Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a new deal focused on creating an “ethical” baseline model for AI music generation. It has a partnership with a company called Klay Vision, which is developing a “large music model” called KLayMM and plans to launch a product out of stealth mode within a few months. Ary Attie, its founder and CEO, said the company believes “the next Beatles will play with KLAY.”
The pair say the model will work “in collaboration with the music industry and its creators,” without giving many details about how, while Klay plans to make music AI “more than a short-lived gimmick.”
This is how the companies explain their common goals:
Developing generative AI music models with ethical and full respect for copyright, naming and likeness rights will dramatically reduce the threat to human creators and provide the greatest opportunity for change that opens up significant new avenues for creativity and future copyright monetization.
How What They Are Working On Will Impact Human Artists:
KLAY is developing a global ecosystem to host AI-driven experiences and content, including accurate attribution, and will not compete with artist catalogs on traditional music services.
UMG's new partnership comes as the company is embroiled in lawsuits against AI music generator websites and Anthropic. In May, the company ended a brief standoff with TikTok by signing a new licensing agreement that covered, among other things, AI-generated music.
Klay will also be led by Chief Content Officer Thomas Hesse, who was previously President of Sony Music Entertainment. Former Google Deepmind researcher Björn Winckler, who led the development of Google's Lyria AI music model, is joining the company as head of research.