We’re rocketing towards some truly terrifying times in music.
In recent years, AI-generated music has become more and more commonplace, and creating it has become more and more accessible. Music created with artificial intelligence is already running rampant on social media platforms like TikTok, and as AI continues to advance, music made solely by machines is becoming harder to distinguish from songs made by real people.
This might seem like a mundane issues, but there’s a lot of risk involved. A multitude of artists have already spoken out about AI-generated songs, with many showing concern that the technology can copy their own voices. The state of Tennessee even passed legislation to prevent “deep fake” songs and music creation from spreading.
Though that’s certainly a step in the right direction, there’s not a whole lot that can be done with AI being used to create original music (rather than copying the voices of already established artists). And there’s not really a barrier of entry for AI-music… thanks to platforms like Suno, anyone with a computer can do it.
That very thing actually sparked a lot of controversy back in November of last year.
Surely you heard about the AI-generated song that topped the Billboard Country Digital Songs Sales chart, right? Whiskey Riff reported that a track titled “Walk My Walk,” by an artist called Breaking Rust, had seemingly fooled the masses. It was a complete AI creation all around – from the artist, to the music video, to the song itself.
“Walk My Walk” is actually credited to someone named Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, who has seemingly also created another “artist” called Defbeatsai, which posts nothing but raunchy AI-generated songs. At least when it comes to the Instagram page for Defbeatsai, it’s disclosed that the songs are AI-generated (I mean, they aren’t hiding it… “AI” is at the end of the name).
When it comes to the social media for Breaking Rust, that “artist” is described as “Outlaw Country” and “Soul Music for Us.” There’s no mention that Breaking Rust’s music has been created entirely by AI, and “Walk My Walk” in particular is the one that rocketed to the top of the digital sales chart. It became one of the top stories in not just country music, but all of music just a couple of months ago.
And I’m afraid that was just the start of a growing, concerning trend that we could see for years to come. Why do I say that? Because it certainly seems like a whole lot of people were fooled into thinking some real people were behind that music… all for it to just be AI. Now, there’s even a study that backs that fear up.
Deezer, an Ipsos and music app, surveyed 9,000 different people across eight countries to see if they could successfully identify an AI track. In a shocking turn of events, 97% of the people that were surveyed actually misidentified the AI track when directly comparing it to a song that was made by a real artist, according to Deezer.
Unfortunately, that’s not hard to believe. I see people all the time fooling for AI-generated news on Facebook (I’m sure you’ve seen that too), and AI music getting better and better as time goes on. That’s kind of how artificial intelligence works. It continues to learn and build off what it has already done. And let’s be honest, the easiest way to spot AI music is by the terrible cover art or social media presence when you finally look up the band.. but just hearing by ear? I’m not sure I’d be able to tell the difference either.
Considering that AI is also still in it’s infant stages (in the grand scheme of things), it’s only going to get more and more advanced. That could translate into music that really is indistinguishable from songs made by real people, and if almost 100% of people are already falling for what’s out there now… that’s scary to think about.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.whiskeyriff.com ’
