What Happened at CES 2026
Las Vegas in January. The city during CES was nothing like its usual self. The convention center and surroundings were packed, and every hotel lobby was filled with startups running booths. We were right there in the middle of it.
Getting the Innovation Award
When we first submitted, we were honestly skeptical. CES Innovation Award, in the Enterprise Tech category no less. Thousands of companies apply from around the world — would a still-niche field like AI music copyright protection even resonate?
But it did. The CTA judges took interest in our technology, probably because the timing was right. Copyright issues around AI-generated content were becoming a global talking point, and there weren't many companies offering a technical solution.
What We Felt on the Ground
The reactions from people we met at the booth were striking. Label executives, streaming platform managers, legal professionals — they all shared a similar story.
"We've been wrestling with this problem too, but this is the first time we've seen someone approach it technically."
AI-generated music is flooding in, and it's impossible for humans to check it all manually. An automated system is necessary — the people on the ground already knew this. They just didn't have a solution.
What's Happening in the Industry Right Now
The music industry is going through a turbulent period.
Streaming platforms see thousands of new tracks uploaded daily. Nobody knows exactly how many of those are AI-generated. Labels want to protect the copyrights in their catalogs, but the pool of material to compare against has grown enormous. In the past, you could get by comparing a handful of hit songs. Now you need to screen thousands of tracks pouring in every single day.
The nature of plagiarism has changed too. It's not just intentional copying anymore — AI can unconsciously reproduce melodies from its training data. Similar melodies get generated without anyone realizing it. Catching this with human ears alone isn't feasible.
What We're Building
What MIPPIA is building comes down to two things.
One is determining "whether a track was made by AI." When a streaming platform or label receives a track upload, the system automatically checks if it's AI-generated.
The other is detecting "whether a track plagiarizes existing music." It identifies if a specific section of a track is similar to a specific section of another track, and tells you whether it's because of the melody, the chord progression, or something else.
When these two technologies come together, an A&R manager reviewing a new track can quickly verify "is this track safe?" Instead of humans having to listen and judge everything, the system pre-screens it first.
After CES
More meaningful than the award itself was confirming firsthand that the market needs this technology. The overwhelming response wasn't "nice to have" — it was "we need this right now."
There's still a long road ahead. Turning the technology into a production service, building infrastructure to handle large-scale traffic, supporting diverse genres and languages — the to-do list is enormous. But CES gave us the conviction that we're heading in the right direction.