Universal Music, Google negotiate to team up on fighting 'deepfake'

Alphabet's Google and Universal Music are in talks to license artists' voices and melodies for artificial intelligence-generated songs, Financial Times has reported, citing four people familiar with the matter.

The music industry is grappling with "deepfake" songs, made using generative AI, that mimic artists' voices, often without their consent.

The goal behind the talks is to develop a tool for fans to create tracks legitimately and pay the owners of the copyrights for them, the report said, adding the artists would have a chance to opt into the process.

The music industry, the report added, spent years battling with YouTube over copyright infringement, but the two sides established a system that now pays the music industry about $2 billion a year for these user-generated videos.

Discussions between Google and Universal Music are at an early stage and no product launch is imminent, while Warner Music is also in talks with Google about a product, the report added.

The companies did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Dangers of AI

At a recent Comic-Con event, voice actors of popular animations and video games warned against the dangers of AI.

"I have children. There are things I don't want my voice to say and have my children hear and question if that is something that I have actually said," said Cissy Jones, of the animated TV series "The Owl House."

The founder of the National Association of Voice Actors also shared a story of a voice actor who worked for a company for three years, but abruptly lost their work.

"They said, 'we have three years of your voice – we're just going to create an AI synthetic voice out what we already have,'" Friedlander said.