RALEIGH, N.C. — Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing many aspects of our lives, including the music industry.
According to a recent survey by music technology company Soundplate, 20% of independent artists have used AI to create music. Thanks to music generator websites, you don't have to be a music expert or techie to make your own songs.
Suno, a leading AI music generator website, is less than a year old and already has 12 million users. Think of it as ChatGPT for music. Users type in what they’re thinking, and the AI creates a full-length song in minutes.
“Sometimes I’ll use the word ‘powerful,’ but ‘cinematic’ and ‘orchestral’ together is usually a win,” said Krista Gable, a self-described AI enthusiast.
Websites like Suno typically use machine learning techniques to produce songs. The platforms employ advanced algorithms to analyze patterns, structures and styles of existing songs from various genres.
By training its learning models on this data, the AI learns to generate new pieces based on what it perceives as good music. Depending on what a user types in, it can create the melody, harmony, rhythm and lyrics to match.
For a demonstration, I asked Suno for a traditional pop song with an acoustic guitar. I offered a few personal details, including where I grew up (Queens, New York) and where I went to college (Syracuse University), to help with the lyrics.
“So the title they gave it was ‘Rob Wu’s Carolina Smile,’” Gable said.
The result may not be Grammy-worthy, but I was impressed with the first try. More serious users can refine the song by using more prompts to modify specific sections, add different voices or instruments, or change the tempo, allowing for more customization.
The technology is opening up a world of possibilities, enabling anyone with a vision to bring it to life.
“Human intelligence and machine intelligence come together, and we’re just getting started,” Gable said.
The technology has also caught the attention of major record labels, three of which sued Suno and another site earlier this summer, claiming copyrighted songs were used to train AI models. Suno has acknowledged its models have been trained on copyrighted music but has claimed fair use in the past and insists safeguards are in place to ensure the songs it generates are original.
“Just like the kid writing their own rock songs after listening to the genre – or a teacher or a journalist reviewing existing materials to draw new insights – learning is not infringing,” wrote Suno’s CEO Mikey Shulman in a blog post.
Phil Cardinale, a technology and intellectual property attorney with the Raleigh-based firm Smith Anderson, believes AI music websites have a relatively strong case. The outcome will likely hinge on whether record labels can prove the AI-generated music is significantly harming their workers.
He believes both sides will come to an agreement rather than battle it out in court.
“I think that what is likely to happen, fast forwarding five years, is that there will be licensing deals with the publishers that have vast amounts of data,” said Cardinale. “It’s usually preferable to litigating for years.”