"AI Sun Yanzi" covers Jay Chou's "out of the circle"
Does "AI Sun Yanzi" infringe Sun Yanzi's voice copyright? Does it infringe the copyright of the song (such as the song of a singer such as Jay Chou)? Will AI steal the singer's job in the future?
From AI face change, AI painting to AI writing papers, the power of technology is amazing, and now AI covers are out of the circle! Recently, "AI Sun Yanzi" covers Jay Chou's "Hair Like Snow" and Nanquan Mama's "Rainy Day" have exceeded one million hits on station B, and there is almost no style that "AI Sun Yanzi" cannot control. At present, there are still "AI Jay Chou", "AI Wang Xinling" and so on active on the Internet. So the question is, does the AI cover infringe the singer's voice copyright?
"AI Sun Yanzi" is on fire, and the analog timbre is highly reproduced
Sun Yanzi has become the darling of AI because of her unique recognizable timbre and singing voice, and dozens of "new works" are released every day. The well-known songs such as "Always Been Quiet", "The Thief of Years", "Red Beans", and even "Good Han Song" and "Borrow Another 500 Years from the Sky" have a different taste under the interpretation of "AI Sun Yanzi". The Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter felt after listening to a few songs at random, the sound was very realistic, as if Sun Yanzi really covered so many songs herself.
In real life, if Sun Yanzi wants to publicly sing other singers' songs, she undoubtedly needs to obtain authorization from the copyright owner. At present, platforms and creators are mainly exempted from liability by declaring that AI works are not commercially available.
Industry insiders believe that according to the current technology, the singer's singing voice, technique and style are still difficult to fully imitate, but the timbre can basically be copied 1:1. Some fans have trained the AI of the deceased singer, including Asan, Leslie Cheung, Yao Beina, Teresa Teresa, etc., which may be a kind of "digital immortality".
Expert reminder: suspected infringement of sound rights and copyrights
Fu Jian, director of Henan Zejian Law Firm, said that for singers with a high degree of timbre recognition, the voice can become an important basis for identifying personal identity, and the voice also has certain property attributes, and using other people's voices and timbres without the authorization of the singer is an infringement of the singer's voice right.
In Fu Jian's view, the core technology of "AI Sun Yanzi" is to simulate the voice of the singer to make the sung work similar to the original. If the works published by the platform and the creator on the Internet platform are not authorized by the copyright owner, and may lead to the risk of expanding infringement, a simple disclaimer cannot completely prevent the occurrence of infringement and cannot be the cause of exemption.
"AI singers' covers are suspected of infringing on sound rights, copyrights and other risks." Lawyer Ding of Jiangsu Suyan Law Firm said that Article 1023 of the Civil Code stipulates that the protection of names and natural persons' voices shall be applied with reference to the relevant provisions on the licensed use of portraits. Therefore, using AI technology to synthesize the singer's voice into music without the singer's permission violates the right to sound. In addition, the lyrics of musical works are all original copyright holders, including distribution rights, reproduction rights, performance rights, information network dissemination rights, adaptation rights, etc., such as using software to synthesize or adapt music works without the permission of the copyright owner for AI characters to publicly broadcast and perform through video, which also infringes the copyrights of others.
In the future, will AI steal the singer's job?
Following the popularity of AI drawing, many workers in related occupations have become anxious, is it now the turn of singers? Zhang Xiaorong, president of the Deepin Science and Technology Research Institute, predicted that AI may replace singers in the future, but it needs to be achieved under strict supervision. The technology with AI replacing singers will bring a new threat to human society: deepfakes. Through deepfakes, personal image and voice biometrics are copied and operated by AI, which is easy to produce more social problems such as new types of AI fraud.
Lawyer Fu Jian also reminded that because the singer's voice has property attributes, it can easily become a tool for others to make profits, which also gives criminals an opportunity. In addition to the voice, the singer himself is also an important factor sought after by the audience, and whether AI can completely replace the singer after leaving the singer himself still depends on the audience's aesthetics and preferences. (Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Xu Jing)