Meta and Universal Music Group announced Monday that it was expanding their multi-year music licensing agreement that would enable users to share songs from the music library of UMG across Meta's platforms without infringing on copyright.
Most importantly, though, the new deal mentions that both parties are discussing "unauthorized AI-generated content." That is another way of saying that the AI system is scraping songs, many of which have not been cleared by the copyright owners. Artists and songwriters are increasingly struggling with AI fakes and having their work used by AI companies to train their models.
He added, "We're excited to continue working collaboratively to avoid the influence of unauthorized AI-generated compositions from impacting artists and songwriters, thereby enabling UMG to better protect them now and into the future.".
The partnership comes at a time when the company is fresh from a fall out with UMG early in the year after the record label removed its music catalog from the short-form video application. In a February statement, UMG had flagged up its concerns over AI and online safety on the platform. The two firms settled their differences in May with the music of artists like Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift returning to TikTok.
The new deal arrives in the aftermath of an AI-related lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (which represents UMG and other major labels) against music generation startups Udio and Suno. The lawsuit alleges that the two companies trained their AI models using copyrighted music. Last week, Sudo publicly admitted to using copyrighted songs but claimed that it was legal under fair use.
According to its site, Meta says it approached AI music in an ethically responsible manner and has only generated and released a few generative AI models trained on "Meta-owned and specifically licensed music." But according to TechCrunch's Kyle Wiggers, Meta has acknowledged AudioCraft might be used for malicious reasons, such as to deepfake someone's voice.
It's the first time users of the popular messaging service, WhatsApp, can share songs owned by UMG as licensed. Also included in this release are Threads, Meta-owned social networking app, a direct competitor of X from Twitter.
Meta first teamed up with UMG back in 2017. During that time, it was a major music company for the first time which granted permission to the users of Facebook to upload and share videos containing its tracks from its music library.