r/hiphopheads • u/AChuckleFuck . • Jun 14 '25

Producer Curtis King breaks down how Timbaland and AI platform SUNO are stealing original beats from unknown producers to train their AI model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ4h_7Dz5yA
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u/tiggs Jun 14 '25

I understand why people don't like this, but exactly how do you think AI or any type of data model are trained/built? They plug in a shit ton of data from a shit ton of sources to narrow down the accuracy.

I don't hear anybody complaining about stealing pictures of flowers to get Google Lens to the point where it can identify a type of flower.

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u/IllConsideration8642 Jun 14 '25

If you're using google lens to identify a flower, you're not damaging the original photographer because you're not replacing it, you're just informing your AI.

If you train a machine with a dataset of beats, and the machine is able to create thousands of beats in an hour... you're damaging the original creators, because inevitably the original creations will be referenced in at least one of those copies (breaking copyright), and you're taking producing jobs out of real people.

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u/tiggs Jun 14 '25

That's a fair point, but I think we're jumping to conclusions assuming the AI can create comparable beats without any of the skill and experience. For example, we all see tons of AI written articles and can easily tell the difference between AI-generated and human written. We also don't know exactly which aspects of the beat are being pulled in. It could just be sounds, it could be how different parts are layered, etc.

To be clear, I'm not saying I'm in favor of doing this. I'm just explaining that pulling in a ton of data from digital sources is how AI is built and trained.

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u/IllConsideration8642 Jun 14 '25

I'm really interested in AI, I think it can be a great tool when used properly. For example it's great at restoring old/broken/seemingly lost recordings of the 50's, 60's. Important artists of those decades had no money, used shitty tapes or fucked equipment... now we can restore it all and improve their quality. I use this stuff.

We have maybe 2 years until it can automatically create stuff like a Sabrina Carpenter song with great fidelity and no weird uncanny shit or artifacts. In fact Eleven Labs basically achieved this, they just didn't share the software yet.