As some of you know, I’m leading the writing on a forthcoming deep dive article (maybe multi-part) on ethics of generative AI for music for our “6Ps in AI Pods” publication. 

While I’m writing tonight, I’ve been mufti-tasking: using my laptop with a CD reader to ‘rip’ music from physical CDs I bought years ago, so I can put it on my phone and enjoy it.

Ripping for personal use is hardly a new use case, and I’m comfortable that this is both legal and ethical. That controversy is long over and I’m even using the far-from-new Windows Legacy Media Player in Win11 to rip & save the MP3s. 

Nonetheless, it feels oddly ironic to be doing this while working on the article, and writing about fair & unfair use, and reading FTC warnings about what consumers ‘own’ (and whether they have a right to know if it’s authentically human-made or machine-generated). Maybe it’s the overlap between the English words ‘rip’ and ‘rip-off’ that feels weird? 

Anyway, I came across a note tonight on an FTC page that “Sir Paul McCartney … has been using AI himself for artistic ends”. I’m really intrigued by that, and eager to look into what he’s doing … but trying not to let myself get too distracted from tonight’s writing goal. Do any of you AI and/or music aficionados happen to know what Sir Paul may be doing with AI?