How a Cloned Voice Topped Billboard Without Permission

Blanco Brown's case exposes AI music licensing's biggest enforcement gap.

Author

Aaron Wu
December 08, 2025

Hey there! It’s Aaron.

Last year, Warner Music sued Suno for training AI on its catalog without permission.

Now they're splitting profits.

The music industry didn't kill AI... it decided to cash in on it instead.

Here's are the latest hits in AI this week:

📌TL;DR

  • Licensing Flip: Warner Music went from suing Suno to partnering with them — a sign the industry now wants to profit from AI, even though voice-cloning chaos still isn’t under control.

  • Runway 4.5: The new model tops video benchmarks with shockingly realistic motion and lighting — AI video just leveled up again.

  • Kling O1: A rising “AI CapCut” that lets you generate, edit, and restyle video in one place — no pro tools required.

  • More AI news…

Estimated reading time: 4 - 5 minutes.

CATCH OF THE DAY

From Lawsuits to Licenses:
How Music Labels Learned to Love AI

Remember when record labels treated AI like a music pirate with better PR?

Last year, Warner Music sued AI startup Suno for training on its catalog without permission.

Now, the same company just turned that lawsuit into a partnership deal.

Yep… Warner’s gone from cease-and-desist to sign-and-split profits.

Under the new model, artists can opt in to let AI train on their music. In return, they get royalties every time someone generates a song in their style. Think of it like “Spotify for AI voices” except this time, the artists actually get paid.

It’s part of a bigger shift. Sony, Warner, and Universal have all struck deals with AI startup Klay to train what they’re calling “large music models” built only on licensed catalogs.

The goal isn’t to stop AI anymore but to own it.

Imagine you’re a songwriter. An AI tool cranks out a melody that sounds just like you (i.e. same rhythm, phrasing, even tone). A year ago, that track might’ve gone viral under someone else’s name, and you’d have no clue it existed.

Under Warner’s new system, you’d get a notification… and maybe even a royalty check.

That’s the shift: from invisible theft to traceable revenue.

But it’s not all harmony. The same week Warner announced its AI partnership, Grammy-nominated artist Blanco Brown found his cloned voice topping Billboard’s country chart — credited to a fictional white cowboy avatar named “Breaking Rust.”
It wasn’t parody. It was theft with better marketing.

And it showed the gaping hole in this “ethical AI” story: licensing only works if platforms actually enforce it.

Right now, they don’t.

So far, enforcement is the missing piece. Warner can license all it wants, but if platforms don’t remove clones, the system breaks.

For creators, this means two things:

  1. Watch for opt-in opportunities from your distributor or label… AI collaborations might soon be part of your contract.

  2. Protect your voice and work. Register your tracks, watermark your stems, and keep records of your creative process. If your sound becomes someone’s prompt, you’ll want proof it was yours first.

The Final Byte

The music industry stopped fighting AI and started licensing it.

For creators, that’s progress… but only if platforms enforce it and checks actually clear.
The framework is here. The follow-through isn’t.

See you in the next one,

BYTE-SIZED BUZZ

Here’s a quick roundup of what’s making waves in the AI world this week.

🎥 Runway Gen-4.5 Takes the Crown
Runway’s newest video model just climbed to the top of Artificial Analysis’s leaderboard, delivering ultra-realistic motion, consistent lighting, and cinematic fidelity that rivals live footage.

The Big Deal: AI video is now flirting with Hollywood-level realism — and doing it on your laptop.

📽️ Kling O1 All-in-One Video Model
China’s Kuaishou launched Kling O1, a text-to-video and edit-anything engine that lets creators generate clips, swap characters, or restyle scenes — all in one workflow.

The Big Deal: Think Runway meets CapCut — granular video editing now speaks fluent AI.

🚨 OpenAI’s ‘Code Red’ Moment
Sam Altman has called a company-wide sprint to outpace Google Gemini 3, fast-tracking upgrades to personalization, reasoning, and image generation under the codename “Garlic.”

The Big Deal: Three years after Google’s own emergency over ChatGPT, the tables have turned.

🎤 Teddy Swims Goes AI
The singer-songwriter admits using AI tools to tweak lyrics and explore new genres on the road — though he draws the line at fully synthetic voices.

The Big Deal: Artists aren’t fighting AI anymore; they’re jamming with it.

🎨 How Designers Are Reclaiming AI
A new wave of designers is embracing AI for batch layouts, resizing, and routine tweaks — freeing themselves to focus on taste, storytelling, and strategy.

The Big Deal: Designers aren’t being replaced; they’re being promoted to creative directors.

WEEKLY CREATOR LOADOUT 🐾

  • Runway Gen-4.5: Create cinematic-style AI videos with more natural motion and consistent lighting for storytelling, B-roll, and course content.

  • Kling O1: Generate, restyle, and modify scenes or characters using an all-in-one AI video editor built for fast creative workflows.

  • Vidi2 (ByteDance): Edit short-form videos with cleaner cuts and better subject tracking powered by spatio-temporal AI.

  • Perplexity (Memory): Research faster with an AI engine that remembers your preferences, topics, and past threads for smoother planning.

  • Seedream 4.5: Produce crisp images and text-accurate visuals ideal for thumbnails, social posts, and branded graphics.

THE GUIDEBOOK

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