Washington, May 1 (EFE).- It would be unusual to imagine a collaboration between Featherweight and Taylor Swift, but it is not such a crazy idea in a world with artificial intelligence (AI), which is already beginning to challenge the “establishment” of the music industry.
A less unexpected mix, The Weeknd and Drake, has starred in one of the latest AI-generated songs to go viral, “Heart on My Sleeve”.
To do this, producer Ghostwriter has used AI to create realistic vocal clips that sound like The Weeknd and Drake, and TikTok has done the rest with a video that has reached nine million views.
However, the Universal Music Group has been in charge of clipping its wings, ordering Spotify and YouTube to remove the song from their platforms.
It’s not the first time Drake has seen his voice used by AI. “This is the last straw, IA”, he lamented on Instagram, following a version of him rapping “Munch (Feelin’U)” by Ice Spice.
Music has often been the spearhead of technological change, even though text-to-image conversion could historically be considered the first art form to take on AI, as there are apps like Midjourney, where the user makes a description of the image you want to generate and the platform creates it.
Even so, music “could be the first industry to become fully involved” in this revolution, Martin Clancy, chairman of the AI Ethics Committee at the US-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, told EFE.
Copyright is the backbone of a music industry that is not yet ready for AI, which is seen as a threat to artists’ rights, so much so that Universal has asked streaming services to prevent it from accessing it. to their songs.
In statements to EFE, a Universal spokesperson justifies the measure by arguing that “the platforms have a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in a way that harms artists.”
In his opinion, the development of AI has forced record companies to ask themselves “what side of history they want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression; or on the side of counterfeiting, fraud, and denying artists their due compensation.”
However, Clancy believes that AI opens up a range of possibilities to discover and even to improve the situation of certain artists. This is the case of the Canadian singer Grimes, who invites others to use her voice -through AI- in exchange for 50% of the income.
Another song created by IA that has recently gone viral is “Savages” by Jay-Z’s group AllttA. One of its members, Mr. J. Medeiros, tells EFE that it was originally composed for a documentary that was looking for a piece of music set in the 90s to portray the life of children in the suburbs of France.
The documentary ended up not using it and now the band has shared it on their networks, without monetizing it or using it for promotion, to the point that many of the people who have heard it don’t even know who the band is behind the composition.
“It took us at least a month to get the verse to sound right,” Medeiros confesses, admitting that they changed the lyrics over and over again and tried to figure out how they could spell certain words to get the AI to pick up the most accurate sound. possible to Jay-Z.
It also made things easier for the song to be originally intended for the children’s documentary, because the verses were more “sweet” and poetic, so they worked better with the AI.
An artist should not be governed by copyright, at least not during the creation process, reflects Medeiros. “As an artist, especially hip hop, it would be hypocritical to adopt a legal position,” claims this rapper, who thinks that musicians have the right to “test” this tool that has fallen from heaven.
Medeiros assures that they will continue experimenting with AI, but without imitating the voice of famous singers, since they have done “what they had to do: add music to the debate about this new invention.”
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