This music is not for robots

Sony is sending letters to several hundred tech companies warning them about the unauthorized use of music from its catalog for algorithm training, warning of possible legal action in the event of infringements.

Once again, a company that makes a living from people consuming its content is trying to prevent the creators of algorithms from making money at its expense. Anyone can listen to music in Sony’s catalog, either by paying for it or by finding it on countless channels for free. And you can, of course, be inspired by one or more recordings, a style or whatever you want, to compose another song.

That’s how the human brain works. We establish connections, neural circuits that we can innervate voluntarily or involuntarily — who hasn’t had a song “stuck” on some occasion to the point of not being able to get it out of their head? — and that we can use for creative purposes, as long as the result is not considered to be plagiarism of another work or of a specific author.

What we are increasingly seeing is the role of the brain being carried out by generative algorithms: we can train them with songs available on an infinite number of channels, and in the same way that a person can be inspired by them, an algorithm can use them to generate new songs, as with Suno: the songs that we can generate with Suno are not copies. They are original…