I want to train a model for a musician based on piano covers they have recorded of popular songs and therefore own, but because of copyright infringement they still pay royalties to the writers of these songs. Curious if this is legal or not – I would presume not since the recordings are not being monetized in this scenario but rather fed into a model, and the recordings are still owned 100% by the musician licensing them to me.
This is not legal advice. Please consult a copyright lawyer about this and take their advice over anything on the internet.
However, there is a such thing as transformative fair use, where a remix that incorporates part of a work while altering it in order to create new meaning or purpose is not copyright infringement. Practically speaking, in court this often comes down to how different the allegedly infringing song is from the original. So ultimately there isn’t a single answer as to whether this is legal or illegal, with each song produced through inference it comes down to how likely it is for one of the song owners to sue and how likely you are to win.
All the more reason to consult a copyright lawyer about it to get a better idea of your chances/options