3w ago

How can you tell if music is AI-generated?

www.bbc.com How can you tell if music is AI-generated?

As AI-generated music floods streaming platforms, questions bubble over whether listeners are owed more transparency.

A survey published last week suggested 97% of respondents could not spot an AI-generated song. But there are some telltale signs - if you know where to look.

Here's a quick guide ...

No live performances or social media presence
'A mashup of rock hits in a blender'

A song with a formulaic feel - sweet but without much substance or emotional weight - can be a sign of AI, says the musician and technology speaker, as well as vocals that feel breathless.

'AI hasn't felt heartbreak yet'

"AI hasn't felt heartbreak yet... It knows patterns," he explains. "What makes music human is not just sound but the stories behind it."

Steps toward transparency

In January, the streaming platform Deezer launched an AI detection tool, followed this summer by a system which tags AI-generated music.

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183 comments

Okay okay. First off, fuck AI yeah. But if it's becoming this indistinguishable where you need to go looking for tells that it's AI I don't think it's fair to call it bad music, just how it got there is bad.
It's like listening to Kanye West. Graduation is amazing but fuck him.
- Humans have made a lot of shitty, uninspired music as well. So it could mean that AI-generated slop is indistinguishable from human-made slop, in which case, it would still be bad music.
  
  Paul McCartney's "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" was the first thing that popped into my brain upon reading this. Not sure if it is relevant, but felt like it was worth noting.
  
  Why? Is it because it's considered a masterpiece or a bad song?
- Hard disagree, because it's like with all the other forms of AI-created slop - with the real thing there's layers of meaning, and you spend time and mental energy digging into that and getting something from it. But as with AI art and AI prose, you try looking closer at it and it just makes you feel hollow and frustrated at having wasted your time.
  There was no meaning, there was no symbolism, there were no clever literary allusions, there was no interplay between the melody and the lyrics, it's just superficial garbage that tricks you into giving it attention by sounding good on its first listen.
  (Edit: lol touched a nerve with some shit talentless musicians)
  
  I listened to Kanye for years before he publicly became a Nazi and I don't think the breadth of his mind changed overnight.
  I spent years defending his off-putting public personality because his music touched me from the start.
  I really think our pattern seeking monkey brains are easily tricked enough to find meaning in a pile of garbage if we believe hard enough and AI represents this, not proves against it.
  
  If you compare AI 'slop' with great works of course its easy to dismiss it and bash it. But there is more human crap out there made each day than there is great works. Music, images, video, texts, all of it. For each piece of great work there is that you find, theres hundreds if not thousands of not so great works that are out there. AI works can be anything from 100% no human involvment besides the initial prompt. They can also involve time and work to get the prompt just the way the user wants. It's going to end up with more people being able to create more things. Not everyone can draw, or play music, or make movies. Not everyone has the time or money to put everything together thats needed to make something like a good song or a good movie. AI tools are going to give more people those chances, and yes there is going to be slop, but theres already been slop for decades that was all 100% human being made, that had no meaning, no symbolism, no clever literay allusions. So what exactly is the problem with people using AI generate something?
  
  But there is more human crap out there made each day than there is great works
  And now, thanks to AI, we can expect 100x more shit to wade through! Great success!
  Not everyone can draw, or play music, or make movies. Not everyone has the time or money to put everything together thats needed to make something like a good song or a good movie.
  If the author does not want to spend time learning and doing, then I don't want to spend time checking whatever they asked an AI to do.
  So what exactly is the problem with people using AI generate something?
  Lower barrier of entry for profit-seeking bullshitters. A significant usage of AI is done by people wanting to profit off it somehow. SEO optimized garbage sites, videos that get lots of views on yt/ttk/insta, playing spotify on repeat forever.
  Oh, there's also the problem of all the deepfakes that people WILL believe, whatever the intent was: revenge porn, political manipulation, trolling.
  
  If the author does not want to spend time learning and doing, then I don't want to spend time checking whatever they asked an AI to do.
  Not everyone has the luxury to spend time learning those skill sets. Should the single parent who had a dream to make art who is getting crushed by capitalism, works 3 jobs to make ends meet and literally doesnt have time to learn there passion without starving not also deserve to be able to express themselves? What do you want only the privileged rich people who have time to dedicate large portions of their life without impact on their finances to be the only ones putting out art? How does someone like Taylor swift who's whole career came about because her parents could spend so much money on getting her training and paying for studio time in some of the most expensive studios more deserving of getting to make art because of circumstances most people dont have the opportunity to participate in?
  Lower barrier of entry for profit-seeking bullshitters
  Oh no poor people might be able to make money off of art instead of only massive corporations that effectively already killed the human spirit in art already. Oh no someone who may have gone to school for art so they can express themselves may no longer be able to get a job at an ad company where their love for art gets extinguished as they have to constantly make soulless logos for mega corps based on advise from advertising psychologist who define what will tingle peoples brain more to make them want to consume more.
  The problem your scared about already happens but is dressed up as human expression today by pr departments because people do it. If anything AI art would counter that because now more people will be producing things for the sole reason of expressing themselves instead of needing to take a soul crushing job eroding the expression of their craft for a corporation to make up for the years of debt they incurred by going to school to follow their passion only to find out the field they went into is a farce.
  Oh, there's also the problem of all the deepfakes that people WILL believe, whatever the intent was: revenge porn, political manipulation, trolling.
  People believe anything already, people believed random hearsay in the past. The only counter for any type of manipulation like this whether being based in deep fakes or just someone spewing nonsense on a pod cast is critical thinking skills. AI doesnt change that one bit, if someone doesnt want to think critically about something they wont, they don't need AI today to practice cognitive dissonance and blocking AI wont stop that behavior only focusing on education and critical thinking skills will.
  
  Glad to see that you lack an understanding of scale, that explains a lot.
  Should the single parent who had a dream to make art who is getting crushed by capitalism, works 3 jobs to make ends meet and literally doesnt have time to learn there passion without starving not also deserve to be able to express themselves?
  They're not expressing themselves if all they're doing is the equivalent of a boss telling a worker to do something. This is also called "commissioning an artist"
  Oh no poor people might be able to make money off of art instead of only massive corporations that effectively already killed the human spirit in art already. Oh no someone who may have gone to school for art so they can express themselves may no longer be able to get a job at an ad company where their love for art gets extinguished as they have to constantly make soulless logos for mega corps based on advise from advertising psychologist who define what will tingle peoples brain more to make them want to consume more.
  This whole paragraph is such a display of bad faith that I can't even figure what's your position. My best guess: a lot of words to dodge the problem.
  The problem your scared about already happens but is dressed up as human expression today by pr departments because people do it. If anything AI art would counter that because now more people will be producing things for the sole reason of expressing themselves instead of needing to take a soul crushing job eroding the expression of their craft for a corporation to make up for the years of debt they incurred by going to school to follow their passion only to find out the field they went into is a farce.
  Yeah, nothing like getting a soul crushing job that doesn't involve art, so that my artistic spirit can remain unfulfilled forever while I pretend to boss around a prompt and think I did something. Refer back to my first point of this reply.
  People believe anything already, people believed random hearsay in the past. The only counter for any type of manipulation like this whether being based in deep fakes or just someone spewing nonsense on a pod cast is critical thinking skills. AI doesnt change that one bit, if someone doesnt want to think critically about something they wont, they don’t need AI today to practice cognitive dissonance and blocking AI wont stop that behavior only focusing on education and critical thinking skills will.
  It's a matter of scale. That you failed to grasp something so simple says a lot.
  
  I don't mind if the work is generated by AI. A dude could randomly pour some ink on a paper and try and sell it to me. If I like it, I'll buy it.
  My issue with AI is the fact that it harms people, and I wish I was exaggerating.
  I dreamed of a future like this one when I was a kid. But not at the expense of mass layoffs and the benefits going to a few folks.
  
  Do you think AI music or art is just people putting random words into a prompt to get an output? AI music still allows people to feed their own lyrics into the output so there can still be plenty of layers to the lyrics, people refine the beats and rhythms to match what they are feeling so emotion still comes through. People who make good AI art use it as a base and mash it up, refine prompts and find what matches what they feel, they are just using a different brush than people in the past. It also allows more people to participate in art than we have had in the past, aside from the environmental impacts of AI which are a problem, use of AI in art is just another tool for expression. Its good which means even the slop ends uo looking and sounding better than the non ai slop counterparts but that doesnt detract from the fact people put emotion and thought into making good art even if they incorporate AI into their workflow to do so.

183 comments