WINNIPEG – Jacob Herd lives and breathes music. He is a musician, composer, and music educator who has performed with dozens of Winnipeg bands and written nearly 100 songs. After almost two decades in the music industry, he has witnessed major changes driven by new technology. While he has adapted to many of those shifts, the rise of artificial intelligence has him increasingly concerned. “A lot of people claim that AI is making music more accessible or somehow removing certain limitations that were on people, but if anything, it actually is bringing the entire industry down,” he said. “Like with many technologies, it can have its place and its uses, but I think a lot of people are using it to undermine the very foundations of the creative process.” Herd says the growing challenges with the use of AI in the music industry are making things more difficult to navigate. “There’s so much human touch and human element that goes into the actual music that you hear,” he said. “That is being completely bypassed and lost with the use of generative AI.” ‘We’re losing our creativity’ It is a concern shared by local musician and podcaster Joel Emerson, host of PegCity Soundoff, a Winnipeg music podcast featuring local musicians. He says the discussion around AI is brought up in most of his conversations. “We’re losing our creativity and we’re losing our love of live music as well, because these AI artists aren’t going to perform it live,” he said. Emerson said it is also becoming increasingly harder to compete with the speed of AI artists. “There’s a couple of bands that I am in and we’re writing, we’re trying to record, we’re playing live shows to get money to record, and you just see so many AI artists that are just putting music out, getting paid and they’re releasing 60 songs a year,” he said. AI music makes waves Several AI songs have gone viral over the last little while, including The Puerto Rico Song, which was released in April. It was created by Bill Stiteler, also known as Saxboy Billy, who used the AI music platform, Suno, to transform his lyrics into a song. In June, the federal government released Canada’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy: AI for All, but the issue of copyright protection for Canadian content creators was not mentioned. Evan Solomon, Canada’s minister of AI and digital innovation told CTV News Ottawa that recognizes the need to update Canada’s copyright system to reflect the changing world. “There are currently matters before the courts related to these issues, and while we will not comment on ongoing litigation, we will continue to engage with creators and stakeholders as these discussions evolve,” Solomon said in a statement. “To musicians and artists who are concerned about the impact of AI on their livelihoods, I want to be clear: your voices matter, and our government is committed to listening and ensuring Canada’s approach to AI supports innovation while respecting and protecting the value of human creativity.” “I think it’s reasonable for industries, artists and governments to have some kind of concern about this,” said David Gerhard, head of computer science at the University of Manitoba. Musicians like Herd and Emerson want to see some regulations in place, but some tech experts, like Gerhard, say it’s not that simple. Detecting AI generated music “It is increasingly difficult to build systems that can detect AI generated content,” he said. “The whole point of AI is that it makes stuff that sounds and looks just like humans, and so we can’t rely on detection systems to find it. We have to rely on the models to label it.” Gerhard says there are some possible solutions to work around these issues. “One possible regulatory approach is to require AI generated content to be labelled. This is something that the European Union has started doing and big models in the States are starting to comply with this,” he said. “They would be required to place a little stamp on an AI-generated image or some kind of a watermark on an AI-generated song, so that whether or not you could detect it directly, you could apply an algorithm to it and be confident that you know where it came from.” As AI continues to reshape how music is made, local musicians like Herd say the challenge will be making sure the technology does not get in the way of those who continue to make traditional music. “After the COVID-19 lockdowns, you saw a real resurgence in live music because I think people will always long for the human element in what they’re watching, what they’re listening to and what they’re experiencing, because we’re all human,” said Herd.
