A survey published last week suggested 97% of respondents could not spot an AI-generated song. But there are some telltale signs - if you know where to look.
Here’s a quick guide …
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No live performances or social media presence
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‘A mashup of rock hits in a blender’
A song with a formulaic feel - sweet but without much substance or emotional weight - can be a sign of AI, says the musician and technology speaker, as well as vocals that feel breathless.
- ‘AI hasn’t felt heartbreak yet’
“AI hasn’t felt heartbreak yet… It knows patterns,” he explains. “What makes music human is not just sound but the stories behind it.”
- Steps toward transparency
In January, the streaming platform Deezer launched an AI detection tool, followed this summer by a system which tags AI-generated music.
I have used Suno quite extensively just for fun, I insert my own lyrics and let it create different styles and beats, and you have to push out like 30 before it does something actually decent, but some of them are fucking bangers. I consider it like watching visualizations in WinAmp.
I am not stating a moral proposition in either direction, just an observation.
I like to ask it to generate lyrics based on funny prompts. For example, I asked it to write a song from Darth Vader’s perspective about the fact that he never actually said “Luke, I am your father”. The results was just savage.
That… Is… Not very good.
BUT! Let’s say that you took that and used it as a scaffolding for an idea. Let’s say you kept some parts, rewrote some other parts, in the end coming up with something much better than the original.
Did you write it, or did the robot?
How much would you have to change for it to be “yours”? Where’s the cutoff point?
I’m just posing this as a general metaphysical conundrum, I don’t take a position other than deconstructing underlying arguments.
Fucking shit. I am starting to sound like a god damned AI.
I just thought it was funny that it decided to brutalize Luke all on its own.
Also, the incest thing was all the AI. I just asked for a song about the fact that Vader never said the line “Luke, I am your father”.
Well then it is not only bad but wildly off topic, because what you got there is a cheap diss track missing a lot of opportunities.
“Hey Luke I heard you kissed your sister on Hoth”
I mean right there you’ve got something rhyming with “hot”. But anyway.
I think that if you don’t know literature and art, dumb literature and art seems genius. And that’s where we’re at as a society.