Music artists concerned AI could cripple their income 06:20

Artificial intelligence poses a serious risk to the viability of plenty of industries. And it turns out the music business isn't immune, and there's a new report predicting that generative artificial intelligence will have a devastating impact on the music industry's future revenue streams. Just the Australian music industry get this. This report reckons it's going to cost them half a billion dollars by 2028.

And it also predicts that 82% of musos will be unable to make a living from playing music because of artificial intelligence. Now, ARIA award winner Jenny Morris, she's the chair of APRA's AMCOS, which consists of the Australasian Performing Rights Association and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Association. And they're organizations that commissioned this report. And she's on the line for us. Jenny, g'day.

G'day, how are you? I'm good, thank you. So 82% of musos unable to make a living because of AI. Can you explain to us how that'll work?

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I have to preface this by saying, you know, musicians and creators are not anti-AI. I think, you know, there are some amazing things that come out of AI. And, of course, you know, we've been using AI enhancements in music for a really long time with samples and other things. The way it's going to devastate us is by...

taking over the space that, I'm trying to find another word for human, that organically made music is made because the AI generated music is going to become so in sync with real music that it'll be very hard, and indeed it is at this point, to

show the difference and so when you are you know trying to put the food on the table for your kids and you're a jingle writer for instance or you know you're a professional songwriter that means the impact will definitely be in your back pocket

So if you're, like you said, so if you're just a, you know, you're playing guitar for a band or you're a recording artist, but you might not be the front person on that track, you're worried that it's simply what you can just dial up a guitar, you can just dial up a guitar track, you can dial up a drum solo, whatever it is, and a computer does it.

Yes, well, not only that, that really can happen as we speak, but it can also dial up a song and a vocalist to play it for you, to sing it for you, and a bunch of, you know, AI musicians, as you say. So there's a Chinese organisation that's a new one, it's a new company, and they produce only AI-generated songs.

Are they any good? Well, if you're asking me, the ones that I've heard are not good. No, they don't have that, you know, I remember the song that was playing when I had my first kiss or I remember the song that was playing when my mum passed away or they don't have that gut-wrenching, you

you know, that visceral connection to, to me. I don't know how other people feel, but, um, at this point in time, I can tell the difference just by how it makes me, you know, sure. But it's art, right? And isn't that part? So do you think that that human connection, because that's what we love about art, it's a,

It's something where humans can connect with each other. If you've got a computer being the catalyst for that connection, do you think humans might just eschew it all and just think to themselves, you know what, this isn't what I've signed up for? Well, look, as I said at the top of this conversation, we do have generative AI. That's not going to go away. And generative AI has already scraped the internet and programmed

And sucked up all of our data, all of my songs, for instance, all the data that denotes my songs have been already harvested and uploaded into very, well, who knows how many platforms. So that horse has bolted. What we want and what we're going to government for is to have...

The original data, just say it's one of my songs, she has to be loved. The original data of that song, which has been scraped up, and if it's turned up and it's now part of an AI-generated song, then I want my name on

to be mentioned i want to get some financial recompense i want to get acknowledgement that is my intellectual property and that's what you know my intellectual property from songwriting is is my superannuation process so that's all we're asking for is recognition to be paid for your work to be paid for the work and to for people you know to have

the awareness that, you know, part of this is human made. Yeah.

Jenny, I've run out of time, but I really appreciate you coming on and telling us about this because it's hard enough to make money these days being a muso, let alone having artificial intelligence take more jobs. So hopefully you're successful with it and the government comes in and does something because there's a lot of reviews and task forces and not a lot of action. I appreciate you coming on. Well, look, thank you so much for giving me a bit of airspace. I think it's really important people know about this. I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you, Jenny.

conversation thank you so much jenny have a good afternoon that's jenny morris she's the chair of apra an aria winner and a hell of a