It seems that SoundCloud has clandestinely tweaked its terms of use, now enabling the company to utilize user-uploads to its platform for the advancement of its AI technology.

Tech ethicist Ed Newton-Rex took notice of this minor change and saw that the revised situations offer SoundCloud the liberty to use uploaded audio to develop and refine its AI systems.

As the newly devised terms assert, “You openly agree that your content may be used as an asset to inform, train and develop artificial intelligence technologies integral to our services,” with the most recent amendments taking effect on February 7th.

The updated terms seem to suggest that SoundCloud can now use our music uploads to train their AI system. In my opinion, they owe us some explanations about this.

The revised terms, however, make an exception for content subject to "separate agreements" with third-party rights holders, such as record labels. SoundCloud has numerous licensing agreements in place with indie labels, as well as some major music publishers, namely Universal Music and Warner Music Group.

At the time of speaking, TechCrunch were unable to locate an explicit opt-out feature in the web settings menu of the platform, and as-yet, there has been no comment from SoundCloud on the matter.

Much like its fellow creative platforms, SoundCloud is increasingly harnessing the potential of AI technology.

Indeed, just last year, SoundCloud joined forces with almost a dozen vendors to introduce AI-powered tools to their platform, with the purpose of enabling remixing, generating vocals, and allowing for the creation of custom samples. A blog post from them last autumn made clear that these partners would be given access to content ID solutions to ensure that credit and compensation are given where they're due. They also made a promise to uphold ethical, transparent AI practices that show respect for creators' rights.

In recent times, numerous content hosting and social media platforms have revised their terms to allow for AI training by both first and third parties. In October, Elon Musk's X amended its privacy policy to grant permission for external companies to use user posts for AI training. LinkedIn changed its terms last September to enable user data scraping for training purposes. Furthermore, in December, YouTube commenced allowing third parties to use user clips for AI training.

Such changes have caused something of a stir among users who maintain that it should be an opt-in if their content is to be used for AI training, and those who demand recognition and remuneration for their contributions to AI training datasets.

News update at 2:22 p.m. Pacific: We have received an emailed statement from SoundCloud, a portion of which we have printed below for your information:

*"We have never developed AI tools, used artist content to train AI algorithms, or given third parties access to SoundCloud content on our platform for AI training. On the contrary, we have put technical safeguards such as 'no AI' tags on our site to prohibit unauthorized use.

In February 2024, we revised our terms of service to clarify how stuff on SoundCloud's own platform could work with AI technologies. Scenarios could include personalized recommendations, content organization, fraud detection, and improvements to content identification aided by AI technologies.”*