The Melody Mimic: AI Voice Cloning's Impact on Music

0:00Welcome to the ChatGPT podcast. I'm your host, Jaden Shafer. Today on the podcast we are going to be talking about AI in music. This has been a really controversial topic over the last month as AI has really pushed to the forefront. There's been a ton of viral AI songs that have come out with collaborations from Drake and The Weeknd and Grimes and all sorts of people that never actually consented to do these collaborations. All sorts of music distributors have issued cease and desist to take it down. We're going to talk about all of it on the podcast, where this is all going, and also where this was in the past.

0:31And the reason why I picked today to do this is because Google just recently released a new language model for music where you can create music using Google. And we want to talk about how, you know, revolutionary this is or not. So we're going to do some samples. But before we jump into all of this, I want to preface this with the fact that I have been doing the whole AI music thing for actually quite a while. Back in 2019, some friends and I for fun used different AI generating tools and we generated AI music and put it on Spotify. And I think this is also relevant today because recently Spotify announced that they were going to be wiping all of this AI music off of Spotify.

1:10So they did like a big clean sweep and, you know, pretty much all these people that were creating this AI music wiped it off. So I actually went back and found an old album that I don't think I'm actually paid for because I think when the distributor I was using found out it was AI-generated content, they just like deleted my account. I don't think it was incredibly popular, but it looks like they've left it up. So if you listen to it, then the distributor gets paid. so, you know, kudos to them for swiping my paycheck, I guess. But anyways, I'm going to play this song that I created. My artist was called Cinematic Mode, and this was, I believe, like pretty much with the old tool that I was using, you could choose a bunch of different genres, you could choose like tempos, you could put a whole bunch of different settings in, and you could generate music and, you know, do a bunch of different music generation stuff.

1:55So here is what I currently still have on Spotify from cinematic mode.

2:16Alright, you get the idea. So anyways, kind of funny, right? It's just the, it's some sort of cinematic music. And I was hoping people would just like listen to it to relax or something. I don't know. In retrospect, it's not incredible. It's not horrible. But the fact of the matter is this was available in 2019. It is now 2013 or it's now 2023. So a lot has changed. It's been four years. So in the course of four years since this technology has been out, and I would say like rather powerful, popular, useful, is Google, has Google made a massive improvement on this technology? So a recent report came out of TechCrunch by a journalist who was able to use Google's new AI-powered music generator, which is called Music LM, and they went through and, you know, tried to get it to do a bunch of different things.

3:06Essentially, it's like, kind of like ChatGPT, where you can talk to it, you can say, hey, create me a meditative piece that does this and that, and it has like a slower tempo, and some guitars and some different things. What's interesting about that is literally this is, I mean, it's really similar to what I was doing in the past where I could pick different instruments and tempos and genres and like all this different stuff, but I was just doing it from a slider, drop-down menus, that kind of like setting stuff, right, from like a software thing. Now it's like you talk to it and tell it, but I'm not a, you know what, I have to give them credit.

3:36If you can really do things like add different instruments in just by telling it, maybe that is an innovation beyond just the drop-down sliders. I would be curious to see how far it goes. Obviously, this is a lot more customizable than what I was using in the past, so I do think that's cool, but let's check out the music and listen to what it actually sounds like. So the first piece I'm going to show you is an EDM song that this journalist, I would have tested it out and showed you some pieces I created, but unfortunately, I'm still on the wait list, so we've got to show you what some journalists have created.

4:09And by the way, these journalists showed this tool when it was announced in, I believe, January or earlier this year, and they thought it was interesting back then, but they said it really hasn't made a lot of progress, and the clips that they were shown back in when it first, like, was announced were definitely cherry-picked clips, right? They generated, like, 100 and found the three best or the two best. So I'm going to show you what it can create now, and then we're going to go into a whole bunch of other famous people who have had music created around them, and I'll, you know, know, it's actually really hard to find a lot of these AI generated music, like there's a collab by The Weeknd and Drake and Bad Bunny and Rihanna, someone just created one for them and Grimes has a whole thing.

4:49Anyways, it's really hard to find this music because it's being taken down on a lot of platforms. But this kind of music where it's just generating background tracks is not, is taken down or controversial. So that's why Google can create it. And I do believe this is a good tool for Google because right now on YouTube, they have this music library where essentially if you want to use music in the background of your videos and you don't want to get copyright strikes and you don't want to get your videos taken down, they have this copyright-free music library that you can use. People can submit their music there if they're okay giving away the copyright.

5:21And I think that if this is able to be a good tool, we'll largely replace that where instead of like I used to just scroll through that when I was making a YouTube video looking for like a cinematic one or like an upbeat one or you know like you know some cool beats and now i'm going to be able to really go specifically with what i'm looking for and get like a really specific custom song that no one else has because something i noticed about that music library is there was a few good songs on there and i'd be watching youtube videos and i'd recognize them i'm like ah they're just using like a free video library or youtube free video library or song library uh clip and it makes it seem a little cheaper so this will be cool it's custom but So let's take a listen to the first one.

6:00It's an EDM song. The prompt for it was EDM song in a light upbeat and airy style, good for dancing. And this is what they got.

6:26So I think that that's not bad, to be honest. The song starts to kind of go off the rails and go a little... It's better at the beginning, right? But like, hey, if you were a musician using something like this, and you could use like the beginning for a little inspiration and like riff off of it and create like a whole thing or inevitably what you're going to be able to do is take a sample from the beginning of the song, feed it into something and say create a full song based off of this. There'll be an AI that can do that. Not horrible. EDM is a little bit easier, right? It's pretty technical kind of electronic music and this is a software program, so maybe that's easier.

6:57Here's a piano solo that they were also able to create and the prompt for this was romantic and emotional piano music. So let's see what it was able to create based off of that.

7:27So not bad. All in all, I think it was a pretty well done piece. piece, again that piece near the end it starts to like kind of change into a whole different theme of a song, so it's kind of hard to have like continuity and make the whole thing sound similar all throughout. That being said, not a terrible one. The last one I wanted to show you is doing chiptunes, I think that they just did that kind of like for the fun of it, so here is a chiptune song that they were able to generate.

8:10Not my personal preference. I think that was the worst of the three, to be honest. Maybe the EDM was the best and the piano was the middle, and that one was the worst, in my opinion. But it's really interesting, and I do have to give Google credit for the fact that you can be much more customizable. You can say the different types of styles and different types of instruments you want in there. That being said, I was doing a lot of this four years ago, and I don't feel like it really has come like incredibly far. It's definitely not perfect, and it has a lot of the same problems music I had way back in the day has.

8:39And the music that I was AI generating back in the day was like three or four minute long songs. These seem to be much shorter at the moment. So it's, I think it's up to be said if Google's going to be able to improve this a lot. I mean, I have to imagine they are going to. It seems like Google just came out and threw out like a whole bunch of AI tools to just show like, look, we're still in the AI game. Don't count us out. OpenAI hasn't killed us. But like at the same time, it's, I don't know, some of them aren't like incredibly impressive or groundbreaking, which like maybe if this is the first time you're hearing AI music, you're like, wow, that's amazing.

9:11But like four years ago, I could create pretty similar stuff. You know, I didn't have like a chat input to create it. I had toggles and drop downs, but it could create a custom music piece based off my stipulations every single time. So we'll see. I think the quality is a little better. Like it better be after four years, but I hope that this gets a lot better from here. So the thing I will say is this is not actually super new, the fact that this all exists. OpenAI, back in 2020, so three years ago, they had an experiment called Jukebox and they had, you know, an AI voice cloning song kind of thing and they made an Elvis song.

9:49And back in the day, TechCrunch did an article on it and it was like OpenAI's new experiment or yeah, experiments in music generation create an uncanny valley for Elvis, right? The uncanny valley is like, you can't tell the difference. Listening back on it, we're going to, I'm starting here, starting at the bottom and I'm going to work my way up because I don't believe that this song from cloning Elvis from 2020 is actually that great. But I do believe that some of the ones that are being done today are much better. So the technology has obviously come far. This is what Jukebox with OpenAI created back in 2020.

10:37The End

10:54Okay, so not horrible. I mean, it's Elvis, but it's kind of horrible. I mean, in my opinion, like, the sound fades in and out. You can hear the voice, like, increase and decrease in volume. And, I mean, kudos to them because this isn't a live artist that they can have go stand in a studio and sing today a bunch of vocals and take it. But, you know, they're pulling this off of older tracks. But still, you should be able to isolate Elvis' voice. And I believe if we had AI-cloned Elvis' voices today, they'll be much better. So bringing that up to show you the contrast between that and what is happening today.

11:25And I will also say the very beginning of this whole AI music thing, I really think was kicked off by David Guetta recently. It's kind of, he brought it to, I guess, a mainstream attention, not that it wasn't being done before. But he essentially went to a big, huge concert and he played an Eminem, like he used Eminem's AI voice and he created like a little track and played it at a concert. There's a whole bunch of people cheering to it. I'm going to show that to you because that was kind of like what kicked off. This is like on YouTube that has 1.3 million views. He says, obviously, I'm not going to release this.

11:58But anyways, you can have a listen to this and to see how this is, the technology is improving a little bit.

12:10This is the future rave sound. I'm getting lost in the underground. This is the future rave sound. I'm getting lost in the underground.

12:26Eminem bro, there's something that I made as a joke.

12:32Alright, so yeah, David Guetta goes on to talk about it. It's like talking about how he made it as a joke and he used some websites and stuff. Anyways, really interesting. He brought it up and as far as I know, there wasn't much pushback from Eminem on this because this wasn't just like random people making it. This is quite a famous person, posted it on his official YouTube channel, so pretty big deal. But all that being said, I don't think that, yeah, I don't think it got a lot of pushback because it wasn't ever released commercially, and it was, like, it was, it was a, you know, one minute long clip, and it was only the first 15 seconds were that song, and the rest of it was him talking about how he made it, so it doesn't really seem like he has this full-on song.

13:14Now, what people are seeming to have a problem with commercially and with copyright is the fact that people are starting to make full-on, full-featured songs. So recently, a creator called Ghostwriter, he created a song called Heart of My Sleeve which is featuring Drake and The Weeknd. I'm going to play a clip of that for you. To be honest, listening to the whole thing, it sounds very similar to both of those artists, and if it was released today, I can almost guarantee it would go to the top of the charts. So let's give that a listen

14:22All right, so you get the idea. I think pretty well done, right? Apparently there's entire Discord communities of people making these AI collaboration songs with over 40 ,000 members in one Discord community I saw specifically. And they're using a lot of different tools and software. They're all talking together. they've released full-fledged albums with, you know, Travis Scott on the album and all these other people. Of course, they're AI voices. But they all collaborate and they create these albums together. And from their perspective, you know, they're saying, hey, we like to create this music, you know, we're big fans, and it helps us to be like, I don't know, more integrated as fans into the artists that we use, whatever.

14:58It's not commercial stuff. But that being said, despite the fact that they're like, honestly, it's more like a parody than a normal song because blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. They're just trying to get not banned. But, um, I believe, uh, United Music Group is a big advocate of banning this stuff. They said, we're going to use our full, um, you know, legal power to stop this. And essentially what they're saying is like, these AI voices, um, there's not a lot of precedent. Like when I, when people have reached out to lawyers, lawyers are saying this is all pretty new stuff. We don't know what the precedent is around this, yada, yada.

15:29There's probably gonna have to be some lawsuits before we really get it settled. But I think so probably what that means is that a real legit artist is going to have to put someone's AI voice on their track, release it publicly, get a lot of streams and downloads, then get sued, and then that's probably how the precedent will get made if I had to guess. But in any case, what I believe would happen and what makes the most sense to me is that if it's a dead artist, then the deceased artist's, you know, family or whoever owns their estate gets to control the rights to their music and their voice and their personage right like if you want to put Elvis on a bottle of shampoo you would have to go get rights from his uh from his estate and I think it's going to be the exact same thing for um music if you want to use his voice that's how you're going to have to do it it's interesting because I do remember after um after Michael Jackson died I guess Kanye or Akon did a song with him or something but you know that was probably pre-recorded so that's probably irrelevant in any case um I think that but like Like, I guess the point is his estate got the money.

16:30He's obviously deceased, and the estates of all these deceased artists are getting the money. So in any case, it is interesting because there are artists coming out now that are fully supporting the whole AI music space, and the number one, I would say, is Grimes, who famously is an artist. She has a child with Elon Musk, and she said she's all on board with the AI music thing. As long as you split the royalties 50-50 with her, she went so far as to create something called elf.tech, which is a website portal you can go into, create music using her voice, and it's all set up with a smart contract so that as it gets music streams and whatever, the royalties are split using a smart contract.

17:12So she's obviously went pretty hard into this whole space. She's a big fan, but recently she did reluctantly come out and set some guidelines for how you can use her, how you can use your music. So she said, okay, hate this part, but we might have to do copyright takedowns only for really toxic lyrics with Grimes' voice. She said, in my opinion, you'd really have to push it for me to want to try to take something down, but I guess please don't be the worst. She said she just doesn't want people to have lyrical content with regards to sex or violence, or she said no baby murder songs, please. So obviously, like, she's, I think she's not being super strict, but she's obviously like, if you take it too far and are making a Nazi anthem or something like that, she's going to take it down and send takedown requests for it.

18:03So really interesting where that is going, but I do believe that it's going to be a big thing for people to create music with her. And recently a song came out, which someone, I saw a headline that said, the first convincing Grimes AI song is here and it's a banger. So I'll let you be the judge on if it's a banger or not, but here's a Grimes AI song that has recently come out since this whole thing has happened, and she's given people rights to take her voice and make songs with it.

19:10All right, so that song is currently on YouTube. It only has 18 ,000 listens, so not very big, unless it's somewhere else that I'm not finding it. But, I mean, the comments on it so far is pretty positive. Top comment is, first Grimes, AI song that I want to listen to on repeat. I really want this song on Spotify. I love it. So we're finally here. Blah, blah, blah. All these people seem pretty supportive of this. So it's going to be interesting to see how this goes in the future. And the album cover or the picture for it would appear to be Grimes, like, coming out of a light explosion, which I'm assuming was just generated on Mid Journey.

19:45So it'll be interesting to see how that goes. All right, last thing I want to bring up for you is the fact that very recently, Bad Bunny and Rihanna had an AI duet drop that was reported on by Billboard. It is obviously the same thing as that other song I showed you by Drake and The Weeknd. It's not real, but some people are saying that it's actually the same creator who did it, and they pushed it on SoundCloud, and it immediately got deleted within 24 hours of being posted on YouTube and SoundCloud. I did find it another clip of it somewhere else, so I'll play that for you. You can listen to it, but I think record labels are taking this really seriously trying to shut it down, so it's going to be interesting to see if they're able to continue doing this or if they're all going to just break down and be like Grimes and offer a 50-50 revenue split on songs made with them.

20:35See, the thing is, I feel like for an artist like Grimes that's not so much in the top charts, that might be a great idea, but for someone like Drake that any song he ever makes is going to shoot up to the top charts, it might just dilute his brand. So I'll let you be the judge, but here is the Bad Bunny and Rihanna collaboration AI song that was created.

21:09Now you got me thinking

21:34In my opinion, one of the better AI songs. So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens. Will music, will record, there's two choices. Are record labels going to be able to completely shut this down and protect their artists? Or are they going to split it 50-50? Or is the 50-50 AI voice split going to be something more popular for deceased artists that don't have the opportunity to make any more money? So yeah, anyways, it's going to be interesting to see where this goes. We're going to follow along on this, and I will keep you updated on what happens in the industry. As always, thanks so much for listening to the podcast.

22:04If you like this podcast, make sure that you join our Facebook community. There's a link in the description of this podcast episode in the show notes to go and join that. Join, tell us your opinions on everything that is happening in AI, and also make sure to click the link to join our weekly newsletter where I send out everything that is happening in AI in a nice little newsletter that covers all of the topics to keep you informed. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast and have a great rest of your day.