Matt Connarton Unleashed: Celine Dion vs. AI

0:00 Speaker 1: We've been talking a lot about AI on the show.

0:02 Speaker 2: Last week, we did we did our experiment with Souno dot com where we made some tracks, and apparently it is even easier than I could have imagined.

0:14 Speaker 3: Too easy, stupid easy. Yeah, like really really too easy. If you didn't hear the show last week, seriously, go back and listen to it. Yeah, we didn't give it a ton, just some basic info and it actually spit out some decent music. And it's concerning because how do you know that's AI? Right, Like, you need AI to find out that it's AI, and then what music did they use to learn that? You're right? Yeah, nothing coming out of AI. Didn't have a human On the other end, they're they're taking all of the art, all of the creations from music genres across the spectrum, from artists everywhere, throwing that in a computer and having it spit It's to me, it's still using other people's work.

1:05 Speaker 3: So that's my my. There has to be a way to tell the difference between real human creativity and AI.

1:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, if you go back and listen to last week's show, you can check out some of the tracks that we created, just with a simple prompt and what it was able to spit out. Suno dot Com is a service and they're actually they're free. The free version of the service is pretty generous. They give you, you know, you can make ten songs a month, which might not sound like a lot, but some of these services, you know, they they try to get you into a free trial and get you hooked on it so then you'll be willing to pay for it every month.

1:41 Speaker 1: But what Suno does is.

1:42 Speaker 2: The free option that they offer is actually pretty good. But if you want to hear, so you can hear. What we did live on the air was something we'd wanted to get to for a while, just kind of an experiment of creating tracks using one of these AI services, and we created several and and of course I did put the the mc hammer distracts because of course my long running feud with mc hammer going back six years now, long time listeners, we'll know the six years now. Yes we did, uh, I did the po. We ended up making four distracts using Souno dot com and I did post them all on YouTube as well, so in your face Hammer, it's yeah, that's right.

2:25 Speaker 3: So people did an article recently about Celine Dion uh huh, So the AI is crossing all gendres as far as what it's doing. But apparently Selene Dion did an Instagram post this past Friday. Just yesterday calling out AI and saying that her voice has been allegedly used in an unsanctioned way that she did not approve of. That it sounds like it's her giving a performance, But it's not pretty upsetting when you can consider the fact that, I mean, for one thing, she's an amazing artist, but this woman is going through enough right now without this on top of it all.

3:07 Speaker 3: I mean, look, can we just say that, because I'm really this upset me to see, of all people, you've got to go after somebody who's literally fighting for their life. That's pretty down and low and disgusting if you ask me, but to quota it said, It has come to our attention that unsanctioned AI generated music purporting to contain Celine Dion's musical performances and names and likenesses excuse me and name and Likeness is currently circulating online and across various digital service providers.

3:42 Speaker 3: Please be advised that these recordings are fake and not approved, and are not songs from her official discography.

3:50 Speaker 2: So we should clarify this because I think I understand you know, I only had a chance to glance at this before, but I so because my first thought was, well, how do you prove that her copyrighted work has been used to train these AI models? And then I realized that's not exactly what's happening here, right, people are creating AI versions and claiming it is her.

4:11 Speaker 1: Yes, okay, yeah, this.

4:12 Speaker 3: Is actually they're putting stuff out saying it's her, yeah, and it's it's not by any you know, so this so she just got blindsided by this.

4:20 Speaker 2: Well you know what this reminds me of. And this was over a year ago, I think now that we talked about it, somebody created on YouTube they posted an AI version of a brand new George Carlin album. Yes, remember we talked about that, and and that was interesting. We actually played a little bit of it. We played the very beginning of it on the show because I'd already listened to it, so I knew where the first swear was, so I knew how far, how far into it I could play because I wanted to give people an idea of what it sounded like and very real sound.

4:47 Speaker 2: It did sound very real, and not only that, I ended up listening to the entire hour. It actually was funny too, Like it wasn't like, okay, it sounded like his voice, but the jokes were really lame. Like I actually laughed listening to that special Which is part of why some people at the time were a little bit skeptical and probably still are that because the people who created it claimed that it was entirely AI generated, but some people listened to it and said, hmm, yeah, the voice maybe, but some of those jokes, there's no way those were written by AI.

5:21 Speaker 2: Those were inserted by who ever made it, but who knows. But yeah, you can make.

5:24 Speaker 3: Very realistic That's something that anybody can really say.

5:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, but you can make very realistic work with it.

5:31 Speaker 3: That's smart of what you give it. So if you fed everything to it of George Carlin, I actually don't doubt that it could write George Carlin jokes because it would have learned from that. You know, it's a computer. What you feed it, Yeah, right, all the bigga ones and zeros.

5:46 Speaker 2: But humor is Humor is different though. That's why I'm also I'm one of the people who is skeptical but who knows.

5:52 Speaker 1: We'll probably never know the truth.

5:53 Speaker 3: I got you, Yeah, but I mean in April of last year, there were over two hundred artists that got together and created an Artist Writes Alliance, and they sign letters. And we're trying to get people to pay attention in saying that you know that they want they want laws to protect them, and they want AI developers to have some freaking morals, I think, and not steal from them, because it really is. It's stealing somebody else's are you're stealing theon Celene Dion's voice. That's so wrong. It's more wrong by because of who they chose to pick on as somebody who's literally fighting for their If you don't know, Selene Dion has what's called stiff person syndrome.

6:39 Speaker 3: That's why she can't perform anymore. It only does so on very very rare occasions. It's extraordinarily painful. She suffers immense, just chronic every day suffering that you cannot even imagine. And that's who they pick. They steal her voice, put music out there, claim it's her trying to make money off of her.

6:58 Speaker 2: Well, also want to make a clear distinction in here again going back to what's really happening in this instance, because you know, we've had a lot of conversations about uh, generative AI, these large learning models. You know, they suck up all this information and all this art, all this creativity and then spit out what they spit out. And we've we've had conversations debating about whether that's okay or not. But this is different in that this because this is not there's no there's no ambiguity here, because this is fraud if you're creating something, because you can take the AI completely out of it.

7:32 Speaker 2: Let's let's say it's just somebody who does a really good impression of Selene Deon recording a song and then claiming that it is Selene Deon.

7:42 Speaker 1: That's out that's outright fraud.

7:43 Speaker 2: If you create something and then and then and you claim it's something that it's not, that's that's fraud. That is there's no ambiguity there.

7:51 Speaker 3: But the only differences in this instance, because it's AI, they can make it sound just like her. It's not just kind of like it's just like you know, because computers can imitate everything, right, and these and what the Artist Rights Alliance is trying to do is protect each other. So when I'm talking about over two hundred, like really big names signed onto this, like Billie Irish and and She's imagine dragons, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder, a whole lot of people, and they they're from their perspective.

8:24 Speaker 3: And I want to give this quote because I think it's a great quote. They said quote, Unfortunately, some platforms and developers are employing AI to sabotage creativity and undermined artists, songwriters, musicians and rights holders. And I think that that's a very very perfect statement. It is sabotaging their creativity. It's theft and fraud to steal somebody else's labors turn it into whatever you want to turn it into. You know that it's and you know what, Artists have enough problems these days making money off their own music.

8:59 Speaker 3: I mean talk about that before. What they make less than what is it.

9:05 Speaker 1: Whatever Spotify off right, Yeah, it's not even.

9:10 Speaker 3: In the old days, you printed an album you made your money off of in part apples sales, album sales, and then touring. These days you're making more of your money off of touring because you can't make as much money off of album sales.

9:23 Speaker 2: Although although what a lot of people don't realize is it's kind of it's it's it's uh. In terms of trying to earn revenue from streaming, it's kind of a worse version of what was already the model, in the sense that you never really made that.

9:39 Speaker 1: Much off of album sales. This is something people don't know.

9:43 Speaker 2: And I've given this example before, but I remember when I was a kid when I first started to realize, because I was fascinated by all you know, all this stuff. When I mean AI, we didn't have yet. But when I was a kid, I was always very interested in the music industry and how it works. And I remember reading an interview with meat Loaf and he was talking about Back Out of Hell and of course, which by now is probably sold and it might be it may have surpassed one hundred million at this point, but he was talking about how he didn't really make that much money, like he said, you know, he got like a quarter a quarter, like twenty five cents a quarter per unit sold.

10:15 Speaker 1: Wow, you know, And but that's that's not unusual.

10:19 Speaker 3: Although music didn't get in music how to be transferred from one person or another in an album. Yeah, for at a cassette. You couldn't just electronically, but it.

10:27 Speaker 2: Wasn't but it wasn't as much. That's why I like sometimes every once in a while you'll hear very successful. I remember Kurt Cobain, you know, uh, of course he took himself away from us very young. But I remember when Nirvana first got really big. He made he made a comment in an interview about you know, people think because we're famous, we're rich, and it's it doesn't work that way. He said, you'd be surprised how broke we are. And TLC we've talked about that a great example. They were triple platinum and broke.

10:53 Speaker 2: The money has always been in touring, the big money, and now even touring is is as that has become more cost prohibitive. Now the money really is in merch and and of course licensing. You know, if you license your music, say to a for a film or a TV series or something, then you can make a lot of money. There's always been a lot of money in licensing and that persists.

11:13 Speaker 3: But whatny do you think they make in licensing, Like when you're a venue having a license to be able to have an artist come in and play certain songs venues can't have can only have certain music that they're license for. Do they get the artists make money off of that or are you really something that Well, yeah, it doesn't get them much.

11:31 Speaker 1: It doesn't get them much.

11:33 Speaker 2: I mean those performing rights organizations like as CAP and BMI. Yeah, they're supposed to make sure that you get paid. But but but for that it's it's yeah, we're not we're talking about yeah, Spotify money.

11:46 Speaker 3: The bottom line, it's really hard for artists to be able to make money. So they have AI ripping off artists voices or you know, creating songs that they didn't even sing. Yeah, this is this is not good and I I mean, I do believe and I do agree with that. I do believe that it does. They are correct in saying it's sabotage and creativity. It's stealing creativity. It's stealing the life's blood of an artist. You know, whatever I put on a piece of canvas came out of my me, right.

12:16 Speaker 1: I wouldn't you know what I mean?

12:18 Speaker 3: You think about when I think about it that way, it's like a musician's song is their baby, that's their soul. You know what it actually brings up is. I know it's slightly off, but when with Wren the artist, Wren the rapper Rent he used a piece of music, he spent like tune of dollars to buy it, and Kujo another rapper or something had ownership over that piece, and when he saw Wren made so much money, he went and tried to sue him for it.

12:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, what a Yeah, we never really talked about it on the show, but yeah, that turned into quite a mess.

12:51 Speaker 3: Oh but the But if you want to hear a really great disk track, you got to listen to Wren's disk track on Kuja.

12:57 Speaker 2: But that wasn't even even an AI situation. It was over a sample was created.

13:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, this was trying and in in the disk track and what he would say and what Ren would say off airs. He's trying to steal my creativity. He's trying to steal my creat That song was so personable and so much of his own soul and life blood in there. To have somebody come along and say that's not your creativity, it's mine. From this two second whatever that he bought and paid for to use this it's just a sound bite, it's just a clip, not the whole song. It didn't, you know, it's nothing like that.

13:33 Speaker 3: It's just a particular looping sound. Yeah, And he bought and paid for it correctly. And this guy, you know, I want money, right, I see you making money. I want that money. Trying but he Wren said the same thing. You're trying to steal my creativity, my creation, and that it so if you look at it in all these different situations, it's it is. It's stealing the very soul, lifeblood of an artist.

13:58 Speaker 1: Yeah,