Get the latest gossip

Musicians are angry about generative AI. Stability AI's new music generator proves their point

The music-making AI left our reporter cold. Its compositions lack soul—and a path for artists to profit.

“Unchecked, AI will set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it,” reads the letter, which my colleague Chloe Berger also wrote about in Fortune prior to the news of Stable Audio 2.0’s release. Aside from the reception to new tools for making music, this moment has parallels to the Napster era, where file-sharing technology enabled people to download songs en masse for free and without any regard for copyright or compensation. The story would seem to confirm the worst fears of human rights campaigners and technologists who have for years argued against the increased use of AI in warfare and have worried that, despite claims the technology will lessen civilian casualties, it will actually have the opposite effect.

Get the Android app