It's a watershed moment for musicians.

A.

Song that would have taken years to make can now be generated in just a few minutes using artificial intelligence. Tech giants like Google, YouTube, and Sony are launching AI tools that allow anyone to generate music based on a text prompt. But how does AI generate music? The technology is trained on a huge number of existing songs. Some artists have agreed for their work to be used, but there has been an influx of AI generators that are thought to have scraped music without the creator's consent. Many tech companies argue that training AI models on copyrighted works doesn't infringe rights because it's fair use. One composer and former leader of Stability AI's audio team resigned because he didn't agree with this thinking.

This position is essentially we can train these generative AI models on whatever we want to, and we can do that without consent from the rights holders, from the people who actually created that content, who owned that content.

Stability AI's Chief Executive, Ahmed Mostak, says Fairuse supports creative development. Tom Spay, a singer-songwriter from London, is concerned about how a flood of AI-generated music could affect emerging artists.

Something that I might have spent years or months working on could just go out the window like that, really. And I think that is scary. And also with your livelihood as well, the more that the market is saturated, the less you're going to get.

Seen and heard. Others have embraced AI to help with inspiration. For the Grammy-dominated producer Aaron Horne.

Ai.

Has helped his creative process.

Really, some of the cool stuff that I've had out of AI, some of the generative AI plugins that will make sounds or drumbeats or synth lines and trying to generate novel sounds and then use them in my production.

Musicians through the ages have embraced technology, whether that's in using autotune to manipulate their voices or digital production tools to sample and repurpose music. In some ways, generative AI is.

No different. But to.

Make sure that artists are benefiting and not suffering as a result of the technology, campaigners are calling for regulations to be put in place to protect them.

When artists work is used in these models, those artists have to be credited and compensated if they have given their consent.

Ai has the potential to transform music for the better. But if we play it wrong, it could be a threat to the work of human creators. Artinne Chippen, Skye News.