Generative Artificial Intelligence… sheer idiocy

There will be only one ultimate winner, and it will hold economic and political power unprecedented in human history.

A handful of mega-companies are therefore locked in a frantic competition, investing hundreds of billions in this mad race. And states, legitimately fearing future technological dependence on a rival power, each back a national champion.

In this frantic context, regulation carries little weight. Pro-AI lobbies work at every level to avoid brakes. Security, protection of democracy, human rights, and copyright—which should be priorities—become secondary variables whose impact must be minimized so as not to slow growth. Any form of regulation is seen as a backward reflex against sacred technological progress and patriotic fervor.

In this logic we observe that the emergence of generative AI in music is totally uncontrolled. We, a record label that has supported artists for 20 years, watch this upheaval in stunned silence. Everything we collectively built, notably in the name of cultural exception, is clearly threatened. And yet no measures are being taken. We are well aware that it will be difficult to counter this tsunami, given how weak the will to regulate is.

Not only is there no regulation, but we are asked to feed the beast. Following the majors, the independent distributors’ association MERLIN has just negotiated a deal with Udio on the use of indie catalogs to train their AIs.

Some independent producers are about to accept, out of fatalism or for profit—or both. For us, a red line has been crossed.

To reassure us, we are promised transparency, but we have never obtained any transparency about Big Tech’s algorithms and we know very well that Americans put business interests first. We are also promised fair compensation but, even if that were the case, we do not want it.

We will not collaborate in this circus.

We refuse to have what artists spent a lifetime mastering melted into billions of data points and “spat back out” as artificial music by Udio, Suno, or another. We refuse that music and, more broadly, art be reduced to a flow vomited by robots for the sole purpose of fattening a unicorn.

This is not the world we want. Neither for our children, nor for all the children of the world who dream of one day picking out a few guitar notes. Because then, how can we pass on learning, effort, composition techniques, the taste for musical practice, and the social bonds it creates?

We believe in the power of artists over our imagination, our way of being in the world, our well‑being and mental health. We believe in the major impact of their work on our lives, and we want to continue caring for it.

We believe that creation—and the technique inherent to it—is a human miracle that must be fiercely protected and passed on to future generations.

We therefore refuse any use of our catalog to train AIs.