Meta Platforms has expanded its licensing deal with Universal Music Group, which now covers users sharing songs from the UMG library across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp and Horizon without fear of copyright violation. As part of a multiyear partnership, Meta and UMG will work together to address “unauthorized AI-generated content that could affect artists and songwriters.” This could encompass everything from users experimenting with voice copying or scraping songs for AI mashups to enterprise level crawling and theft for model training, and suggests Meta will be implementing a filtering system to detect infractions.

“Artists and songwriters are increasingly grappling with AI fakes and their work being used by AI companies to train their models,” writes TechCrunch.

Meta began working with UMG in 2017, when it was known as Facebook, licensing the label’s recorded music and music publishing catalogs for use across its social platforms in what UMG calls in a press release “a landmark agreement” that paved the way for other social media companies to act responsibly with music policies and copyright.

“We are delighted that Meta shares our artist-centric vision for respecting human creativity and compensating artists and songwriters fairly,” UMG Chief Digital Officer and EVP Michael Nash said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work together to address unauthorized AI-generated content that could affect artists and songwriters, so that UMG can continue to protect their rights both now and in the future.”

In June, record labels including UMG joined a Recording Industry Association of America lawsuit against AI startups Udio and Suno over unauthorized music use for model training.

The new agreement comes after UMG removed its catalog from TikTok earlier this year, citing concerns about AI and responsible music use on the platform, reversing its position several months later, presumably after some sort of agreement was reached.

The world’s largest record company is showing a willingness to experiment and take a leadership role in mapping how the industry can come to terms with AI in a way that protects artists, having one year ago partnered with YouTube on a Music AI Incubator.

TechCrunch writes that Meta’s “ethical approach to AI music” includes “only releasing generative AI models (AudioCraft, MusicGen and Jasco) that are trained with ‘Meta-owned and specifically licensed music,’ according to its website,” though it notes that “AudioCraft could potentially be misused to create a deepfake of someone’s voice.”