Add Audio Watermark to protect music creators

Cubase
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Music creators, dubbing actors, and content creators are facing challenges with the rise of artificial intelligence in creating audio fakes. These challenges threaten not just intellectual property rights, but also privacy and the very essence of authenticity of digital audio content.

Audio watermarking technology plays a key role in authenticating and protecting audio material in different contexts. Audio watermarks are a form of hidden information. Their basic idea is to covertly embed secret, invisible data (information, code, unique identifier) into audio materials so that this information cannot be removed without degrading the original audio quality. Hidden, inaudible information can be extracted and used to verify the originality of audio material, identify its owner or recipient, or serve as a trigger for a specific event.

Reasons why audio watermarking is becoming important in the era of advanced technology:

  1. Intellectual Property Rights Protection: Since AI makes it easier to copy and modify audio content, watermarks ensure that original creators can effectively assert and protect their intellectual property rights.

  2. Preventing the abuse of deepfakes. With the rise of deepfake audio, watermarks help detect and prevent the spread of fake content that could be used for misinformation or malicious purposes.

  3. Protect the music industry. Audio watermarking helps musicians and producers protect their work from unauthorized use or distribution—a critical factor in an era when AI can easily create and modify music.

  4. Checking legal evidence. Watermarks serve as a tool for authenticating audio evidence in legal cases, where real audio can be distinguished from audio generated by artificial intelligence.

I would really like to see an Audio Watermark feature in the next version of your software. Work option: in the settings for exporting a music file, there is now an option to specify a UNIQUE USER KEY, which will help identify a particular piece of music. To check, you can make an additional option in the program.

Jason.

3 Likes
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I like this idea.

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Thank you very much for your feedback. I hope that the program developers will approve of my initiative and the users will support it.

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This has been possible with WaveLab for a few years now (“spectral watermarking”).

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@MrSoundman Spectral watermarks can be identified by any user. What I’m saying is that when a person listens to a music file (for example, illegally leaked onto the network), he won’t even realize that the sound wave contains encrypted information, which can be identified by its “fingerprint” as the author.

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You are probably referring to a low-level pseudo-noise type watermark. The problem is finding one that isn’t patent encumbered.

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As noble as your intention may be, I’m not sure what you’re hoping to achieve with this.

The biggest theft of musical intellectual property today is being perpetrated by multinationals who just write down the cost of copyright infringement legal cases as a tax-deductible operating expense.

No AI, no deepfakes, just straight-up theft. Is that yours? Now it’s mine. Whaddaya gonna do about it?

We all know who they are.

Unfortunately, it appears that almost nobody cares about the authenticity of anything anymore. As long as the so-called social media operators can continue to refer to themselves as “platforms” rather than “publishers” (which is what they are) and are not held responsible for their content, there can be no authenticity of digital content; the phrase becomes an oxymoron.

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@SuperG There is a swesterfeld - audiowmark repository on GitHub under the GPL-3.0 license.