Artists already face the possibility of AI being used to mimic their style, and current copyright law may allow it. Say an AI system is trained exclusively on Beyonce's music. If that system then makes music that sounds like Beyonce, is Beyonce owed anything? Several legal experts believe the answer is "no." For there to be a copyright issue, the AI program would have to create a song that sounds like an already existing song. It could also be an issue if an AI-created work were marketed as sounding like a particular artist without that artist's consent, in which case, it could violate persona or trademark protections. The AI-made track couldn't just sound like Beyonce, in general, it would have to sound like a specific song she made. Directly training an AI on a particular artist could lead to other legal issues, though. AI program's creator could potentially violate a copyright owner's exclusive rights to reproduce their work and create derivative works based upon the original material. It's not even clear whether AI can legally be trained on copyrighted music in the first place. When you purchase a song, are you also purchasing the right to use its audio as AI training data? Several of the experts The Verge spoke to for this piece say there isn't a good answer to that question.