SoundCloud CEO Eliah Seton has today (May 14) published an open letter clarifying the company’s position on AI.
The letter follows backlash that happened last week after AI music expert and founder of Fairly Trained, Ed Newton-Rex, posted about SoundCloud’s terms of service quietly changing in February 2024 to allow the platform the ability to “inform, train, develop or serve as input” to AI models.
In his letter, Seton repeats what SoundCloud shared in a statement last week, noting that the platform “has never used artist content to train AI models. Not for music creation. Not for large language models. Not for anything that tries to mimic or replace your work. Period. We don’t build generative AI tools, and we don’t allow third parties to scrape or use artist content from SoundCloud to train them either.”
The letter then goes on to directly address the 2024 Terms of Services changes, which were done, Seton writes, “to clarify how we may use AI internally to improve the platform for both artists and fans. This includes powering smarter recommendations, search, playlisting, content tagging and tools that help prevent fraud.”
But he acknowledges that “the language in the Terms of Use was too broad and wasn’t clear enough. It created confusion, and that’s on us. That’s why we’re fixing it.” He writes that the company is revising the Terms of Use to make it “absolutely clear” that “SoundCloud will not use your content to train generative AI models that aim to replicate or synthesize your voice, music, or likeness.” He notes that the Terms of Service updates will be reflected online in the coming weeks.
Seton adds that given the rapidly changing landscape, “If there is an opportunity to use generative AI for the benefit of our human artists, we may make this opportunity available to our human artists with their explicit consent, via an opt-in mechanism. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we have a responsibility to give our human artists the opportunities, choices and control to advance their creative journeys.”
Finally, he notes that the platform is “making a formal commitment that any use of AI on SoundCloud will be based on consent, transparency and artist control.”
Read his complete letter here.
