On March 17, Rolling Stone published an article featuring a song called “Soul of the Machine.” Sounding like blues of the early 20th century, the “voice” sings the lyric, “I’m just a soul trapped inside this circuitry.” Naturally, the whole work—music, lyrics, guitar playing, and singing—was produced by artificial intelligence. As writer Brian Hiatt describes, a simple prompt, “solo acoustic ...

Last week, Tennessee passed the ELVIS Act to expand its statutory right of publicity (ROP) law to include voice as a protected aspect of an individual’s “likeness.” In response to artificial intelligence enabling more precise replication of specific, human sounding voices, it is little surprise that the music powerhouse state has taken swift action to explicitly include voice among the ...

If it can be difficult to keep up with artists’ rights in the news, that goes double for music. Fortunately, there are some incredible artists who devote as much energy and passion to rights advocacy as they to do making music—and among those individuals is Blake Morgan. Singer/songwriter, recording artist, indie label owner, and producer, Blake epitomizes the hard-working, middle-class ...

I met Bill Westwood last year when he contacted me to very kindly ask if I would like to speak to the Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) about copyright and artificial intelligence. I was aware of medical illustration as a specialized field but didn’t know much about it until I drove up to Albany to visit Westwood at his studio. ...

When Internet Archive lost resoundingly in the Hachette (book publishers) case, the court rejected its cockamamie legal theory called controlled digital lending (CDL). Then, when a group of record labels (UMG et al.) filed suit against IA for infringing reproduction, distribution, and performance of sound recordings, I wrote at the time that there’s no way IA has an unfounded theory ...

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