A Critical Defense of Human Authorship in AI-Generated Music
The argument that AI music is solely the product of a short, uncreative prompt is a naive, convenient oversimplification that fails to recognize the creative labor involved.
A. The Prompt as an Aesthetic Blueprint
The prompt is not a neutral instruction; it is a detailed, original articulation of a soundscape, an aesthetic blueprint, and a set of structural limitations that the human creator wishes to realize sonically. This act of creative prompting, coupled with subsequent actions, aligns perfectly with the law's minimum threshold for creativity:
* The Supreme Court in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co. (1991), established that a work need only possess an "extremely low" threshold of originality—a "modicum of creativity" or a "creative spark."
B. The Iterative Process
The process of creation is not solely the prompt; it is an iterative cycle that satisfies the U.S. Copyright Office’s acknowledgment that protection is available where a human "selects or arranges AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way" or makes "creative modifications."
*
Iterative Refinement: Manually refining successive AI generations to home in on the specific sonic, emotional, or quality goal (the selection of material).
*
Physical Manipulation: Subjecting the audio to external software (DAWs) for mastering, remixing, editing, or trimming (the arrangement/modification of material). The human is responsible for the overall aesthetic, the specific expressive choices, and the final fixed form, thus satisfying the requirement for meaningful human authorship.
II. AI Tools and the Illusion of "Authenticity"
The denial of authorship to AI-assisted creators is rooted in a flawed, romanticized view of "authentic" creation that ignores decades of music production history.
A. AI as a Modern Instrument
The notion that using AI is somehow less "authentic" than a traditional instrument is untenable. Modern music creation is already deeply reliant on advanced technology. AI is simply the latest tool—a sophisticated digital instrument. As Ben Camp, Associate Professor of Songwriting at Berklee, notes: "The reason I'm able to navigate these things so quickly is because I know what I want... If you don't have the taste to discern what's working and what's not working, you're gonna lose out." Major labels like Universal Music Group (UMG) themselves recognize this, entering a strategic alliance with Stability AI to develop professional tools "powered by responsibly trained generative AI and built to support the creative process of artists."
B. The Auto-Tune Precedent
The music industry has successfully commercialized technologies that once challenged "authenticity," most notably Auto-Tune. Critics once claimed it diminished genuine talent, yet it became a creative instrument. If a top-charting song, sung by a famous artist, is subject to heavy Auto-Tune and a team of producers, mixers, and masterers who spend hours editing and manipulating the final track far beyond the original human performance, how is that final product more "authentic" or more singularly authored than a high-quality, AI-generated track meticulously crafted, selected, and manually mastered by a single user? Both tracks are the result of editing and manipulation by human decision-makers. The claim of "authenticity" is an arbitrary and hypocritical distinction.
III. The Udio/UMG Debacle
The recent agreement between Udio and Universal Music Group (UMG) provides a stark illustration of why clear, human-centric laws are urgently needed to prevent corporate enclosure.
The events surrounding this deal perfectly expose the dangers of denying creator ownership:
*
The Lawsuit & Settlement: UMG and Udio announced they had settled the copyright infringement litigation and would pivot to a "licensed innovation" model for a new platform, set to launch in 2026.
*
The "Walled Garden" and User Outrage: Udio confirmed that existing user creations would be controlled within a "walled garden," a restricted environment protected by fingerprinting and filtering. This move ignited massive user backlash across social media, with creators complaining that the sudden loss of downloads stripped them of their democratic freedom and their right to access or commercially release music they had spent time and money creating.
This settlement represents a dark precedent: using the leverage of copyright litigation to retroactively seize control over user-created content and force that creative labor into a commercially controlled and licensed environment. This action validates the fear that denying copyright to the AI-assisted human creator simply makes their work vulnerable to a corporate land grab.
IV. Expanding Legislative Protection
The current federal legislative efforts—the NO FAKES Act and the COPIED Act—are critically incomplete. While necessary for the original artist, they fail to protect the rights of the AI-assisted human creator. Congress must adopt a Dual-Track Legislative Approach to ensure equity:
Track 1: Fortifying the Rights of Source Artists (NO FAKES/COPIED)
This track is about stopping the theft of identity and establishing clear control over data used for training.
*
Federal Right of Publicity: The NO FAKES Act must establish a robust federal right of publicity over an individual's voice and visual likeness.
*
Mandatory Training Data Disclosure: The COPIED Act must be expanded to require AI model developers to provide verifiable disclosure of all copyrighted works used to train their models.
*
Opt-In/Opt-Out Framework: Artists must have a legal right to explicitly opt-out their catalog from being used for AI training, or define compensated terms for opt-in use.
Track 2: Establishing Copyright for AI-Assisted Creators
This track must ensure the human creator who utilizes the AI tool retains ownership and control over the expressive work they created, refined, and edited.
*
Codification of Feist Standard for AI: An Amendment to the Copyright Act must explicitly state that a work created with AI assistance is eligible for copyright protection, provided the human creator demonstrates a "modicum of creativity" through Prompt Engineering, Selection and Arrangement of Outputs, or Creative Post-Processing/Editing.
*
Non-Waiver of Creative Rights: A new provision must prohibit AI platform Terms of Service (TOS) from retroactively revoking user rights or claiming ownership of user-generated content that meets the Feist standard, especially after the content has been created and licensed for use.
*
Clear "Work Made for Hire" Boundaries: A new provision must define the relationship such that the AI platform cannot automatically claim the work is a "work made for hire" without a clear, compensated agreement.
Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/udiomusic/s/gXhepD43sk submitted by /u/BradizbakeD
[link] [comments]
