Researchers developed a “harmony mask” to prevent illegal copying of music

Artificial intelligence need huge amounts of data for learning and development work.

Texts that are protected by copyright have almost inevitably been included. In particular, the big software houses use everything that moves online as material.

The same laws apply when copying music. It is more difficult for musicians to fight against illegal copying.

Only large content producers have the resources to sue large companies that produce new AIs. Small content producers will suffer.

Now, one counterattack has been developed for copying. It ruins the music being copied.

The listener doesn’t notice anything, because low sound waves have been floated along. The human ear cannot hear them.

Counter strike researchers from the University of Tennessee and Knoxville and Lehigh University in the United States began. They developed a new tool for the web.

They gave it to it named HarmonyCloak. It translates to, for example, the word “harmony cover”. It allows musicians to try to protect their work.

In the accordion cover, a new layer is embedded in your own music, which contains a lot of noise.

Human ears cannot detect low noise, but artificial intelligence cannot remove it from the audio data being copied.

Project homepage present the method. There are samples of chapels that have been “messed up” with the help of a blanket.

Noise can be embedded in any musical piece, say the creators. The cover always remains below the human hearing threshold, writes the website New Atlas.

Harmoniapeite is based on the fact that artificial intelligence models cannot figure out which parts of music are fundamental and which are not. It can’t ignore some parts of the song.

Similar tools are already in use for images that have been illegally copied. Watermarks have slowly started to be added to the pictures. It exposes abuse.

Practiced artificial intelligence can already produce a plain and soulless song. It doesn’t sound crazier in silos, for example, when it’s heard in the background, for example as so-called elevator music.

Harmoniepeite, on the other hand, produces such confusing music that it is unpleasant to listen to.

The developers say that the harmony mask always spoils the music a little differently with each song. The AI ​​would have to know all the songs properly to crack the mask’s code.

The mask can also produce a noise that affects several songs in the same way.

In this case, the original creation is protected from all artificial intelligences that try to copy it – even from artificial intelligences that haven’t even been developed yet, say the creators.

Time shows if the veil of harmony can be broken.

University researchers present in the spring at the IEEE meetinghow the cover was made. The method of production has not yet been announced.

IEEE is an international organization of electrical and electronic engineers. The meeting focuses on security and privacy.