Booking agency Good Intent has apologised after unknowingly including an AI generated artist on the lineup of a Sydney live music event.<\/p>\n
The agency is responsible for booking Mixed Bag, a weekly series featuring emerging artists at Newtown\u2019s Bootleggers. On Wednesday (July 1st), the lineup included The Duke of Randwick, Pillar Lane, and Genevieve, as well as Afro Charles \u2013 whose content was later described as \u201cclearly and blatantly\u201d AI-generated.<\/p>\n
Aidan Sammut, who also played that night, posted a video to Instagram the following day (July 2nd), describing it as a \u201cpretty unfortunate development for live music in Sydney\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt no point was it disclosed to us that we would be playing with an AI artist,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact, we only found out because a member of another band had happened to go through their [Afro Charles\u2019] Instagram account. The account contains AI generated visuals over what I\u2019m fairly certain is AI generated music, lyrics, and vocals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorse still, there was no disclosure on any of the event\u2019s promotional material that it contained an artist that was AI generated. As a musician, it is a complete insult to be put on a lineup with someone who uses technology that can only exist because of the large scale theft of the work of my other fellow human musicians,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
While he acknowledged Good Intent may not have been aware it had booked an AI generated artist, Sammut said he would find it \u201cvery hard to justify paying to attend one of their events in the future\u201d if that proved to be the case.<\/p>\n
Following Sammut\u2019s video, Good Intent and Bootleggers also took to Instagram to apologise. In a joint post, Good Intent\u2019s Rob, who books the Mixed Bag series, said he takes \u201cfull responsibility\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t look at this particular artist\u2019s socials, and their representatives\u2019 communication used wording consistent with genuine artists,\u201d he wrote in the statement. \u201cTheir representative described them to us as a \u2018producer\u2019 who used \u2018live vocals\u2019 in their sets. This person was booked through an agency, who presented themselves as professional. I hadn\u2019t seen them live, but now looking at their socials \u2013 their content is clearly and blatantly AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood Intent and Bootleggers have never knowingly, and will never, book people who use AI to generate music,\u201d the statement continued. \u201cWe\u2019ll ensure we review our vetting processes moving forward, we\u2019d never want to be placed in a position where we\u2019re encouraging the use of AI, and financially supporting the theft from artists on which AI is trained.\u201d<\/p>\n
Good Intent and Bootleggers said they will donate to Support Act to \u201cput [thei] money where [their] mouth is\u201d, and will \u201cmake sure to do better\u201d: \u201cWe don\u2019t support AI, we support genuine artists,\u201d the statement reads.<\/p>\n
The controversy comes as Australia\u2019s music industry ramps up its fight against AI. Last month, reports emerged that millions of Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand musical works<\/a> had been included in four \u201cgiant datasets of songs\u201d used to train AI models without the knowledge, consent or payment of the songwriters, composers and publishers behind them.<\/p>\n In response, artists and industry leaders gathered in Canberra<\/a> this week to urge the Federal Government to uphold Australia\u2019s copyright laws<\/a>, arguing AI companies should not be allowed to train their models on creators\u2019 work without permission or payment.<\/p>\n Artists including Paul Dempsey, Mahalia Barnes, Mark Seymour and Holly Rankin (Jack River) joined industry bodies including ARIA, APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Publishers Association in calling for AI companies to negotiate licensing agreements with creators rather than using copyrighted works without consent.<\/p>\n As Sammut summed up in his video: \u201cLive music must be defended as an avenue for human creative expression. There is no place for generative AI slop in the live music scene. The appeal of live performance is that it is raw, it is passionate, and that it is human.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Booking agency Good Intent has apologised after unknowingly including an AI generated artist on the lineup of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[33673,1131,33674,33675,33676,978,2631,33677,33678,24658,33679,1700,247],"class_list":["post-43411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-afro-charles","tag-ai","tag-ai-generated-music","tag-ai-in-music","tag-aidan-sammut","tag-australian-government","tag-australian-music","tag-australian-songs-ai","tag-bootleggers","tag-copyright","tag-copyright-ai","tag-good-intent","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}