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Merlin to AI Companies: Don’t Harvest Our Data

AI companies shouldn't scrape indie labels' data, a memo by Merlin warns. The indie licensing organization released the mission statement on Friday.

But ironically, “AI companies are rightly protective over their models and proprietary software, yet some seem to view other people’s intellectual property as ‘free data’ to feed their algorithm.” Any AI company that trains its models by scraping the internet for copyright-protected sound recordings is making unauthorized reproductions of entire copyright works. AI companies are rightly protective over their models and proprietary software, yet some seem to view other people’s intellectual property as “free data” to feed their algorithm.

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