I asked AI music generator Suno to write me a humorous song about AI doing creative work.
Here’s the result:
Yes, some of the ChatGPT-generated lyrics are questionable, the scansion’s a bit off and the ‘singer’ sounds like she’s borrowed Cher’s vocoder, but after listening to it a few times, I’d say the tune’s actually a bit of a banger.
Bearing in mind that the quality of AI-generated music is only going to get better from here (“remember, today's AI is the worst AI you will ever use” - Ethan Mollick), it makes sense that the music industry is vexed about AI.
Whilst I expect artists and labels will get the protection they’re seeking around voice cloning (à la Tennessee’s ELVIS Act) and that they’ll be tighter controls around unlicensed copyrighted material being used as training data, I think the genie’s well and truly out of the bottle on AI being able generate pretty decent original tracks, which will become part of our listening landscape.
Spotify’s AI Playlist, which launched as a beta in the UK and Australia this week, promises to fashion a playlist to match your every text prompt. It’s a neat idea, although it’s struggled with a few of my prompts, responding thus: “I’ve tried a bunch of different ways to make that playlist, but it’s not coming together”.
It’s not hard to imagine AI generating tracks on the fly to fill in gaps in Spotify’s catalogue (as hard as it is to believe that >100 million tracks leaves any gaps).
Spotify may prudently choose to steer clear of this for the time being, but the lack of recurring royalty payments may make AI-generated music too an attractive an option for TV & Film producers and business owners looking for background music in bars, cafes and elevators (elevator music’s still a thing right?)
However, I don’t believe this means musicians should throw in the trombone as I think we’re hard-wired to want to connect with human artistry, storytelling and performance.
Streaming hasn’t killed radio or live music. Live Nation reported last week that concert attendance is at record levels, jumping 20% in 2023 to 145 million (compared to 98 million in 2019 before the pandemic).
The advent of synthesisers didn’t consign traditional instruments to museum display cabinets. Instead they enabled many more people to compose, record and perform tracks using sounds they wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to render in the traditional way.
The power and speed of development of AI* definitely poses some new questions in this (and pretty much every other) domain. But I wonder whether it’s possible we’ll look back on the advent of AI-assisted music generation as a similarly democratising moment, which augments rather than destroys existing means of music production?
That appears to be ChatGPT’s conclusion when I asked it to write a couple more verses to finish off the curtailed song Suno generated (songs generated for free are limited to 2 minutes):
But fear not, dear humans, for creativity's flame,
Burns brighter in challenges, it's never the same.
For every task the AIs take, a new one does appear,
It's a dance of evolution, so let's cheer!
So here's to the future, it's not all doom and gloom,
For in the room where it happens, there's more than enough room.
For AIs and humans, to work side by side,
In the ever-evolving creative tide.
But then I guess it would say that… 🙃
*AI Internet is currently losing its mind over Udio, which is looking like a better version of Suno. It only launched yesterday and has had to temporarily close its doors to new joiners.