RIAA targets popular AI Hub Discord over copyright infringement

The Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) has set its sights on the ‘AI Hub’ Discord server and its 142,000 members. AI Hub is a repository of AI tools, tips, and guides, many of which have applications in music.

Alongside readymade tools that allow users to clone the voices of Eminem, Jeff Buckley, Bruno Mars, Frank Sinatra Rihanna, and dozens of others are how-to guides like “Making AI Song Covers.”

For now, AI Hub remains live on Discord. Some specific voice modules have been taken down, but that hasn’t stopped users from reuploading them like the deleted Frank Sinatra voice module pictured above was on Thursday morning.

Laws that might govern AI are outdated, leaving the creation of tools like this and their private use a legal grey area, even if their public use is widely seen as infringement. But much like their ongoing battle with sites designed to rip music from YouTube, the RIAA’s new battle targets the enablers.

In a letter to Discord obtained by TorrentFreak, the RIAA demands that AI Hub take action immediately, including:

• “remove and/or disable access to this Discord server.”
• “remove the files or links from your system, including any mirrored or duplicate copies of those files or links, and/or that you disable all access to the infringing files and associated links.”
• “inform the server operator/s and the uploader/ to that server(s), as applicable, of the illegality of their conduct.”

The RIAA has also obtained a DMCA subpoena that requires Discord to identify the alleged infringers.

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.