What can you do when your deeply personal music about painful experiences is scraped for parts? Fight, says Vera Ellen.<\/p>\n
This story mentions suicide. Please take care.<\/p>\n
On her recent European tour dates, Vera Ellen saved one special song to play near the end of each set. \u201cI\u2019ve been performing \u2018Broadway Junction<\/a>\u2019 a lot on this tour,\u201d Ellen says. Taken from her Taite Prize-winning 2024 album\u00a0Ideal Home Noise,\u00a0that song is about giving up. \u201cI wanted to jump in Broadway Junction \/ Feel the tracks against my back,\u201d sings Ellen. \u201cTo be super blunt, I was suicidal,\u201d she told\u00a0RNZ<\/a>\u00a0about that song\u2019s inspiration. On this tour, Ellen finds \u2018Broadway Junction\u2019 carries a different vibe. \u201cI\u2019m revisiting those feelings in this healing space with an audience,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s been very emotional seeing how that song connects to other people \u2013 and who has been in that space.\u201d<\/p>\n That song, and others from\u00a0Ideal Home Noise, have been taken by AI, says Ellen. Many other Aotearoa artists recently found out their songs had been taken too. That\u2019s thanks to The Atlantic\u2019s\u00a0AI Watchdog<\/a> tool, launched to reveal \u201cthe books, videos and other media used by the world\u2019s most powerful tech companies to train their AI models\u201d. Search that database and you\u2019ll find dozens of Aotearoa artists and hundreds of songs: 43 by Aldous Harding, 47 by Che Fu, 60 by Lorde, 90 by Marlon Williams, 111 by Bic Runga and 127 by Shihad. \u201cNo permission. No licence. No payment. These are not bargaining chips, they are the life\u2019s work of\u2026 New Zealand songwriters,\u201d says APRA AMCOS chief executive Dean Ormston in a statement titled \u201cProof of Theft\u201d.<\/p>\n Ellen found out earlier on her tour when she woke up in Budapest to an email telling her that her songs may have been taken. She took to Instagram from her hotel room, posting a fiery video<\/a>. \u201cI am so exhausted,\u201d she says in that clip. \u201cBillion dollar companies quite happily take our creativity, take our life experience, put that in their pocket and give us a little crumb\u2026 We can\u2019t keep rolling over and being exploited like this. We need to protect ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Ellen told me use of her most intimate songs was especially troubling. \u201cThe idea of someone extracting this very personal [and] deep human experience and using it for its parts\u2026 there\u2019s a responsibility that isn\u2019t there. It\u2019s a very sensitive subject and not necessarily something I trust a machine to handle.\u201d<\/p>\n She isn\u2019t the only one speaking out. In a recent TVNZ interview, Bic Runga railed against AI datasets taking \u201cwaiata, reo M\u0101ori and haka\u201d then spitting them back out in deformed ways. \u201cI do worry that if we outsource all our creative disciplines to a machine, our brains will just get a little bit dim,\u201d Runga said. Kane Strang is also appalled, finding 24 of his solo songs and another 12 from his band Office Dog in The Atlantic\u2019s search engine. \u201cWe\u2019re climbing a broken ladder,\u201d Strang writes in\u00a0a recent Substack post<\/a>. \u201cHow was AI ever going to benefit working songwriters in the long term? How can you feed music to an AI developer and it not take something away from the artist?\u2026 We need to tear this whole thing down.\u201d<\/p>\n In Australia,\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0reports AI companies have promised to commit more than $50 billion in datacentre investment and establish a $350 million fund for creatives in exchange for weaker copyright laws. One senator describes this as \u201cthe ultimate dirty deal\u201d. Artists are outraged. \u201cHumans should be telling our stories, ones that come from deep thinking about our experiences and how we process them, not from data aggregations,\u201d Powderfinger\u2019s Bernard Fanning told The Guardian. \u201cAs musicians we are appalled that our life\u2019s work has been stolen from us,\u201d Spiderbait\u2019s Jane English told the publication. \u201cWe haven\u2019t given consent or been compensated, it\u2019s just been swiped. How is this fair?\u201d Proving theft, however, is tricky. \u201cThink of these databases like the map to a safe filled with gold. Having the map itself is fine; stealing the gold is when the law is broken,\u201d reports\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Discussions appear to be less advanced in Aotearoa. In its recent\u00a0Music & AI<\/a>\u00a0report, APRA\u2019s Ormston calls for a regulatory foundation to uphold the rights of creators. The overwhelming majority of musicians want \u201cattention, consent, credit, transparency and remuneration\u201d if their work is used by generative AI, he says. Ellen says she\u2019s standing up and saying something on behalf of the hundreds of musicians in this country because of the lack of copyright protections. \u201cI\u2019m concerned for myself, my friends, my nieces and nephews and future generations,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s very disturbing. I feel very impassioned to learn and do something about this because I feel like we have to, and this is the moment to.\u201d<\/p>\n Vera Ellen\u2019s new album Heaven Knows What Time is\u00a0out now<\/a>;\u00a0she\u2019s on tour in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article was originally published on Chris Schulz\u2019 Substack, Boiler Room<\/a>.<\/p>\n Helplines and support
Suicide Crisis Helpline<\/a> \u2013 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO). If you, or someone you know, may be thinking about suicide, call for support from a trained counsellor.
Youthline<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 free text 234, call 0800 376 633, webchat at youthline.co.nz, DM on Instagram @youthlinenz, message on Whats App 09 886 56 96. For young people and their parents, wh\u0101nau and friends.
Helpline available 24\/7, webchat 10am \u2013 10pm.
Lifeline<\/a> \u2013 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP)\u00a0Here to listen and help.
Samaritans<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Free call 0800 726 666 for support for anyone who is lonely or in distress (24\/7).<\/p>\n