Will.i.am on his anti-AI stance and how he wants to protect himself from the technology.
In a current podcast, US rapper Will.i.am discusses the spread of artificial intelligence, or “AI” for short, in the music industry. His rallying cry against AI’s unsolicited use of his face is, “I own the rights to the songs I’ve written, but I don’t own the rights to my face or my voice?! My face is mine!”
Will.i.am: The dangers and victims of artificial intelligence
In the talk with “SiriusXM”, the moderator:innenteam asks the founding member of the Black Eyed Peas whether artists benefit from the use of AI – or how it could harm the art industry. The singer, songwriter and music producer then explains the true dangers of artificial intelligence and how he perceives it.
First he points out that there are currently three industries in the music world: “There is the touring industry with its laws, rules and budgets. There’s the publishing industry, which again has its own laws, rules and budgets, and there’s the recording industry. But the fourth industry coming our way? It has no rules, no laws!”
The rapper, whose real name is William James Adams Jr., refers to this in particular on artificial intelligence. “There’s a fourth industry on the way that’s not only relevant for artists and musicians, but for everyone: grandmas, aunts, nieces and nephews, everyone. Why? Because we all have a voice. Everyone is compromised to their voice and face – but there are no rights to our facial math or our voice rate.” So, he says, everyone becomes a potential “victim” of a new lawless industry.
Pointing to his face in the video podcast, Will.i.am says, “We don’t have rights to our facial math?! So that’s what we have to look out for, not if someone is covering us and passing off their voice as someone else.”
Beware of AI: According to Will.i.am, this is something we have to watch out for
The rapper elaborates on the cynicism of our time in the talk: “You get a FaceTime or Zoom call, and because there’s no clear intelligence on the call, there’s no distinguishing an AI call from a real person’s call to distinguish.”
He emphasizes: “That is the urgent task: that we protect our facial mathematics. I am my face math. But that’s not mine. I own the rights to ‘I Got A Feeling’, I own the rights to the songs I wrote, but I don’t own the rights to my face or my voice.
More about artificial intelligence
Recently, many hip-hop masterminds have entered the AI music debate. Producer Timbaland, for example, created an AI-generated verse from the late rapper Notorious BIG and worked on AI software to commercialize the phenomenon. Snoop Dogg, meanwhile, thinks AI music got “out of control” when he heard Michael Jackson’s AI cover of C-Murder’s “Down With My N’s,” NME also reported.