Faced with the success of musical creations generated by artificial intelligence, South Korea is considering regulations

Thanks to programs based on artificial intelligence, we can, for example, have Ariana Grande sing Edith Piaf’s greatest hits. These very popular creations raise in South Korea the legal headache of such creations, unauthorized by the protagonists.

The question currently being asked in South Korea is that of the legal rights surrounding the productions of the Sorisori site. This site offers to have an artist you love sing a song originally performed by another person. You can therefore create an album of covers in your living room, directly on your computer.

The process is quite simple. In exchange for a monthly subscription, of around 10 euros per month, it is possible to extract the voice of an artist from a song and apply it to a song that he has never sung. If we attack the voice of Barry White, the program will not only isolate his voice, but also learn, with artificial intelligence, to sing, speak and murmur like him. Then, you indicate the title of the song you want him to sing and the program does the mixing automatically.

The problem of publication which is a public broadcast

This creation can then be published on a social network.This is where the legal problem arises. The artists and production houses did not authorize these transformations. This are therefore illicit productions. If it’s for your personal use there are no major problems but if you’re streaming these pieces it poses a problem.

A large number of these titles created by Sorisori can be found on Instagram or on a YouTube channel called Spot-AI-Fy, a portmanteau name mixing Spotify, the major music platform, and AI which means artificial intelligence in English. Currently, there are 280 songs on this channel, some of which are very popular, where fans have made Ariana Grande sing K-Pop. The channel defends itself by recalling that it does not sell the titles broadcast and presents them as artistic creations. But she still makes money, since her channel accumulates millions of views and therefore income paid by YouTube.

Artists therefore need to protect their rights and their works. The organization that manages artists’ rights in South Korea, the local SACEM, is calling for special legislation to better protect the original creations of the country’s singers. The Korean government will propose new regulations in the coming days, which should better regulate the use of artificial intelligence in the music industry.