New tool from YouTube: when AI John Legend sings on command

DThe strikes in Hollywood are over, but the topic of artificial intelligence, its use and how it should be regulated will, of course, continue to roil the Dream Factory and the entire entertainment industry.

There have been no strikes by songwriting teams in the music industry yet, but there is still widespread discussion about artificial intelligence and what rapid advances in the field mean for the industry. For example, on YouTube you can find countless AI cover versions of songs in which the star is supposedly singing another artist’s hit. Very few people get too much attention. Things looked completely different in early April, when “Heart On My Sleeve” first made waves on Tiktok and then appeared on video platforms and streaming services like Spotify.

The song was written and published by a user under the nickname “ghostwriter”. But the singing sounded suspiciously like that of two stars Drake and The Weeknd – an AI-generated feature, the “ghost” wrote. Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny recently complained about a similar incident.

It is not surprising that such excesses are not well received by either the artists themselves or their partners in the industry. “Heart On My Sleeve” was quickly removed from Spotify and Co after Universal Music intervened, although users can still find newly released versions on YouTube.

Artists give voice to artificial intelligence tool

In principle, the music industry is quite open to the use of AI. Opportunities are repeatedly highlighted, be it in music production or music marketing. This also applies to tools through which the voices or works of musicians can be made available to AI users. Always provided that the artists agree to this in advance and that they or the copyright holders of the works are compensated. A similar passage is also part of an agreement between Hollywood actors and film studios regarding digital images of actors created by artificial intelligence.

YouTube has announced an artificial intelligence tool that uses artists’ voices to create individual song snippets in Shorts, a competitor to Google subsidiary Shorts’ Tiktok. The first “experiment” was mentioned in a blog post published Thursday. The tool, called “Dream Track”, will initially only be tested on a small group of Shorts users.

According to the report, nine artists are on board, including John Legend, Demi Lovato, rapper T-Pain and Sia. “Dream Track,” a collaboration with Google’s artificial intelligence company Deepmind, allows users to enter the desired theme of their 30-second song segment, specify the musical style, and then select the voices of nine artists. The first thing to do is explore how the technology can be used, including to connect artists with users or their fans, YouTube says.