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Seoul, South Korea. Photo Credit: Lee Seunghyub<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Technically, the group behind the initiative, the K-Music Rights Organizations Mutual Growth Committee, formally set sail on February 26th \u2013 one day after Lee Si-ha started leading the Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA).<\/p>\n
However, South Korean outlets only recently shed light on the alliance, which also features brass from the Recording Industry Association of Korea, the Korea Entertainment Producers\u2019 Association, the Korean Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the Federation of Korean Music Performers, and the Korea Music Content Association.<\/p>\n
According to the Maeil Business Newspaper, all these members intend to jointly develop \u201ca new music copyright order that the world can follow.\u201d And while the order will target four main areas \u2013 more here in a moment \u2013 reining in AI certainly stands out as the chief objective.<\/p>\n
On this front, the committee\u2019s members outlined an \u201caggressive survival strategy\u201d to counteract AI\u2019s music-space rise and signed a declaration proclaiming \u201cthe noble sovereignty of human creativity,\u201d the mentioned outlet<\/a> relayed.<\/p>\n Just in case that wasn\u2019t clear enough, one presentation slide shown during the committee\u2019s initial sit down framed the event as \u201ca declaration of war\u201d as opposed to a meeting, per Google\u2019s translation of the Korean-language text.<\/p>\n (The group needn\u2019t worry about the registration of machine-made music; it\u2019s been nearly a year since KOMCA implemented<\/a> a 0% AI policy.)<\/p>\n As for the other areas of interest, the entity is further working towards a \u201cblockchain-based infrastructure\u201d that, according to the translated summary, will attempt to bridge the data gap between ISWC, ISRC, Content ID, and UCI identifiers.<\/p>\n And the final two focus areas directly relate to those highlighted above: The K-Music Rights Organizations Mutual Growth Committee will seek to halt the international \u201coutflow\u201d of South Korean music revenue and to reshape the wider \u201cplatform market.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the execs is SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man, whose Blooming Talk<\/a> app houses AI clones of A2O Entertainment artists. Concerningly, the Tencent Cloud-powered<\/a> platform offers \u201cseamless, real-time exchanges between artists and their fans,\u201d including both text and voice conversations, per its website.<\/p>\n On one hand, giving diehards 24\/7 access to digital replicas seems like a recipe for disaster (or at least a good dose of social harm). On the other hand, as explored by DMN Pro<\/a>, fringe communities are already using unauthorized bots to mimic talent \u2013 a disconcerting reality that, besides being bad for the individual and probably society, steals away fans, streams, and revenue from the artist.<\/p>\n <\/div>\nIn keeping with the signed declaration as well as the distinct declaration of war, the committee will first look to tackle unauthorized training, maximize training-data transparency, and establish labels for AI outputs on digital platforms. <\/strong><\/h4>\n
All in all, it seems safe to describe the push as a stark contrast to Kyncl\u2019s authorization- and licensing-geared AI approach. That said \u2013 artificial intelligence slop\u2019s very real commercial consequences aside \u2013 some South Korean music execs are nevertheless harnessing AI to capitalize on superfan support.<\/h4>\n