Eighty-three-year-old former Beatle Paul McCartney has added a “song” to a new silent LP in protest against AI companies unfairly exploiting musicians’ intellectual property to train generative AI models, The Guardian reports.
Other artists featured on the Is This What We Want? album include Sam Fender, Kate Bush and Hans Zimmer.
The Guardian says of McCartney’s “song” that in place of catchy melodies and evocative lyrics, there is only quiet hiss and the odd clatter, being a recording of an almost completely silent studio.
This forms part of a music industry protest against copyright theft by artificial intelligence companies, suggesting that if AI companies unfairly exploit musicians’ intellectual property to train their generative AI models, the creative ecosystem will be ruined and original music silenced.
The contribution from McCartney, who is currently touring North America, comes as musicians and artists step up their campaign to persuade the UK government to stop technology companies from training AI models on their creative output without approval or paying royalties.
Is This What We Want? will be pressed on vinyl and released later this month.
The album track listing spells out: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies”.
[Image: By Raph_PH – MaccaLyricsRFH051121 (15 of 18), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=159315689]