Background:

Artists biggest rivals.... are their robot clones?

Over the past few years, the music and film industries had their biggest fight in a generation.
It wasn’t against a rival music or film studio…it was against technology that can clone your voice, steal your face, and recreate you without ever asking.
AI can now reconstruct an actor's face or clone a voice from just a few audio clips...it can also insert a performer into scenes they never filmed or add a musician's voice to an album they never even recorded.
Which means you could wake up tomorrow to discover Harry Styles has released three albums overnight - without him even waking up. AI can execute that formula in under two seconds… pretty much for free.
Get this: an anonymous producer called Ghostwriter dropped a song called "Heart on My Sleeve" using AI clones of Drake and The Weeknd's vocals. And it went viral.
This even led the Grammy CEO saying that cloned vocals aren’t Grammy-eligible.
And in 2024, Tom Hanks personally warned his Instagram followers that that AI-generated ads using his likeness to sell dental plans and "miracle cures"... were entirely fake and made without his consent.

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Where we're at today:

AI's making music... and you might not have even realised you're listening to it

The technology to replicate actors and music exists already... and you might've not even noticed.

Get this: in a blind test of 9,000 respondents, 97% could not tell the difference between a human-made track and an AI-generated one.

And it’s growing. The global AI music market hit $5.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach approximately $60 billion by 2034.
And AI-generated music could account for 20% of global streaming revenue by 2028.

In film, studios are already using digital doubles and AI voice replication. The late James Dean, who passed away in 1955, was cast in a war film in 2023.
And from a pure commercial perspective for film studios, this is the dream. There are no scheduling conflicts, no diva behaviour, no lead actor going on a podcast and requiring a PR crisis team by Monday.
But from an artist's perspective…it’s an absolute nightmare.
In Australia, the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA) warned that without protection, 23% of Australian creators' revenue (over $519 million) would be at risk from AI by 2028.

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Where to from here:

If you can't beat them, take a cut of them

The growth in AI platforms that develop music and film aren’t going away.
The major labels are across this. For example, Warner Music Group, the label behind Lady Gaga, Coldplay, The Weeknd and Sabrina Carpenter sued Suno (the music-generating AI platform) for copyright infringement.
And then shortly after, Warner’s CEO announced that they had settled the lawsuit and signed a new partnership with Suno.
Translation? If you can't beat them, take a cut of them.
So, it’s looking like the winners in this new world are the artists and studios who got to the table first.
And the losers are likely the independent artists and voiceover actors with no union and no legal team.
But while AI can write a song that sounds exactly like your favourite artist, it can’t make you feel emotionally connected.
Because the feeling of screaming Cruel Summer with 100,000 strangers at the MCG... is one AI can't touch.