Harvey Mason Jr.

Yeah, I think that's the best I can give you because, as you said, certain artists tend to claim ownership differently than others. Also, artists sometimes have publishers or record companies that own pieces of their catalog that tend to be more aggressive than some artists might naturally be. But as you start introducing AI, unless we can understand

where it's coming from, what it's replicating or learning from and trying to simulate, it's going to be really dang hard to figure out where the money needs to go or how the money can flow. I'll tell you one story. I met with the head of the copyright office. She was an amazing woman.

She came to my studio actually and we started pulling up some of the generative AI platforms and I was showing her how it works. This is probably eight months ago. She hadn't really been exposed to a bunch of it and I typed in a few words And we made a track, a song. And I said, is that copyrightable? She says, no, it's not. It has to have human interaction or human involvement.

I said, well, I typed in the prompt. She's like, oh, Harvey, that's not enough. So I took the same track and I typed a response. I said, well, change the key, change the tempo, and change these three lyrics. Then I sent it back to the platform and sent back a new song. I said, now is that copyrightable? She says, no, it's getting closer, but I don't think it's enough. So I did another prompt.

So I did three rounds of prompts. It came back. It was a slightly different song. And she said, okay, I think that's right. I think that's human interaction. So none of this is figured out. The head of the copyright office, who I thought was amazing and incredible, and I love the fact that she was interested and cared enough to come to my studio.

But the fact that we don't have an understanding of how this moves forward and how we protect creators, whether that's the songwriters you mentioned or people that just had catalogs from 20 years ago, we're not going to have good, clean answers until we get those understandings.

The labels are going to have to sue the platforms. If we can advocate –

properly and loudly enough even within the tech platforms throughout the labels and publishers journalists podcasts hosts we can talk about this enough come to an understanding of how this needs to function as confusing as that might be we can start to manage some of it internally you know some same things happened when we started sampling other people's records we had a bunch of hit records that included other people's samples and that ran its course we kind of figured out how it needed to be treated and handled

Same thing with streaming. There's things like people are putting music all over the internet on streaming services, and we've gotten to a place where we're slightly better still work to do there. I believe we'll come to some solutions around AI and how we can all equally or equitably participate in the revenue.

Very different than AI. You're right.

I'm sure it will be messier because it is such a wider reaching issue. But I do think there's a way, maybe I'm overly optimistic in rose-colored glasses, but I think people realize the importance of music, maybe broader, the importance of art and AI has an impact across all the different disciplines of artistry. And if we can

continue to emphasize the value and the importance of it and point out that this has the potential to really be harmful to it. I have to believe in my human heart that anybody would want that to be addressed and would want to come up with a solution that made sense. whether it's the guys you mentioned or heads of other companies, I just think there's a way to do it.

I know everybody's trying to build their companies, make value for their investors and shareholders, and there's a lot of levels to this. But at the base, it's music, man. It is music. We can't have... wild, wild west around copyright and ownership and intellectual property protections.

Stuff needs to be done properly so that we can continue to tell these stories, to have these emotions and the heart and soul behind these songs. Otherwise, what are we doing? We're just going to have the computer make everything? Now, if you look at AI for other things that are... Can you talk to Sam Altman? Because that might be his answer. I'm hoping to, but I have to. He has a favorite artist.

I know he does. He has a band he grew up listening to his whole life in his bedroom while he was programming some computer. He loves somebody. Or he's read a book that mattered, or he saw a piece of art that moved him. Everybody has. Well, maybe not everybody, but most people. So all that to say, I believe in human creativity.

I believe in AI and the power that it has to enhance and amplify human creativity. And there's a way that they can coexist, I believe.

Our members are split. There's a lot of members that say AI is the devil. Don't put it in the house. And they... are fearful, rightfully so. And then there's another group of our members that are really excited about the power, the potential of AI. And they're all in. They're creating, using it. They're doing everything they can using AI. And neither side is wrong.

And again, the beauty of music or art or creativity, everybody creates differently. So my role is a difficult one. It's to try and serve our membership and our music community fairly and and in a way that allows for a bright future for our creators, whether that's using AI or whether that's limiting AI or making sure there's guidelines around AI.

It's to be determined, but my focus when I wake up is to make sure our human creativity is healthy, it's allowed to endure, and we can continue to make a living. We have a whole group of people who make their money, their living. They pay their rent and take care of their kids by creating art.

And we have another generation that's coming up that wants to do the same thing because they know how we express ourselves. We know how music can sometimes heal and unite people. I was on a plane the other day, and there was a woman sitting next to me, a couple seats over, on a laptop. She was crying. I thought she was typing a letter to somebody. She was programming in Logic.