Photo Credit: Fletcher (RIAA)
The RIAA is adding a ‘Voice Cloning’ watch to its Notorious Markets report as generative AI makes it possible for anyone to create deep fake voice profiles of public figures. Here’s the latest.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says it saw an eruption of unauthorized AI vocal clone services in 2023. That’s no small surprise—generative AI tech has taken off in a big way this year. The result is that major artists like Drake, 21 Savage, and The Weeknd are seeing their voices cloned to create music tracks that the original artists had no hand in creating. It’s also created questions for Grammy eligibility, which sparked an intense debate earlier this year.
“An explosion of unauthorized derivative works of our members’ sound recordings harm sound recording artists and copyright owners,” the RIAA says. Most of these services are located outside of the United States, which makes it harder to takedown. For now, the voice cloning site that has attracted the attention of the RIAA is voicify.ai.
The RIAA says it believes the owner of this website is a UK resident, with the site generating 8.8 million visits in the past year. It makes money through subscription fees, licensing technology to give users the ability to re-create AI music covers of artists like Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Bruno Mars, Eminem, Harry Styles, Adele, Ed Sheeran, and many others. Musicians aren’t the only public figures targeted by the service—though they’re the most relevant figures to the RIAA.
This service also offers the ability to create vocal clones of politicians like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and more. Voicify works by allowing users to select a YouTube video they want to ‘re-create’ using its AI voice model. The model then stream-rips the video, copys the acapella from the voice track, and modifies the acapella track using the AI vocal model to synthesize speech that sounds like a specific person.
“This unauthorized activity infringes copyright as well as infringing the sound recording artist’s rights of publicity,” the RIAA concludes. Will more vocal cloning sites end up on the Notorious Markets list as the year wears on? You betcha.
