YouTube is in talks with record labels to license their songs for artificial intelligence tools that clone popular artists’ music, hoping to win over a sceptical industry with upfront payments. The Google-owned video site needs labels’ content to legally train AI song generators, as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three people familiar with the matter. The company has recently offered lump sums of cash to the major labels — Sony, Warner and Universal — to try to convince more artists to allow their music to be used in training AI software, according to several people briefed on the talks. However, many artists remain fiercely opposed to AI music generation, fearing it could undermine the value of their work. Any move by a label to force their stars into such a scheme would be hugely controversial. “The industry is wrestling with this. Technically the companies have the copyrights, but we have to think through how to play it,” said an executive at a large music company. “We don’t want to be seen as a Luddite.” YouTube last year began testing a generative AI tool that lets people create short music clips by entering a text prompt. The product, initially named “Dream Track”, was designed to imitate the sound and lyrics of well-known singers. But only 10 artists agreed to participate in the test phase, including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and John Legend, and Dream Track was made available to a just small group of creators. YouTube wants to sign up “dozens” of artists, to roll out a new AI song generator this year, said two of the people. YouTube said: “We’re not looking to expand Dream Track but are in conversations with labels about other experiments.” YouTube is seeking new deals at a time when AI companies such as OpenAI are striking licensing agreements with media groups to train large language models, the systems that power AI products such as the ChatGPT chatbot. Some of those deals are worth tens of millions of dollars to media companies, insiders say.
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