There seems to be an emerging music-business consensus that AI technology will soon allow just about anyone to replicate the voices of giant pop stars. Earlier this year, Universal forced streaming services to remove the viral hit “Heart On My Sleeve”; the previously unknown Ghostwriter had used AI tools to make the song sound like a new collaboration from Drake and the Weeknd. A few months ago, Google and Universal were reportedly negotiating a deal to license artists’ voices and melodies. Now, YouTube is working on its own tool to help people sound exactly like their favorite artists.

Billboard reports that YouTube’s AI-music tool will be an officially-licensed version of the AI-deepfake programs that already exist on the internet. The idea is that artists and labels can opt in or out of YouTube’s program, and their voices will then be essentially up for grabs. YouTube reportedly wanted to launch this tool at their Made On YouTube event last month, but it wasn’t ready yet. That delay comes, at least in part, because YouTube is still negotiating with major labels to figure out how royalties would work.

Billboard‘s Colin Stutz writes, “Some executives say it’s also been challenging to find top artists to participate in the new YouTube tool, with even some of the most forward-thinking acts hesitant to put their voices in the hands of unknown creators who could use them to make statements or sing lyrics they might not like.” (This will definitely happen.) The labels also realize that a deal with YouTube could set the terms for a whole lot of other future AI deals. Labels are used to dealing with YouTube, but any future deal might have to include publishing royalties for the songwriters whose music was used as input in creating the AI models.

YouTube’s competitors are already playing around with voices and artificial intelligence though features like Meta’s Snoop Dogg chatbot and the TikTok thing where different artificially generated voices can read your captions out loud.