Key diary dates

Monday 6- Wednesday 8 May: High-Level Conference on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) organised by the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU.

Monday 6 May: Deadline for online platforms regulated under the Digital Services Act to submit transparency reports.

Tuesday 7 May: NGO Seas at Risk to publish report on under-sea mining. 

In spotlight

EU platform rules return to the spotlight this week, since today (6 May) is the deadline for the largest online platforms – those with more than 45 million users per month – to hand in their transparency reports under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

It’s the second batch of reports after the stringent rules started applying to the likes of Facebook, Amazon and TikTok last August.

With the submission of the first reports in October, platforms were scrutinised over the low number of content moderators they had in some of the smaller EU member states. Facebook has a single employee looking at Maltese content, and three in Estonia, claiming that much of the process is automated. In comparison, TikTok, which has fewer users per month, has six people looking at Estonian content and none for Maltese.

In light of the latest DSA probes started by the European Commission last week: into Facebook’s and Instagram’s handling of disinformation and ability to stop Russian fake news, all eyes will be on platforms’ election preparedness. And it remains to be seen if the social media platforms have taken more action compared to half a year ago.

With just about a month to go to the European Parliament election, the Commission is trying to ramp up platform preparedness for the poll. Stress-tests last month (24 April) were designed to help mitigate risks that may impact the integrity of elections and their services, for example.

However, as the latest Facebook and Instagram probes show, the Commission largely counting on the willingness of mother company Meta to comply; since there is no deadline for when the probes might end. 

Policy newsmakers

@Kergueno                                                                                                                @Uspaskich

MEPs interests

MEPs collectively earn more than €8.6 million a year from outside jobs – including from private companies that also actively lobby on EU policy, according to a report published by Transparency International EU today (6 May). Topping the list is Lithuanian MEP Viktor Uspaskich, who declares €3,000,000 per year working for a company called Edvervita UAB. The group, including Raphaël Kergueno, senior policy officer at Transparency, has called for EU lawmakers to be banned from moonlighting, as figures show over two thirds of the 705 deputies disclose activities in addition to their core role. 

Policy Poll

Should MEPs elected to the next European Parliament be permitted remuneration:

From MEP salary alone

From additional side jobs

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Data brief

With some help from artificial intelligence, country music star Randy Travis, celebrated for his timeless hits like “Forever and Ever, Amen” and “I Told You So,” has his voice back.

In July 2013, Travis was hospitalized with viral cardiomyopathy, a virus that attacks the heart, and later suffered a stroke. The Country Music Hall of Famer had to relearn how to walk, spell and read in the years that followed. A condition called aphasia limits his ability to speak — it’s why his wife Mary Travis assists him in interviews. It’s also why he hasn’t released new music in over a decade, until now.

“What That Came From,” which released Friday, is a rich acoustic ballad amplified by Travis’ immediately recognizable, soulful vocal tone.

Cris Lacy, Warner Music Nashville co-president, approached Randy and Mary Travis and asked: “‘What if we could take Randy’s voice and recreate it using AI?,’” Mary Travis told The Associated Press over Zoom last week, Randy smiling in agreement right next to her. “Well, we were all over that, so we were so excited.”

“All I ever wanted since the day of a stroke was to hear that voice again.”

Lacy tapped developers in London to create a proprietary AI model to begin the process. The result was two models: One with 12 vocal stems (or song samples), and another with 42 stems collected across Travis’ career — from 1985 to 2013, says Kyle Lehning, Travis’ longtime producer. Lacy and Lehning chose to use “Where That Came From,” a song written by Scotty Emerick and John Scott Sherrill that Lehning co-produced and held on to for years. He believed it could best articulate the humanity of Travis’ idiosyncratic vocal style.

“I never even thought about another song,” Lehning said.

Once he input the demo vocal (sung by James Dupree) into the AI models, “it took about five minutes to analyze,” says Lehning. “I really wish somebody had been here with a camera because I was the first person to hear it. And it was stunning, to me, how good it was sort of right off the bat. It’s hard to put an equation around it, but it was probably 70, 75% what you hear now.”

“There were certain aspects of it that were not authentic to Randy’s performance,” he said, so he began to edit and build on the recording with engineer Casey Wood, who also worked closely with Travis over a few decades.

The pair cherrypicked from the two models, and made alterations to things like vibrato speed, or slowing and relaxing phrases. “Randy is a laid-back singer,” Lehning says. “Randy, in my opinion, had an old soul quality to his voice. That’s one of the things that made him unique, but also, somehow familiar.”

His vocal performance on “What That Came From” had to reflect that fact.

“We were able to just improve on it,” Lehning says of the AI recording. “It was emotional, and it’s still emotional.”

Mary Travis says the “human element,” and “the people that are involved” in this project, separate it from more nefarious uses of AI in music.

“Randy, I remember watching him when he first heard the song after it was completed. It was beautiful because at first, he was surprised, and then he was very pensive, and he was listening and studying,” she said. “And then he put his head down and his eyes were a little watery. I think he went through every emotion there was, in those three minutes of just hearing his voice again.”

Lacy agrees. “The beauty of this is, you know, we’re doing it with a voice that the world knows and has heard and has been comforted by,” she says.

“But I think, just on human terms, it’s a very real need. And it’s a big loss when you lose the voice of someone that you were connected to, and the ability to have it back is a beautiful gift.”

They also hope that this song will work to educate people on the good that AI can do — not the fraudulent activities that so frequently make headlines. “We’re hoping that maybe we can set a standard,” Mary Travis says, where credit is given where credit is due — and artists have control over their voice and work.

Last month, over 200 artists signed an open letter submitted by the Artist Rights Alliance non-profit, calling on artificial intelligence tech companies, developers, platforms, digital music services and platforms to stop using AI “to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.” Artists who co-signed included Stevie Wonder, Miranda Lambert, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Peter Frampton, Katy Perry, Smokey Robinson and J Balvin.

So, now that “Where That Came From” is here, will there be more original Randy Travis songs in the future?

“There may be others,” says Mary Travis. “We’ll see where this goes. This is such a foreign territory. There’s likely more on the horizon.”

“We do have other tracks,” says Lacy, but Warner Music is being as selective. “This isn’t a stunt, and it’s not a parlor trick,” she added. “It was important to have a song worthy of him.”

A military court in eastern Congo on Friday sentenced eight soldiers to death for cowardice and other crimes linked to fleeing the battlefield, as the government struggles to contain violence and attacks in the mineral-rich area where many armed groups operate.

In March, Congo lifted a more than 20-year moratorium on the death penalty, stating that those guilty of treason and espionage were able to get away without proper punishment. Human rights organizations criticized the decision.

BOMBING AT REFUGEE CAMP KILLS 5 PEOPLE, INCLUDING CHILDREN, IN EASTERN CONGO

Alexis Olenga, a lawyer for Paluku Olenga, one of the soldiers sentenced to death, said his client had not fled the battlefield because he was arrested in the area of his assignment.

“This is a monstrous decision, I believe we must immediately challenge it before the high military court,” he told The Associated Press.

The military court in Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, acquitted three other soldiers of all charges and released them.

Moïse Hangi, a civil society activist, told the AP that “instead of repairing our security apparatus, these kinds of decisions will increasingly weaken our army and make those on the lines of defense more fearful.”

The decades-long conflict in eastern Congo has produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with over 100 armed groups fighting in the region, most for land and control of mines with valuable minerals. Some are fighting to try to protect their communities.

Many groups are accused of carrying out mass killings, rapes and other human rights violations. The violence has displaced about 7 million people, many beyond the reach of aid.