{"id":100112,"date":"2025-10-27T06:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T06:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/100112\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T06:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T06:51:07","slug":"poison-pill-aims-to-protect-music-from-unlicensed-ai-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/100112\/","title":{"rendered":"Poison Pill aims to protect music from unlicensed AI training"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, poison pills were what spies carried with them in case they wanted to commit suicide rather than be captured. In the financial world, meanwhile, a poison pill is a tactic that companies can use to fend off hostile takeovers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the music\/tech sphere, though, Poison Pill<\/a> is a new startup based in the UK that is building technology to help music companies fight back against unlicensed AI training by \u201cpoisoning\u201d their own music. It launched in beta last week, and is also a finalist in our 2025 Music Ally SI:X startups contest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest venture from Ben Bowler, whose previous startups include Chew\u00b7tv and Aux. While the exact details of how Poison Pill\u2019s technology works are necessarily secret, he talked to Music Ally about the bigger picture, and who the service is aimed at.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost musicians are pissed about the current state of AI in music: well-funded companies are scraping music without permission, creating services that claim to replace them. Streaming services with AI-filled playlists. AI music is taking over previous money makers like sync,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why, as a first step, Poison Pill is open to independent artists who want to stick it to these AI companies. Our aim is to protect 20% of independent music. With this poisoned music out there, we can shift the power dynamic and bring AI firms to the negotiating table for fair licensing of training data for independent musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

How exactly does the company \u2018poison\u2019 the music? It\u2019s all about \u2018adversarial noise algorithms\u2019 \u2013\u00a0one of the techniques that researchers have designed to disrupt AI models.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt exploits how AI models learn to recognise genre, instruments, etc, by identifying highly specific sound features: finding shortcuts based on their training to make predictions quickly,\u201d is how Bowler explained it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never know exactly what these features are, but imagine that the model detects indie music by looking for a certain resonance pattern made when a guitar string is plucked, and classical music by looking for a different resonance found in wind instruments,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can use this nature of AI against itself by subtly adding low-level noise to an indie track that closely matches what the model expects classical music to contain. The level of this noise is so subtle that humans cannot hear it, but AI, which relies on these shortcuts, will quickly mistake your indie track for classical.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Bowler, this is disruptive because if GenAI models are being trained to produce music based on text prompts, they need to accurately understand the genre and instrumentation of the tracks they are learning from.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf suddenly many tracks are embedded with these attacks, future versions of these models will start generating random styles, seriously disrupting their usefulness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The pitch sounds appealing, but can it really work? Or rather, won\u2019t AI companies spot the technology being used and develop ways around it? Bowler acknowledged the potential for that, but said that it does not negate the value of using Poison Pill\u2019s technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe protections are difficult to detect and remove entirely, but yes, AI companies can reduce their impact. Importantly, the system doesn\u2019t need to be perfect to effectively change the power balance between creators and scrapers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs more music incorporates ever-evolving Poison Pill protection, the cost for these companies to identify and address these protections increases progressively. These companies depend on the fact they can quickly and cheaply process large volumes of music,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they have to check and re-process every track before training new versions of their models, paying a fair price to license clean music becomes a far better option.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poison Pill\u2019s service is now available in its beta, with Bowler saying that the startup is now focusing on continuing to improve its protection algorithm, applying new attacks and testing how well it works against different AI systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond that, we are exploring how other creators: photographers, artists, and filmmakers could also use this technology to safeguard their work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The company is currently bootstrapped (self-funded), but Bowler said that Poison Pill has already attracted interest from several potential investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdditionally, we are in discussions with potential partners, such as labels and larger rights holders, to provide API access to our technology for the protection of larger catalogues,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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