Google, Universal Music in talks for deal on AI 'deepfakes'

Generative AI has stirred a lot of debate on copyright and licenses in cases where the AI has been found to use copyrighted material. (Representative Image)

Google is reportedly in talks with Universal Music Group, to license voices and melodies from their catalogue for training its music based AI models.

Generative AI has stirred a lot of debate on copyright and licenses in cases where the AI has been found to use copyrighted material.

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Google's music generation AI called MusicLM can create high-fidelity music from text prompts but Google wisely decided not to release the model for public use, due to copyright issues.

Meta also released their own version of a music generation AI tool called AudioCraft, and the company says it used an in-house library of licensed music and audio to train its model.

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According to a report from Financial Times, Universal Music Group which represents popular artists like Drake, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande is interested in working with Google to create an AI tool that can generate music.

The deal would reportedly pay copyright holders a fee for the license, while music artists will have a chance to opt-in. A report by Times says that Google is also talking to Warner Music Group for a similar deal.