We Make Noise's Position on AI
AI Manifesto
For most of history, the youth have had a reputation for being champions of new technologies. From the computer to the internet, Walkmans, iPods, iPhones, the list goes on. But it all seems to come to a screeching halt, particularly with AI. Graduation season was met with viral video after viral video of AI advocates and CEOs being booed off the stage during their commencement speeches. We’ve all met someone who’s bought a dumb phone. In New York, there’s even a modern Luddite movement taking shape.
Regardless of your stance on AI, there’s no denying that it is permeating the music industry. And it's not just SUNO. More and more, the platforms millions of people use to share and listen to music are using this technology. Spotify has been flooding its platform with AI musicians; SoundCloud silently updated its Terms and Conditions to allow AI training, etc.
Here are some words from our Executive Director Erin Barra on We Make Noise’s positioning on the current state of AI as it relates to our community of women and gender-expansive musicians:
We are in the midst of a revolution. Not a trend or product cycle - a revolution on the scale of the one that transformed labor and industry two centuries ago, and one that may leave a comparable mark on the planet. This one is technological, and it will reach every industry, every job title, every level of work, ours included. Nothing about how we conceptualize, create, refine, teach, distribute, and earn a living will be left untouched. But the pain of what's coming will not be shouldered equally. We exist to serve the female and gender-expansive professionals in the music industry (and beyond), and they will absorb the worst of it. Pretending otherwise isn't an option we get to take.
We should know this pattern better than most industries do, because we've lived it so many times already. We got dragged into FM radio. We got dragged into every new physical format that came along. Then file sharing arrived, and the industry's answer was to sue its own listeners instead of building something better. Streaming came next, and we spent a decade fighting the terms instead of shaping them. By the time we agreed to play along, the money had already moved to whoever owned the pipeline. Every time, the industry treated change as something to survive rather than lead. And every time, it wasn't the executives who paid for that delay. It was the musicians, the assistants, the session players, the artists without a lawyer on retainer, the people with no leverage to begin with - the people this organization exists to put leverage behind.
So we hold space for multiple truths at once, and we refuse to let go of any.
The first truth: AI technologies are already omnipresent, and our community cannot afford to standby. History has a pattern. New technology gets designed by a few, released to everyone, and the people who were never in the room absorb the harm and get none of the say. Women, gender-expansive people, queer people, and people of color have lived that pattern before. We will not sit it out again. Fluency is leverage. To influence what a tool becomes, you have to be close enough to touch it and loud enough to name its flaws where the people building it can hear you. We intend to be that close, and that loud. (We Make Noise!!!)
The second truth: Many of these tools were built on our work, without our consent. They were trained on music, writing, and art that no one licensed or paid for. They threaten the way our people earn a living and the way our industry has run for a century. The guardrails that would protect our community do not exist yet. The government is not coming to save us. None of this is softened by how useful the technology is.
The third truth: We hear it. Underneath the criticism, the outcry, and every argument happening right now about this technology, there is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of being harmed. Fear of being taken from. Fear of losing our humanity and intelligence. Fear of causing irreparable damage to our planet and species. Fear for a future none of us chose. While some say the fear is an overreaction, we believe it is the correct response to watching an industry get remade by people who never took the time to ask us what we thought or needed. We are not here to talk anyone out of being afraid. But fear, on its own, has never protected anyone. Outrage burns hot and burns out, and while it does, the tools keep hitting the market, the contracts keep changing, and the decisions keep getting made without us. Feeling the fear is not the same as answering it. We intend to do both.
All of these statements are true. Holding them together is not contradictory. This stance is an honest position for an organization like ours.
We are here to be fully present and assertive, standing strong and addressing the issues directly instead of turning away or ignoring them. Present enough to have real influence over what these tools become. Vigilant enough to say plainly when they are extractive, unaccountable, or built on theft.
Our mission has always been to move gender equity forward through music and technology. That mission does not pause because the technology got harder to trust; it sharpens. If the next era of tools is going to be built, our community belongs in the building of it, not just in dealing with the cleanup after.
Throughout this year, we have been gathering data about AI usage at our writing and production sessions. This data is both qualitative and quantitative, rooted in the perspectives of our community, who are in the trenches doing the work. We are also working with world-class researchers, Digital Fems, who have spent years working at the intersection of gender studies, technology, and music. We intend to publish what we learn. The evidence we bring to this conversation will come from the practitioners themselves, the people this industry studies last and consults never.
We are walking into this with our eyes open. We aren’t certain how it ends, but we intend to be in the rooms where the decisions get made. We have built a voice for exactly this, and we intend to use it.
Here are some resources to help inform and protect our community
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ArtyShield link:
Independent Societies of Musicians
Responsible ways to integrate AI into music
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