Can the music industry make AI the next Napster?

Jul 1, 2025 - 14:24
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Can the music industry make AI the next Napster?
Nice generative AI platform you have there. Would be a real shame if the RIAA… happened to it. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Sure, everyone hates record labels - but the AI industry has figured out how to make them look like heroes. So that's at least one very impressive accomplishment for AI.

AI is cutting a swath across a number of creative industries - with AI-generated book covers, the Chicago Sun-Times publishing an AI-generated list of books that don't exist, and AI-generated stories at CNET under real authors' bylines. The music industry is no exception. But while many of these fields are mired in questions about whether AI models are illegally trained on pirated data, the music industry is coming at the issue from a position of unusual strength: the benefits of years of case law backing copyright protections, a regimented licensing system, and a handful of powerful companies that control the industry. Record labels have chosen to fight several AI companies on copyright law, and they have a strong hand to play.

Historically, whatever the tech industry inflicts on the music industry will eventually happen to every other creative industry, too. If that's true here, then all the AI companies that ganked copyrighted material are in a lot of trouble.

Can home prompting kill music careers?

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Read the full story at The Verge.

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