Testing Suno.ai: The Viral AI Music Generator

0:00Today on the AI Breakdown, we're looking at the new AI music generation app that has people losing their minds. The AI Breakdown is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. Go to Breakdown.net for more information about our YouTube, our newsletter, and our Discord.

0:24Welcome back to the AI Breakdown. Well, it is Christmas Eve for those of you who celebrate, which means it is a very low-key, festive, fun, celebratory time of year. And so for today's show, instead of doing something big and heavy, you know, exploring AI safety or X-Risk or Shagath or technical stuff like the emergence of AI agent creation apps and things like that, I thought we would have fun looking at AI music generation and specifically honing in on this new tool that people are getting really stoked about. Now, throughout the year, there have been a number of different developments from the big labs when it comes to AI music generation.

1:01OpenAI had previously been working on this with something they called Jukebox, but they eventually sunsetted that project to focus elsewhere. Meta earlier in the year announced something called Audiocraft. And Audiocraft was really impressive. We did some samples on a show earlier this year. To give you just a quick flavor, I asked it to create a melodic old-timey Christmas song, and this is what it produced.

1:32Now, this is a very generic prompt, a hard one for it to get right. But the more specific you are, like 80s driving synths and things like that, the better it does. Now, Google also announced something that they called Music LM, and that's recently come to bear as MusicFX, which you can now try in Google's AI test kitchen. To give you a sense of this, I clicked an I'm feeling lucky button for a random generation. And what came back was a fast paced, upbeat piece with a driving drum beat. The sound is both exciting and energetic with an aggressive rhythm. Here's what that sounds like generated.

2:34Definitely a step up in quality from where we were earlier in the year. And by the way, whenever you generate a sound, it gives you a set of options. Now, one of the things that's cool about the way that MusicFX is set up is that it hones in on specific parts of the prompt and turns them into drop downs so you can start to see how making different decisions about specific words would actually change how it came out. So, a fast-paced upbeat piece with a driving drum beat. Let's instead of upbeat, put melancholy. And let's only change that and see what happens.

3:23You can see the mood and feel of the piece got shifted based on that switch from upbeat to melancholy. Now let's start over because we're going to go look at some Christmas related songs And I want to see how it does when I give it something related. A pop, punk, Christmas song with Irish instruments and an upbeat driving feel. It identifies pop, punk, Christmas, Irish instruments and upbeat and driving as variables in the prompt that could be changed.

4:05First one doesn't really have Irish instruments, not necessarily anything noticeably Christmas, although admittedly that is a hard type of prompt. Let's try their second generation.

4:32Still not quite there. Now, this is not something I've tried, but let's see if you identify a specific artist what happens. A driving fast Christmas song in the style of flogging Molly. Indeed, the prompt goes against our policies for identifying flogging Molly. All right. Well, anyways, so that's MusicFX. Like I said, a really cool update, but ultimately not the thing that has people so stoked this week. No, that is Suno. Now, Suno has a serious team behind it. These are folks who were formerly at companies like Meta and TikTok, and the experience is definitely brought to bear in what they've created.

5:12Now, Suno, unlike these other tools, are actually generating the stems of entire songs, including lyrics. So let's take a listen to one of their trending samples, Turkey Time, which is a pop song.

5:36pour some wine turkey time it's a country ride grab your plate fill it up take your time obviously we've got here a whole different level of quality to explore all right but now let's go to my library where i messed around with a bunch of different styles all of course around christmas songs. Let's start with Yuletide Turmoil, a synth-pop 1980s ballad.

6:27So the prompt for all of these was the same with one variation. So in this case it was a 1980s synth-pop ballad song about a Christmas dinner gone wrong. Basically, I just switched out different genres and genre explainers in the place of that 1980s synth-pop ballad. For this one, the prompt was a 1990s gangster rap song about a Christmas dinner gone wrong.

7:07Next up, of course, we had to try a dubstep Christmas song, that classic of all genres.

7:26And one more for the heavyheads out there. Here is Feast of Chaos, a 2000s new metal Limp Bizkit style song about a Christmas dinner gone wrong. Now, what's interesting about this one is that I actually used Limp Bizkit in the prompt, but later when I tried to put Skrillex in the dubstep prompt, it wouldn't allow it. So maybe Limp Bizkit is just such a weird word that it didn't know what to do with it.

7:57now let's bring it down a notch for those of you out there who are not into heavy music and let's try a 1950s big band sinatra style song about a christmas dinner gone wrong and we're actually going to play two of these because they both came out great when you give sooner a request its default is to give you two options. And so this is a Christmas dinner meltdown.

8:45And next we'll do Holly Jolly Christmas Blues. Well, it's the most wonderful time of the year. Family gathers round full of Christmas cheer. But at our dinner table, things took to turn. Mama burnt the turkey and daddy's face went red.

9:14It also does a great job with country music. This is the Christmas Dinner Fiasco.

9:35And the Christmas Yodel. of mine. There was a festive air. I joined Christmas shine. The table was set. So obviously this is a pretty amazing tool. It is something where beyond the first few creations, you're going to have to pay if you want to do more. But once you do pay, you have a huge, huge amount of generations that you get per month. I will show you just one more in this video, my favorite of all the creations. And in fact, the first one that I did, an upbeat pop punk song about a Christmas dinner gone wrong. This, my friends, is Tinsel and Tension. It's Christmas time, the table's set Family gather round with love and respect Tension's brewing, things are getting tough Uncle Bob and I still just can't get enough It's a Christmas dinner gone wrong

10:46So friends, that is Suno. Go to suno.ai and start playing around with it. You will have a ton of fun. Hey, and thanks for a great year of content. The plan for next week is to do a show on Wednesday and on Friday. I figure rather than be gone entirely, that at least gives us a chance to cover any news that has creeped up. So look out for that. And in the meantime, have a really happy holiday. Until next time. Peace.