Meta protects music from AI

Meta and Universal Music Group (UMG) first formed a partnership in 2017, to allow Meta (then, Facebook) users to add music from UMG’s catalog of songs to their posts to prevent copyright infringement.

Now, they’ve expanded this partnership into a global, multi-year agreement that while “further evolving creative and commercial opportunities” for UMG artists and songwriters—by allowing users to share their songs across all of Meta’s platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Horizon, Threads, and, for the first time, WhatsApp)---will also address “unauthorized AI-generated content that could affect artists and songwriters.”

Both have a shared commitment to protecting music creators and artistry and want to make sure that artists and songwriters are compensated fairly.

“We are delighted that Meta shares our artist-centric vision for respecting human creativity and compensating artists and songwriters fairly… and we look forward to continuing to work together to address unauthorized AI-generated content that could affect artists and songwriters so that UMG can continue to protect their rights both now and in the future.”

This comes after UMG had a bust-up with TikTok earlier this year, which saw TikTok remove UMG’s catalog of music from its platform, triggering UMG to make a statement about AI and safety on the platform. It also follows the lawsuit, filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (which represents UMG and others) against music generation startups Udio and Suno, accusing them of using copyrighted songs to train their models.

Meta is clearly taking an ethical approach to AI and music, having previously declared that they only train their AI music-generating models (AudioCraft, MusicGen, and Jasco) with “Meta-owned and specifically licensed music,” paving the way for others within the industry to hopefully follow.