AI Music is Everywhere. Is it Legal?

Oct 21, 2025

Ed Newton Rex, a classical composer and former Stability AI music team lead, dives into the controversial world of AI-generated music. He argues that these creations often mirror existing art, blurring the lines of copyright and creativity. Ed discusses the legality of training AI on copyrighted works, labeling it as theft, and emphasizes the need for fair compensation through licensing. He warns of the broader cultural impact if AI takes over art and advocates for a new humanist movement to preserve authentic creativity.

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ANECDOTE

Leaving Over Licensing Principles

Ed Newton-Rex left Stability AI after discovering the company wouldn't license music used to train models.
He quit on principle and then campaigned for creators to be fairly compensated.

INSIGHT

Fair Use Isn’t A Blanket Defense

AI companies claim training on copyrighted work is protected by fair use under U.S. law.
Ed argues fair use is context-specific and often doesn't apply when AI competes with original creators.

INSIGHT

Market Harm Is Central To Fair Use

One fair use factor weighs the effect on the market and potential value of original works.
Ed believes training models that output competing music plainly harms creators' markets.

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AI art is everywhere now. According to the music streaming platform Deezer, 18 per cent of the songs being uploaded to the site are AI-generated. Some of this stuff is genuinely cool and original – the kind of work that makes you rethink what art is, or what it could become.

But there are also songs that sound like Drake, cartoons that look like The Simpsons, and stories that read like Game of Thrones. In other words, AI-generated work that’s clearly riffing on – or outright mimicking – other people’s art. Art that, in most of the world, is protected by copyright law. Which raises an obvious question: how is any of this legal?

The AI companies claim they’re allowed to train their models on this work without paying for it, thanks to the “fair use” exception in American copyright law. But Ed Newton Rex has a different view: he says it’s theft.

Newton Rex is a classical music composer who spent the better part of a decade building an AI music generator for a company called Stability AI. But when he realized the company – and most of the AI industry – didn’t intend to license the work they were training their models on, he quit. He has been on a mission to get the industry to fairly compensate creators ever since. I invited him on the show to explain why he believes this is theft at an industrial scale – and what it means for the human experience when most of our art isn’t made by humans anymore, but by machines.

Mentioned:

A.I. Is Coming for Culture, by Josha Rothman (The New Yorker)

Machines Like Us is produced by Mitchell Stuart. Our theme song is by Chris Kelly. Host direction by Athena Karkanis. Video editing by Emily Graves. Our executive producer is James Milward. Special thanks to Angela Pacienza and the team at The Globe and Mail. Media sourced from BBC News.

Support for Machines Like Us is provided by CIFAR and the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

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