KUALA LUMPUR, May 6 — The Recording Industry Association of Malaysia (RIM) today urged authorities to take immediate action, including by enacting legislation, to regulate the production of music using artificial intelligence (AI).
RIM chairman Rosmin Hashim said the practice poses a significant threat to the sustainability of the local music industry as it could undermine the livelihoods of thousands of local creative professionals.
“One of the main concerns is copyright infringement when AI models are trained using copyrighted music content without the consent of the rights holders. Without clear legislation, creators may find their work exploited without permission or fair compensation.
“Recently, AI technology was used to produce a new version of the song ‘Aku Cinta Padamu’, originally sung by Datuk Seri Siti Nurhaliza, with an artificially generated voice resembling Dayang Nurfaizah. This not only violates copyright law but also raises questions about ownership rights for such music,” he said in a statement.
Rosmin noted that according to a global economic study by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, the global music industry is projected to suffer losses of up to €10 billion (RM47.58 billion) by 2028 due to AI-generated music that does not provide compensation to original creators.
“Creators not only go unpaid when their work is used to train AI models, but their income is affected by competition from AI-generated content itself.
“These losses will be felt across the entire local music ecosystem — including songwriters, singers, musicians, and recording companies — and could lead to significant job losses in the near future,” he said.
Rosmin also said more than 20,000 AI-generated songs are uploaded daily to the music streaming platform Deezer, accounting for nearly 18 per cent of the platform’s total music content.
“If this trend continues, AI-generated music will eventually surpass human-produced content and take over the royalty payments currently earned by human creators across streaming platforms,” he added.
He urged the government to formulate new laws to protect human creativity and intelligence, and to introduce transparency regulations for AI developers, including the mandatory disclosure of copyrighted content used to train AI models.
“This measure is crucial to ensure AI development proceeds ethically and in balance, while continuing to support the creativity and sustainability of the local music culture,” he said.
— Bernama
