SoundCloud Updates AI Policy in Terms of Use After Backlash

Final week, SoundCloud was accused of updating its terms of use to permit content material uploaded to the location for use as coaching information for synthetic intelligence (AI). Now, the streaming platform has updated its AI coverage in its phrases of use, and SoundCloud CEO Eliah Seton has shared an open letter addressing the situation, clarifying the location’s present use of AI, and promising that artist content material will stay unaffected nor used to coach generative AI.

“AI ought to assist artists, not exchange them,” writes Seton in his open letter. “With the panorama altering quickly, if there is a chance to make use of generative AI for the good thing about our human artists, we might make this chance out there to our human artists with their express consent, by way of an opt-in mechanism. We do not know what we do not know, and we now have a duty to offer our human artists the alternatives, selections and management to advance their artistic journeys. We’re making a proper dedication that any use of AI on SoundCloud can be based mostly on consent, transparency, and artist management.”

In his letter, Seton provides that SoundCloud up to date its phrases of use in February 2024 to make clear the way it makes use of AI to enhance the location’s suggestions, search, playlisting, content material tagging, and instruments that assist stop fraud. “Our use of AI is targeted on discovery—serving to followers discover new music and serving to artists develop, beginning with their first followers,” writes Seton. “Extra broadly, we use AI to establish rising expertise, personalize the platform expertise, and assist real-time customer support, all designed to assist human artists and have interaction actual followers.”

SoundCloud has implemented a collection of generative AI merchandise over the previous 12 months and a half, every designed to help with music manufacturing and distribution. In 2022, the corporate laid off roughly 20% of its workforce because of claims of current financial adjustments. AI firms have been on the receiving finish of several lawsuits this decade, too, for infringing on copyrighted works within the coaching of their AI fashions.