I have to say, I completely lost it at the whisper '(The "Software")' (0:18)... give this tech another year or two and it will be better quality than your average radio song.
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I don't think I can endure much more AI slop seeping its way into my life.
To me the feeling of AI generated content is less "slop" and more "in-flight magazine". It can have a surface sheen of quality that you can lure you in, but you realise it's devoid of any vitality or soul.
When recorded music was invented, musicians protested. Recorded music was devoid of any vitality or soul. Recorded music still became a hit. Then we got the synthesizer. Again we got the same complaints, lifeless and without soul. The synthesizer still became a hit. Now the next step is happening, and we see the same complaints all over.
Only time will show if the next step will happen anyway. My gut feeling tells me that AI art will gain acceptance over time, and we will just think of it as "art" or "music", just as we did with recorded mysic and synthetic sounds.
Humanity lost some things when it gained recorded music. It made the profession of performer less valuable, and diminished the number of performers who could make a living. But humanity got something very valuable in return — the ability to record and play back music. The same goes with the tradeoffs made for photography and motion pictures.
I see little value to humanity in tools that are able to generate an endless amount of music derived from existing music, specifically designed to neatly slot into the place of human artists. We gain little in return from that.
Some people will make an argument like, this lets people generate lots of low-quality music for use in elevators or grocery stores. Well, there is already a massive oversupply of completely free music which can do that. Do people pretend to not know this?
The other weak argument is that it lets people express themselves who haven't studied or practiced music. But, it doesn't, because the interfaces (text prompts or "upload an existing file") are designed to take the place of a human being given instructions for criteria to fill, as if they were a worker, not an expression of the person giving the instructions. If the person giving the instructions were expressing themselves, most of the AI tool would not be redundant. It's as expressive as telling another person to write a song for you with some instructions. Hardly expressive at all.
I'm not sure I follow your argument, because neither synthesizers nor recordings write music.
For augmenting comoposers, sure, GenAI can be a tool like others. Musicians have been incorporating rhythms and melodies shipped with their electronic instruments for ages.
Entire genres have been defined by sounds and synth presets, too.
So I do see a bit of the similarities that you describe, but I think this is largely misleading.
Agreed.
Another side of it is that it will enable the creation of more music around more topics than before, by non-musicians. The accessibility bar is lower.
For a lot of people, music is a way to express their emotions, and not just by creating/playing it, but by listening to it. Now, you'll be make your own hyper-specific music with lyrics around topics specific to you, without learning any of the underlying skills yourself.
I've certainly wanted some kinds of music/representation in music of some of my experiences to exist, but not enough to go out and learn to make it myself. Now/soon I should be able to do that with AI tools, and I think that's actually neat!
You are just skipping the step that all of it had the human element considered, which to all of us is a very intrinsic part of "art". When AI generates a piece of entertainment it's ok to just call it entertainment, it's not art until AI actually has something we can relate to as consciousness (aka a "soul").
True. But undeniably, current creative types will be displaced. That will be disruptive, will damage individuals ability to make a living.
Not a lot of individuals, to be honest. Only a handful of people make any kind of living from composing. Millions try it, but have to be content with performing for their friends. Which will continue unchanged.
So the actual economic impact of AI music will be different from the scenarios being described. What is true is, we will all have a lot more musical listening choices. Which is a net good for the rest of us?
The difference here is that no one wants to listen to this shit. It is extremely corny and generic. Cringeworthy.
Algorithmic music has already been around for decades and it never became popular. In the 90's it was of interest only to a small group of academic music nerds. The same is true today. Avant-garde shit for nerds. No one wants to listen to it.
> When recorded music was invented, musicians protested
> we got the synthesizer. Again we got the same complaints
I honestly don't believe this happened. Citations?
You make it sound like one day there was no recording and then bam! flac quality recordings of musicians, out of the blue. You do realize it started with exceedingly shitty wax cylinders that sounded absolutely atrocious by today standards (and by the past standards as well)
Isn't that the real Turing test - does it feel like it has a soul?
Beware the cleverness of the Turing test!
It is a test that selects for the ability to deceive.
I want to run a experiment on humans to see if we are worthy of a turing test.
1. We tell a human (test subject) that they will be a judge but they are a test subject. We will tell them that there will be two chats -- one will have a human and the other will have a computer and they need to decide which is which.
2. We will then give them access to two real time chats but the twist is both of them will be humans.
3. Our test subject needs to rebel against the experiment and say they are both humans.
What percentage of the population will be able to say both chats are humans? Is this a humane experiment? Will any ethics board clear it? Does it have any scientific value?
Choose your preferred software license for lyrics if you want substance
Sadly you could say the same of the 80% in just about anything human-made. The 80% of software, music, furniture, etc.
Maybe there will be a change of feeling, it's starting to come to me, instead of seeing this AI generated content as "soulless" etc I'm starting to see it as an extension of OUR human generated work. It's more like an endless remix of HUMAN talent.
All of that is boring though. The exciting stuff is all that will be displaced, and how we will solve the myth or meritocracy.
what is in-flight magazine if not slop
AI slop (to me) would be to pass this off as a song or something meritorious to listen to.
IMHO this and things like it are basically a sub-class of comedy or satire, so I have time for this sort of thing. It's a joke, and should (can?) only be appreciated as artistic as someone saying "Wouldn't it be funny if ... ?" because now that casual thought can be turned into a pretty instant "well here it is! LOL!".
I don't think you're supposed to appreciate it as music. Maybe I'm calling it wrong though.
(edit - I will admit that upon further thought, I'm not sure how I feel about this when compared to, for example, Nina Gordon recording "Straight Outta Compton" as an accoustic, mildly lamenting singer-songwriter style number 20-some years ago. It's clearly in the same satrical arena but one took a lot more effort and imagination. Kinda, because there was a lot of effort and imagination that went into both the training data and the model, even if this specific output was only a passing joke. It's quite hard to reason about this stuff...)
In my experience, there's less of a distinction than you might think.
A lot of satirical songs are absolute bangers, because (for example) to do a send-up of the tropes of X music, you must know all the tropes of X music, and be able to perform them. So a lot of satirical music is actually done by people with a lot of skill and passion for the thing being satirised.
And because satirists don't have to worry about being predictable or unoriginal, they can put in more crowd-pleasing cliches per minute than 'serious' artists, giving them the most intense X of all X artists.
(Not saying the MIT license is a banger though - just that some satirical songs are)
Personal opinion, but I think you're calling it wrong. Also personal opinion, I absolutely hate the idea of it happening, buuut...
I think it's a bit like everyone who said "black cabs in London have nothing to fear; X years of 'The Knowledge' will always be better than a guy with an App in an old Prius..." Except it was all wrong. Black cabs are probably still superior, but the bulk of people (and especially new customers) are all using Uber, because it's easier and they just don't care.
It sucks that production factory, literally built to make money, AI created junk music will be a thing, but it most likely will. Someone will exploit that they can make a ton of cash with low risk and budget. They'll have the connections to, despite initial (somewhat) faux outrage from the public/press, get radio play/playlisted online ("probably even 'ironic' addition from the hipster music crowd"). The song will be an earworm, and aside from the musicians that hear all the flaws, the passive every day mom and pop listeners will get the hook stuck in their head and it'll just be another great tune like any other.
I don't think we'll replace 'celebrity', I think that'll still happen, and I think maybe greater appreciation will happen to 'real musicians' (with a face!). But 'everyday' disposable pop (like all those one hit wonder tunes that are still played in nightclubs, pubs, throwback radio, wedding discos) - that's going to be disrupted massively.
Oh I don't doubt it!
I guess my point was that I don't hate the linked tune because it's not someone asking me to listen to a song, it's a joke and one that does have some humour to it.
I can absolutely see this tech (if it's allowed to) replacing a lot of working musicians who do music for ads, jingles, tv, film etc. And yes, disposable pop is probably on the chopping block.
> disposable pop ... that's going to be disrupted massively.
I wonder how the disruption will play out - the world is already drowning in content created by humans. If we envision that AI can make disposable pop to the same standard (and I have no reason to doubt it) then that surely creates an absolute deluge, almost boundless in size, of stuff. Promotion will become more or less the only art, to make things stand out from the crowd, and that can probably only continue for situations in which people want a shared experience. For an awful lot of situations the streaming of entirely ephemeral audio would probably do. It could as easily kill 'pop' as a business on the audio side, as it could steal it.
I'm just sorta daydreaming about possible outcomes here. All sorts could happen.
Art will realign to put more value on live performances. Don't worry, people who push AI art don't understand that art is a form of communication between humans. They might learn when the bubble pops and they are left with a trillion shiny "art" objects that are worth nothing, because nobody wants to look at them.
100%. I compare it to the invention of cameras - before that you could make an honest living as a portrait painter, no inspiration needed. Afterwards, painters needed to lean into artistic qualities to stand out. But also, 'Photography' was born - what was seemingly just a press of a button turned out to be an artform.
Not totally true. Yes, there's value in live performances and human connection but most of the songs we listen don't stimulate that. Hell, often we don't even know what the musician looks like, who they are, how they sound live, etc. They're just items in our Spotify queue that are only there to give us a dopamine hit with their sequence of well-composed sounds.
There's a craving for a deeper connection but that's usually the smaller part of our everyday consumption.
Sorry to disagree, we already crossed the line where the "Her" movie could turn into a real story. To say it more clearly: It won't take a long to see people even having affective relationships with AIs.
Depending on the popularity and your income, the experience of a artist life is really not that intim as you make it.
If you can pay for a live performance and have to time to go there, yes.
A lot of people can't and a 5-10$ Spotify/Apple Music/... account is all they can afford (if at all).
AI music will disrupt this market.
Spotify for example will try to produce their own AI music (like they already do with regular music). The Christmas playlist will then mainly contain their music. That saves a lot of money for the.
I don't quite get why this is downvoted;
it may not be the absolute truth, but in my personal anecdotal experience, there is quite some truth to it.
I have had a lot of fun playing around with image generation and chat gpt.
But have also had the non-surprising "Hedonistic Fatigue" that comes with excess access to something originally valued. I have now been able to generate 4 and 5 digit numbers of pictures of awesome colourful steam locomotives and epic dungeon vistas, but now find myself fatigued by "what on earth am I going to use 5000 dungeon pictures for?", coupled with the dread of being forced to CHOOSE from 5000 options. And I learn the known principle, that when you can choose from 4 options, you are happy you picked the best of 4, but when you can pick from 5000 options, you are left feeling inadequate with "I almost certainly was not able to pick the best of those 5000 options, and trying to do so would exhaust me". So suddenly, picking something from your menu of options, feels dreadful and fatiguing.. (I get the same feeling sometimes, when trying to pick a movie to watch out of 16.000 options).
So yeah, no doubt the AI sketch/refinement tool will be merged into our creative process, but for the time being, I feel a second generation of alienation-estrangement with my "available options".
They are already worth very little if more than one party can produce them at the push of a button.
"Art" already puts more value on live performances and scarcity. Popular music consumption is largely removed from that.
Yeah, the last two live mega tours (Taylor Swift and Beyoncé) have a tad more personality than the average artist, but the usual stuff that you would hear on the radio might as well be AI generated and live-performed by animatronics and a significant chunk of the audience wouldn't care or even notice.
Yes, this is why the most popular songs on the radio atm are all mass produced, generic (for their genre) crap that doesn't really stray beyond the proven money making methods.
I mean people watch Love Island on TV for chrisssssakes. Humans can definitely be mindless consumers, where the sugar salt and fat in fast-food is the same as false drama, outrage, sex and violence in media. We all got buttons and they're so easy to push. Just look how popular TT is versus the type of content on there; mostly short-lived mindless stuff.
Suno links have already become what grey screenshots of ChatGPT were just after it came out, listened to a few at first and now I just keep on scrolling.
I had a similar thought -- my perspective:
There will be a TON of these 60-second tracks, and no one wants to listen for anywhere near that long while skimming a feed, so these will now be ignored.
If you ever turn the radio on or hear the spotify weekly top playlist, it's not like contemporary cookie cutter pop music is any better. At least with this anyone can quickly experiment quirky new ideas!
What I find most amazing is how the music changes at the start of the all caps section. Is this a completely new interpretation of what all caps means or could it have been learned from examples?
Yeah I was definitely expecting some "IN YOUR HEEEEEEEAD, IN YOUR HEEEEE-EEEEEEAD, ZOO-OM-BEH!" when it got to all caps, so was a bit of a surprise.
I wouldn't be surprised is all caps gets interpreted by it completely differently over multiple iterations.
Experiment: https://suno.com/song/3338f5e5-b36d-4596-815d-cd2804c9a344 (generated lyrics)
Same lyrics all caps (chorus): https://suno.com/song/b176c658-9e9c-4a4b-b05e-6db291f415c9 didn't really do anything.
After loads of different attempts trying to get something different: https://suno.com/song/398ef310-94b8-493a-ae61-22b790875689 not really that great.
Tbf I think it's because it's been trained on genres and maybe lyrics and lacks info on vocal styles and other stuff present in tracks during the training...
At the current rate of progress maybe it'll be months. I did a song for my company just to have fun around an event and the quality of the song was astounding, better than this one I think also using v3. I didn't even write the lyrics, I just described what I want in the prompt. Also I used one of poems I wrote as a teenager (not a lot of them) to create a song... the AI would notice the emphasis in the feelings of the lyrics, exactly in the same way I felt them, so it made pauses and chorus accordingly.
It reminds me of CGI in the 90's. Everyone was so astounded over the quality of jurassic park and toy story, the rate of improvements was mindboggling. Predictions were made that in a few years, actors and movie studios would be obsolete. But in the meantime, audiences started to notice artifacts that were not apparent to the untrained eye - CGI was actually ugly! And here we are 30 years later - actors are still on sets.
but the sets of today aren't the sets of the 90's. sets were giant green screens for a second, now they're giant TV's. they're still on set, sure, but things have changed.
I had a similar reaction. We can still detect AI-generated images after years of progress; I think it's hasty to say they'll be indistinguishable any time soon.
Pretty much all mainstream songs are of the same tempo (or slight variations), the same beat, the same scale, the same accents etc. I'm not surprised at all it can be regurgitated by an generative model.
What I would like to see is what happens if you ask it to do in 5/8, 5/4 or any of the 7/* variants and see how that goes (I have no idea, might actually work). There are some examples in common music but not a lot especially for the more obscure ones. Unless they also trained it on a lot of international folk songs.
Almost none of what you said is true. Same scale? Tempo? Same beat? You think artists are just all using the same instrumental track?
And yes it can do odd time signatures. It can do all sorts of genres like art pop, cinematic scores, ambient, math rock, avant garde, baroque, etc.
> give this tech another year or two and it will be better quality than your average radio song.
TBH that's a pretty low bar; "radio" songs have been engineered and polished for a very long time now. I have no hard numbers but gut feeling says radio music only represents 1% of the music industry.
Here's my attempt at humor, there is something about his short sentences and speech delivery that makes them very suitable for ballads: https://suno.com/song/9f731225-8844-44f1-9325-4078cf53c729
Hmm, I think a rambling song form would have been a better fit.
I beg to differ, here's the nu metal version: https://suno.com/song/edea40ab-c41f-46e4-908f-a511b9ab311e
I almost feel compelled to take action against the corruption and crookedness.
The song is not clever or funny. It's a rather tuneless recitation. The only reason anyone is posting it is because AI.
Not sure whether I'm being completely serious, but it's already better than most EuroVision songs.