Photo credit: Árpád Czapp
As generative AI takes the social media world by storm with song mashups, TikTok wants to reveal AI-generated content.
A new report According to The Information, TikTok is working internally on a tool that would allow content creators to disclose whether content was created using generative AI. Song mashups like the Drake/The Weeknd collaborations that went viral on TikTok use generative AI to create music that “sounds” like the mix of these two artists. It is currently unclear how this disclosure will be made.
It could be as benign as the current disclosure of sponsorship and telling viewers they are watching AI-generated content. It’s also unclear if TikTok requires disclosure of AI-generated content, or if it’s just a suggestion for content creators that TikTok can use to try to avoid liability for AI-generated content that isn’t labeled as such.
“At TikTok, we believe trust is the foundation of our community – and we’re always working to promote transparency and help viewers better understand the content they see,” a TikTok spokesperson said of the report .
AI-generated content is popping up on TikTok, YouTube, Spotify and many other platforms. Midjourney can now be used to create album art, while platforms like it podcast can train a sound generation model with just a few minutes of input. Grimes is willing to jump on the opportunity to train “AI artists” based on real artists – but not everyone shares her optimistic attitude.
Universal Music has lobbied Drake and The Weeknd, asking DSPs to keep these AI-generated mashups off the services. Meanwhile, UMG still reigns supreme on YouTube, with copies of generated songs uploading faster than they can be downloaded. A marketplace for storing AI-generated content has even sprung up, rumored to aim to bring music back to the “Napster era,” with a place to house AI-generated music that can’t be ripped down.