Last month, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon delivered a speech to the graduates of the Wharton School about how easily he can make music with artificial intelligence—a message that was not exactly well-received. During an appearance on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, the banker who moonlights as a DJ remixed the message to produce something that sounds a little more revolutionary—even if he’s probably full of shit. Near the end of his hour-long conversation with hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, Solomon once again started in on how amazing AI tools are for musicians. But while his Wharton speech was entirely fawning over the technology, the CEO took a beat to recognize that AI doesn’t work without actual creatives. “I think there are a couple of big issues that need to be wrestled through with this,” he said. “The first is these AI apps are using other people’s content in some way, and the artists aren’t getting in any way compensated for that. And I think you’ve got to think about how you’re going to bring the artist community and their IP in the discussion of this over time.”
Now, this is still a very ass-backwards way to go about this—these AI labs have already stolen and used the work of artists to train their models without compensation. And because these machines are black boxes, getting any sort of retroactive payment for the material usually requires proving the artist’s work was used in the first place, which can be very difficult. Basically, you’ve got to sue to get paid, and the best that most artists can do is get a paltry payout rather than the more difficult task of getting the work removed from the training data. The costs will likely outweigh the benefits even if you win.
