Decoder with Nilay Patel
00:28:10 · Nilay Patel, Mitch Glazier
[00:28:10] S3: How is that structured? Does everyone just do everything all day long? [00:28:14] S4: There aren't as many redundancies as there should be. We're divided into those different departments, right? Like content protection, communications and research, public policy and industry relations, and obviously legal affairs. So we are, I would say, small and nimble but we punch above our weight. We are high profile but our industry if you think about it compared to the folks that we are sort of up against if you want to view it that way, it's really small. I mean the entire recorded music business was $11,000,000,000 wholesale last year in The United States. The market cap of just one AI company. Yeah. Right? Is, you know, $2,000,000,000,000. So when we're out there lobbying and we've got like, you know, our three person lobbying team at the RIAA trying to make a point to policymakers and you're dealing with you know super PAC money that equals $250,000,000 in a midterm cycle, you know we don't have that kind of revenue. We don't but what we do have is music. And we have artists who everybody loves and who are culture makers and who are messengers that people trust and listen to. So I think we do pretty well for our tininess. [00:29:41] S3: The other question I ask every CEO comes on the show is about decisions. You have a lot of decisions to make. Some of these are decisions of first impression. No one has ever decided how AI and art should work together. How do you make decisions? What's your
00:29:53 · Mitch Glazier
[00:29:53] S4: Personally, my my leadership style is I like to have people surround me who are not yes people. I don't want people just sort of... If I come up with an idea, I don't want it to be reinforced immediately. If you agree with that, great. But I like to hear from everybody. I think my team knows that I like to hear the truth and I wanna hear their raw opinion because I wanna check my instincts. I usually will have a gut instinct, but then I will survey people that I trust in our companies and people on my own team. I'm learning to be a better listener. When I hear people I kind of as soon as in my mind I feel like I know what they're saying, I tend to then jump ahead to the next. I'm like deposing them, you know, here's I have a million questions. I'm learning to sort of be a better listener and kind of understand where they're coming from. And then I take all of it and I synthesize it. And I would say about maybe 60% of the time I end up with my original gut reaction. But 40% of the time, I take a different path because of what I've heard and the expertise of those who are around me. So it takes a little longer than maybe it should and you don't always have time. Sometimes you have to make a snap decision. But on something really big, like, what what strategy are going... Are we going to take? If we feel like we need to bring a lawsuit, which is going to be a major publicized precedent setting lawsuit that could determine the rights that creators have. You have to take that as seriously as it is. Make sure that you are getting all the opinions that you need to get. I also have a ton of friends who work so to speak on the other side, people who I trust who I've known for many years. And I will often, without disclosing anything I'm not supposed to disclose, I will often call them and say, what is your perspective on this? Like I live in this world of like creator rights where I'm thinking in one direction, but what would you argue on the other side? What how are you looking at this? And when that informs your decision making, not only are you more prepared, but sometimes you will alter the way you think about something. Mhmm. By putting yourself in their shoes and understanding, you know, there's another side to this that's gonna make sense to a judge or to a policymaker because they're not crazy.
00:32:18 · Mitch Glazier, Nilay Patel
I mean, they they have a different take and it's pretty valid and sometimes I have to be a moderating force even in my own industry of saying we're living in our bubble, they're living in their bubble and so if we're going to be effective finding a solution, if that's what we want. If what we want is a solution, then we may have to think about this in a way that leads to a landing zone. If we don't want a solution and what we're trying to do is sort of like, you know, make good trouble, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a good thing. It can lead to good results but if we want some, if we're trying to get to here, we better figure out a path, a realistic path to get there. [00:33:02] S3: Okay. So I'm very sorry for this but it feels to me like the rest of this conversation is just gonna be nightmare law school hypotheticals. Like that's just this is just what we're doing now. Nothing more [00:33:13] S4: like that. [00:33:14] S3: That framework applies to a lot of different problems particularly like on the other side they make some good points too. So I opened Instagram today and I saw 9,000,000 deepfakes of celebrities being put in the video for Popstar by Drake. Have you ever seen this video? [00:33:31] S4: Yes. Yes.
00:33:31 · Mitch Glazier, Nilay Patel
[00:33:31] S4: Yes. Yes. [00:33:31] S3: Drake didn't do it himself just... It's Justin Bieber is acting as Drake in the video. And I saw one with Lewis Hamilton today. I saw one with Donald Trump today. I saw a full Star Wars one where it's a Darth Vader, and he's just been deep faked into the... Into Justin Bieber's mansion singing a Drake song. And I thought to myself, I can't even count the layers of intellectual property issue here. Right? First of all, no one has the license to any of this likeness. Right? Like Lewis Hamilton could probably be like, hey, that's me. I don't know under which law he gets to show up and say, hey, that's me and to whom he says it. Is it the AI company? Is it the person who made the video? Is it Instagram? There are some of the platforms have private policies like YouTube now. But I don't even just that where to begin. That's very connected to you saying the scarcity is in the artist, right? The scarcity is in the relationship the fan has to the artist. But that has nothing to do with the copyrights you routinely enforce which is the recording. You can see I'm just spiraling. Like I watched one video, eight seconds of Darth Vader doing a Drake song and I thought I don't even know where to begin. Is it Disney who gets to be the angriest or is it Drake or is it someone in the middle? Can you help me just organize my thoughts here? [00:34:51] S4: So I'm, first of all, I'm so glad you're bringing this up because we have, we literally over the past three years have been dealing exactly [00:34:58] S3: yeah
00:34:59 · Mitch Glazier
[00:34:59] S4: with this because believe it or not and it's so bizarre to think about like none of us right now has a right to our own voice or likeness yeah under federal law most of us don't even have it under state law. State law, which is called right of publicity, usually only applies to advertising or endorsements. Right? Like, I couldn't take your face and put it on a Wheaties box without asking you because I'm selling it and making money with... And and I'm I'm basically using your popularity to do so. That... Those are very limited rights. Now we're in the world of deepfakes where everybody can do anything and make you say or do something you never said you never did and that you might not approve of. And we don't have a basic right to ourselves under the law. It seems so weird in a country that was founded on individual liberty and individual rights that we wouldn't have an individual right to ourselves. So we had to sort of start from scratch. And what we did was we actually got together with YouTube in the very beginning because these things, even if they're not created by the platforms, the the the avenue to the fan is through the platform. Right? And we're not... Everybody's not gonna bring a lawsuit against everybody in order to get this stuff down when it's proliferating as fast as it is. So the question was, what responsibility does or can the platform have to give a very simple sort of takedown mechanism that anybody could use. Right? Because this is your face, it's your right. It's not like the record company owns the right to your to your face. Right? Or the movie company or you own the right to your face. So if you don't like the fact that somebody used your face or your voice in a way you didn't like, you should be able to very quickly say, that's me. I can prove it's me, and I don't want it up there. Yeah. And the platform should want to do something to protect the integrity of the platform.
00:37:06 · Nilay Patel, Mitch Glazier
[00:37:06] S3: Okay. Can can I just stop you?... Liability. Hold on [00:37:08] S4: a sec.