YouTube is reportedly developing an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that will make you sound like your favorite music artist. Sounds exciting, right?
This new AI tool will allow YouTube creators to record audio of their popular singers and musicians when making videos, reported Bloomberg on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter, who preferred to remain anonymous.
YouTube Working On AI Tool To Help You Sound Like Your Favourite Singers
Apparently, YouTube was earlier planning on debuting this feature at the “Made On YouTube” event in September, which would allow a small selection of artists in beta to grant permission to a “select group” of creators to use their voices in videos on the video streaming platform.
“From there, the product could be released broadly to all users with the voices of artists who choose to opt in. YouTube is also looking at those artists to contribute input on that will help steer the company’s AI strategy beyond this,” Billboard states in their report.
The video streaming platform describes the upcoming AI tool as being able to “record audio using the voices of famous musicians.”
However, legal regulations and delays in the process of finalizing licensing agreements with three major music labels – Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group (UMG) that would cover voice rights for the beta version of the tool have pushed the debut plans to a currently unknown date, the Bloomberg report notes.
According to YouTube execs, it has been “challenging” for the video streaming platform to find prominent artists’ names who are willing to license their voices to train the AI models. The Billboard report adds that some artists are anxious about lending their voices into “the hands of unknown creators who could use them to make statements or sing lyrics” that they don’t agree with or may find distasteful.
Major record labels reportedly have yet to sign away the rights from the lists of artists on the AI tool, though discussions between the two sides continue.
YouTube is treading its foot carefully, as it wants to ensure that AI technology is used responsibly. For this, it is working with the music industry so that the use of artists’ voices and content in AI creations is done rightfully.
While YouTube’s upcoming AI tool has the potential to become an absolute game-changer for creators, it is also a known fact how deepfakes have been used in the past for nefarious purposes for scams and misinformation. Hence, it remains to be seen whether or not the record labels give their permission to use artists’ voices to train YouTube’s new AI tool.
