Following a wave of criticism from musicians and human rights activists, the SoundCloud platform has publicly stated that it has not used and does not plan to use artists' work to train generative artificial intelligence without explicit consent. The company is updating its terms of service.
Following a wave of criticism from musicians and human rights activists, the SoundCloud platform has publicly stated that it has not used and does not plan to use artists' work to train generative artificial intelligence without explicit consent. The company is updating its terms of service.
On May 14, 2025, SoundCloud CEO Elijah Seton published an open letter in which he acknowledged that the wording in the terms of service, updated in February 2024, was too broad and confusing for artists. The clause in question was that user-uploaded content could be «used to inform, educate, or service artificial intelligence technologies» — without separate consent.
This wording caused a wave of outrage, as it could mean allowing tracks to be used to train generative models capable of imitating the music, voice or style of artists. Some musicians even threatened to leave the platform.
SoundCloud says it has never used artists’ content for such purposes. The company also does not allow third-party developers or services to scrape (massively collect) music for training models. To protect the content, the platform has introduced a special «no AI» marking — it clearly signals that the track cannot be used for AI training.
The new wording, which will soon appear in the terms of use, will read: «We will not use your content to train generative AI models that imitate or synthesize your voice, music, or image without your explicit consent, provided through an opt-in mechanism.»
This move is not related to the rejection of AI in general — SoundCloud actively uses machine learning for recommendations, fraud prevention, content personalization, search optimization, analytics, etc. As Seton emphasized, AI helps promote the creativity of «living» artists, but does not replace it. Thus, thanks to the First Fans tool, based on AI recommendations, the company has already transferred over 7 million tracks to new listeners.
In 2022, SoundCloud acquired Musiio, a startup specializing in music analysis using neural networks. Since then, the platform has been integrating AI more deeply into the processes of music distribution and discovery of new talent.
However, not everyone finds the new wording transparent. Ed Newton-Rex, a technoethicist who first pointed out the TOS flaw, believes the changes still leave «loopholes.» He says a model can still train on tracks that don’t mimic a particular artist’s style but still «compete with them in the marketplace.» He suggests simpler wording: «We won’t train any models on your content without consent.»
While SoundCloud claims to be «artist-centric,» the final version of its new terms of service will show how deeply the company is prepared to protect the interests of musicians in the age of AI.
However, artificial intelligence cannot always fully and completely fulfill the tasks set before it. Our news feed published an article about how the Swedish company Klarna is bringing real support operators back to work. Their CEO admitted that excessive reliance on artificial intelligence has reduced the quality of service.
https://www.technology.org/2025/07/08/ai-chrome-extensions-the-business-tool-leading-companies-cant-ignore/