The legal spat between the Marvin Gaye estate and UK singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran is dominating the copyright headlines this week. A less glamorous but possibly more significant story lies in reports of music industry behemoth Universal Music Group’s attempts to clamp down on AI-generated music distributed via streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music.

UMG is seeking to prevent AI content engines from learning how to ‘compose’ by scraping material under its copyright. The company, which controls roughly a third of the international music business, is concerned that AI bots are ‘scraping’ their songs to train themselves to create ‘sound-alike’ music in the style of a particular artist or composer.

Universal Music Publishing GmbH, Berlin.

AI-generated songs have been generating significant listener interest among streamers in recent months and UMG, home to artists including Taylor Swift and Elton John and which owns a very extensive classical music catalogue, has been active in ordering hosts to remove AI-generated content it believes is infringing on its rights.

A notable example is the AI-generated “Heart on My Sleeve” by TikTok user Ghostwriter977, which draws on musicians including Drake and The Weeknd. The song...