The recent developments of Generative AI within the music industry have been really interesting to me. As a BIM student and very active music hobbyist, I’ve seen technology influence a lot of aspects of the music-making process. It started with AI programs that could find sounds within your music library that would fit in with the track you were making. Finding sounds was never this easy. This was quite an innocent addition if you compare it to the possibilities that are available now.
One of them is generative AI Voice models, with these models it was possible to recreate any song with any voice. At first, this sounded very cool, but this quickly turned into several controversies. People were copying voices from major artists and layering the vocals on top of instrumentals they made or generated. The songs were so believable that unreleased material could not be separated from generated material. See for instance the following song that used the voice of popular artist Drake:
Copyright is a big issue with these songs. A copyright system works by recognizing existing patterns, but with AI, these are all new patterns, so copyright claims do not work against these generated AI songs. See for instance the following copyright infringement article about popular artists The Weeknd and Drake:
These cases will create some interesting and challenging questions. What if generated Drake songs divert revenue from the actual Drake? What if his voice is being used for malinformation? Other than the problems these AI voice models bring It probably won’t be very long till it’s possible to make believable full instrumentals with vocals singing lyrics that are all fully generated by AI. Music what first was this creative outlet for people becomes an industry where you have to be skeptical about the validity of songs. The fun and cool parts of the music you listen to might just be fully generated now.
I think you touch on a very interesting subject in this post which might raise several two sided opinions on the matter of AI generated music. On the one hand, as you rightfully bring up, the creation of such content brings up many concerns surrounding copyright infringement and even the malicious use of an artist’s voice to potentially spread malinformation on a global scale.
While I definitely agree that these are very serious issues that need to be tackled, I would argue that alongside these threats there are extremly interesting opportunities to consider with AI generated music. While the creative element of the artist does fade away, the use of these tools allows us to push the boundaries of the music industry. Through the generation of vocals, there is the potential to not only make new sounds that the artist in question potentially would not do, but also combine our favorite artists that maybe would never consider linking up in real-life to make such a song. It opens the doors to countless opportunities on never seen before collaborations.
Nonetheless, I’ll still mention that it remains vital that a clear distinction can be made between what is real and what was generated through AI. As much as people might enjoy these new sounds and collaborations it has to be distinguished from what real music actually is.
You raise some interesting authenticity problems that are definitely worth thinking about. However, I am most curious about what you think the ‘fun in music’ really is. Besides a song not actually being made by one of your favorite artists, do you think the songs generated by AI could be just as good for you as a listener? Could it reach the same emotional level, or could it maybe only be just as good in making plainly enjoyable tunes?
In response to Afonso, I can’t help but wonder whether we would ultimately be worse of if every possible version and combination of music can and will be created. Maybe the limitations of artist and specifically also the limit to what they are willing to give us is what gives music its precious value. Would we get bored if we can just ask AI to create anything we want in the blink of an eye? I’m not sure.
Thank you for the insightful post! Within the music industry, this is certainly a hot topic of discussion as this concept is fairly new and hard to tackle. It is hard to tackle because there are various concerns relating to AI in music such as credibility, authentication and ownership are all topics that need to be addressed. In my opinion, the most crucial concern would be that such work can be replicated by other users than the artist themselves which can create challenges addressing authorship and artist’s integrity. Additionally, it may produce content that may deviate from the true expression from the artist as that may diverge from their true intention.
While the artist may seek opportunities of using AI in their music creation for multi purposes, they may issue when their work and credibility has been altered by individuals. I am curious to see how artists are going to utilize the technology and how it will affect live performance if artists indeed use such methodology. Will they openly use AI technology in live performance or use it as a background tool for live performance. Furthermore, I am also curious whether the artist will be transparent about it. With transparency, there is a possibility that listeners would not appreciate the use of the technology as an assistance tool but there is also the possibility that listeners would appreciate the combination of music and technology and are open to these new opportunities.
As a result, this is an intriguing topic of interest and would like to see how it would affect industry and its people.