hey, wake me up tomorrow at 7.30 with Sinatra singing Back in the USSR, then play Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols, but sung by Amy Winehouse, while I'm having breakfast". Digital models of artists will become the new big thing that day.

If a random singer can duplicate the sound of a popular singer it's one thing; to use a process to clone the voice of that singer from the singer's own recordings is a theft of that person's unique talent. Same principle as if I took a paparazzi photo of a celebrity and sold it as portraits due to the fame of that person as opposed to using it for legitimate news purposes.

>If a random singer can duplicate the sound of a popular singer it's one thing; to use a process to clone the voice of that singer from the singer's own recordings is a theft of that person's unique talent.

in the end the outcome is the same and happens all the time in the industry. When a voice actor portraying another character for an animated series, the original actor doesn't get compensated. Cloned or exactly duplicated is indistinguishable to the outcome.

>Same principle as if I took a paparazzi photo of a celebrity and sold it as portraits due to the fame of that person and for legitimate news purposes.

Not sure I understand this. paparazzi takes photo and sells photos ? whats the issue ?

I cannot take and sell a photograph of you, capitalizing on your image and likeness, for my own profit without permission (the violation is called "conversion") unless the photos meet exceptions such as being newsworthy or just a general street photography photograph (but the people captured by street photographers aren't captured specifically for who they are but how they look in a scene and could have been anyone without changing the essential nature of the photograph).

The existence of paparazzi photography and pictures sold to tabloids makes me wonder how this could possibly be true

The trouble with using the word "theft" while making an argument about unauthorized copying is that it never holds water - does the popular singer lose their ability to sing? If not then the closest you can really get and still come across as genuine is to say they "stole" the uniqueness of their talent, rather than their unique talent itself

One time a woman stole my heart. Luckily I was able to get a transplant in time. Words can sometimes have multiple meanings.

Not legally

Well sometimes though. In the case of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act the word “unauthorized” can mean basically anything the DOJ wants to pull out of their asses and prosecute. Fortunately we have courts to remove ambiguity.

The idea of copying as theft isn’t new but I agree it’s not really the same.

yes, legally

The above comment wasn't a passage in a legal document, it's a comment on a discussion site. "IP theft" is a colloquial, non-legal term generally referring to violations to copyright law. Neither the RIAA's complaint nor the DMCA contain the word 'theft'.

Is it theft or art? I listened to some AI-generated Eminem verses and they were pretty good, but I processed it differently--more as a novelty/fan-made type of thing. The authentic version will always be better.

The they win this we can look forward to the lawsuits about human singers that sound a little too close to an RIAA artist even without AI, the way that a song can be infringing for three similar notes or even for just being in the same genre as another RIAA artist's work.

List of technologies RIAA has successfully sued out of existence:

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Someone needs to pay all those lawyers.

Kinda hard to sue a technology out of existence. The closest that comes to mind is Napster but that was a brand, not the technology per se (though it did become the legal precedent for going after illegal sharing and distribution of copyrighted music).

Aeero

Napster

But Soulseek exists.

Well fortunately most people I see making AI covers they use open source tools to do that (https://github.com/RVC-Project/Retrieval-based-Voice-Convers...)

I’m not sure what to think about this yet. This is me thinking out loud:

How does this differ from cover bands that try to sounds as much like the originals as possible? If I clone Eminem and present it as Eminem, I think that would be morally and legally wrong, but what if I marketed it as “Clone Eminem” or “Not Eminem”?

I’ve heard covers of Stairway to Heaven that you’d swear are the original. If that’s ok, what’s inherently different about this?

Cover bands are bands playing other peoples' music. That's an expected use case in our legal system, and the authors of the music are compensated as mandated by the government.

Misrepresenting who performed an audio track is exactly that, a misrepresentation of goods sold. There are laws for that.

There is nothing in law that explicitly permits what AI sites are doing with performers' music. And the sites are not compensating the imitated performers. That's just plagiarism which is already unlawful.

I agree about the misrepresentation. If it's not Drake singing, it's wrong on all levels to claim it's Drake. I'm not entertaining the idea of plagiarism. That's wrong. Don't do that.

But should it be illegal to clone Drake's voice and add it to a song I've written, as long as I don't claim it's the real Drake? I'm not so sure about that. It's generally considered acceptable to imitate a band's guitarist. Why not its lead singer? If I can record a cover of "Sweet Child of Mine" with a guitarist who can perfectly copy Slash, is it wrong to do the same with an AI who can copy Axl? It kind of feels different, but intellectually I'm not convinced.

Will they do a China style internet and attempt to lock it down to only approved websites? The cat is out of the bag and there is no stopping it. Personally I welcome this technology. Just this morning I listened to Drake and The Weekend with my kids it’s an okay song. My bet is we will see Drake and The Weekend actually perform this song live. I suggest they find a way to embrace this.

I have always wondered if some percentage of dead-air-calls are actually some system gathering a bunch of voice samples to sell as a data product. This fear is definitely born from playing UPLINK.

I stopped speaking first when answering the phone to unknown numbers a couple of years ago, out of fear of identity theft via some bank's shitty voice ID system, or a more believable version of the "Honey my phone was stolen and I'm stuck send money" scam

corporations weaponinzing the government to hold back progress. nothing new here.

That seems a somewhat extreme take. Do you feel the same about copyright? Should I be able to record someone else speaking or singing and sell it?

Yes and yes. It's not an unpopular take on HN.

There are endless viable monetization strategies in a copyright free world.

A use-case that my kids would love would be something like: "Siri, please play Smell like Teens spirit in the voice of Barry White". Presumably it's just a matter of figuring out a scheme to figure out how to allocate revenue, such as is currently done with radio, streaming, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the rush these past few years to purchase big artists catalogs could be related to this.

Just wait until their beloved talent's voice is shot from years of singing, drinking, smoking, etc. and they want a new album. Maybe they'll want to revisit their stance on this and use the tech to keep pumping out those hits that they need to survive on as a leech.

Nothing in their complaint would preclude the artist from using the technology.

Good. It should be settled at some point legally what the courts feel about AI and this is a very relevant case. I'm tired of armchair techbros acting like they're the judge of the imaginary court in their head

Is it just me or is RIAA arguing that voices are copyrightable?

The poop has left the chute.

There are so many comments here that act like recording industry is like 2 scummy lawyers and an evil executive with a too-sharp goatee. But the truth here is that it's an absolutely massive 100 year old industry that has asked and answered this question and pretty much every other one in this thread through contracts, courts, and tradition. Their investment, as a whole, is making cool music and getting it to people while supporting the livelihood of artists (and captial).

This new wave of sophisticated content generation is raising some new questions, which is something that happens all the time (see the rise digital sampling and hip-hop in the 1980's), and as always the industry is trying to sort out how best to answer those questions in the context of what's already been established. And of course there's power jockeying as well because open questions are always an opportunity for somebody to either seize or secure a stake in whatever's coming.

This action is mostly about public "folk" outside the industry being able to too easily cloud and exploit brands by viralizing "Eminem's Rap for the Russian Empire" -- these brands have a lot of value in being particular and controlled and people's livelihoods are involved. The industry is just working to figure it out and (in some cases) trying to stomp on the breaks so they have time to do so.

That's not saying that RIAA is faultless, or that some of the power plays they'll make and that others make won't be transparent and scummy, but there's a lot of legitamate complexity here that people seem deeply invested in ignoring rather than learning about.

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