Timbaland is committed to getting the world to get on board with his artificial intelligence ventures, but he may have gone a bridge too far with his recent action. The 53-year-old producer got blasted on social media for using a producer’s beat and producer tag to train the A.I. platform Suno.
Timbo previewed a demo record, which utilized a beat and tag made by K. Fresh and lyrics from a TikTok creator. He sought to make a new version of their song, but users quickly noticed that they were a bit too similar. They called out the Virginia producer for using real music made by human beings to train A.I. without crediting or paying them.
“Timbaland seems hellbent on torching his legacy,” one X user wrote. “I don’t know what Suno is paying him, but no amount of money is worth changing how the world remembers you forever.” Another user emphasized the importance of getting permission for something like this. “At the bare minimum there needs to be consent,” they wrote. “AI usage without that is theft. Musicians already gotta deal with enough of that.”
K. Fresh eventually jumped into the conversation and showed the process of how he made the beat and connected with the TikTok creator. “People keep sending me this. I still don’t even know what to think about it,” he wrote on Instagram with two thinking emojis. “A little chain of events if you will.”
Timbaland doubled down, focusing on his ability to show what A.I. was capable of. “[I’m] showing the power of a tool and how powerful it is,” he wrote. “How it can flip songs to do remixes.” He also mentioned how Ghostface Killah had contacted him to use the beat, perhaps as a way to lighten the severity of what he did, and revealed that he reached out to K. Fresh to get his consent. “I don’t get nothing from that, but that post said, ‘Yo God can you send me that beat?’” said on Instagram Live. “That ain’t my beat.”
Several producers have spoken on Timbaland’s AI use over the last few weeks, especially after he announced an A.I. label, his first signee TaTa, and his new genre “A-pop.” Swizz Beatz stood up for his Verzuz collaborator, stressing the importance of Black creators getting into the A.I. mix since white creators were already doing it.
“I’m happy that Tim is into A.I.,” Swizz Beatz said during a live stream featuring Timbo, Young Guru, and 19Keys. “Because all the white people in it. Why we can’t get in it? I don’t care how. It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish. So this is Tim’s entry point into A.I. Whether we like it or not, it’s an entry point.” Swizz did emphasize the need for Timbo to be transparent and inform people, because even he was blindsided by the news.
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