"Gimme Some Truth"

AI Music and Implications for Copyright and Cataloging

Abstract

For the past 70 years, researchers and experimental musicians have been working with computer-synthesized music, forming a collaborative relationship with generative artificial intelligences known as human–AI co-creation. The last several years have shown that musical artists are quickly adopting AI tools to produce music for AI music competitions and for commercial production of songs and albums. The United States Copyright Office, in response to this trend, has released its latest policy revisions to clearly define what is eligible for copyright registration. Soon after, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) also released new guidelines, providing recommendations for how library catalogers should address AI-generated materials. In both cases, they reject the notion of considering AI as a contributor. The language in each of these policies, however, is self-contradicting, showing that they are ill equipped to address generative AI. This study leverages critical textual analysis and qualitative content analysis and uses case examples to probe the manner in which these policies regard generative AI. Recommendations are made for addressing shortcomings in the PCC’s policies, and moral philosophical frameworks such as virtue ethics and consequentialism support arguments for supplementing catalog item records with information from authoritative external sources, deviating from this policy for the sake of truth-seeking.