9 ms·

AI song featuring fake Drake and Weeknd vocals pulled from streaming services

115 points by miobrien 3y ago

CPLX 3y ago
This got a lot of attention this week. I guess it's novel. But the song sucked, as did the supposed AI contribution. I couldn't quite figure out why everyone used this as the example of how it's all over and AI will take over the world of music.
- miobrien 3y ago
  I thought the song was pretty catchy. As a first example of what AI can do in this space, I'm excited at the possibilities -- especially as someone who writes music but can't sing like the Weeknd or rap like Drake. I look at it less as something that's going to replace songwriting and more as another tool.
- dotBen 3y ago
  Not my kind of music either, but your opinion is subjective and completely misses the point of the story here.
- jackomelon 3y ago
  I liked the song. I think the buzz being generated by this thing is awesome.
- Anuiran 3y ago
  This just seems like goal post moving. If all AI stuff was 500x worse than it is currently that would still be a big deal. Tech does not stand still, with any rate of improvement this stuff will become insanely good quality.
- rchaud 3y ago
  > I couldn't quite figure out why everyone used this as the example of how it's all over and AI will take over the world of music. The bar for "AI" gets lower every day. I still think the ChatGPT reaction is something of a marketing psyop. Beyond a couple of novelty searches, I haven't noticed anybody using it as a daily driver.
- skeaker 3y ago
  That's fine if you feel that way, but millions of people enjoyed it. The comments on reuploads of it are full of people gushing over it, asking why it was removed, and being surprised that AI was involved in it.
forrestbrazeal 3y ago
I believe a big reason this song blew up on social media was that it was misleadingly hyped as an "AI-generated song". I expect many people thought that AI composed and recorded the (reasonably idiomatic) music and lyrics. For the record, here's my understanding of how this "AI-generated song" was made: 1. A human wrote the lyrics 2. A human recorded the beat 3. A human recorded themselves rapping 4. An "AI voice filter" made the recorded voice sound like Drake / the Weeknd. IMO, the real tragedy here is not some threat to Drake (he’ll be fine) but that some dude who wrote an original song had to pretend it was written by AI to get it heard.
- uhtred 3y ago
  If he did everything he could to make it sound like Drake or The Weeknd musically and lyrically then it wasn't original and didn't deserve to get noticed much. One less clone if a world of clones isn't a tragedy.
- djxfade 3y ago
  That's just how the music industry has become. As an indie musician myself, it's incredible hard to get heard. So while I don't agree with what was done in this case, I can understand why.
  - tokai 3y ago
    Is it though? This never been easier just to upload something and get some amount of listeners. If you lived a bit rural and was a poor teenager in the 60s you could forget ever getting anyone to listen to your music, if you even had the instruments to play it. Nobody is owed a big audience.
    - koolba 3y ago
      In the 60s you could find a few local DJs, slide them a couple bucks or some reefer, and you’d get a non-trivial amount of ears. With the sheer volume of online music and lack of people to bribe or sleep with, it’s very difficult for a new entrant to get known.
azraeldv 3y ago
finally, the producer will get more credit as they can create music without the need to involve vocalists with their weird political agenda
999900000999 3y ago
Very very impressive, it’s a weak Drake song, but amazing some random guy was able to do this. I can imagine some independent artists being more open to allowing AI imitation.
- dangerwill 3y ago
  > I can imagine some independent artists being more open to allowing AI imitation. Stop with the bs tech optimism. Artists don't want this and rightfully so, no matter how big or small. The only people excited for this are tech-ies with no artistic talent happy to have a way to "disrupt" another industry, alongside an idle (but nervous) curiosity from consumers
  - dvngnt_ 3y ago
    yeah I doubt Drake would care as much since he has close to a billion vs a struggling artist. I could see Drake using it for demos/reference tracks though since he has ghost writers
  - 999900000999 3y ago
    As is you can buy a Benny the Butcher verse for like 300$. Of course it's the same verse his company is selling to everyone else. I'm sure eventually some artists will sell licenses to AI models of their voices. It's not a "real" feature since AI will never be an exact replica.
    - dangerwill 3y ago
      Why would you think artists will be able to sell licenses at a sustainable level for their voices? The whole point of these generative AI models is to avoid paying for human labor so the industry will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to do so. We have already seen all of these projects actively avoid paying for their training data, either by just not caring about copywrite or by using only fully open source training data. If the RIAA takes openAI, et al to court and wins then we may see licenses for this, but given the pittance that spotify pays now for streams, we should expect any license revenue to be utterly minimal for all but the biggest artists.
squarefoot 3y ago
I'm 100 certain we'll soon listen to (and later watch) home made virtual performances by deceased artists and actors, with also huge legal implications. Just suppose someone manages to create a very convincing new song with Elvis and Kurt singing along Amy Winehouse, then releases it without naming the involved artists, so that except fans one couldn't tell who they are with 100% certainty, could lawyers have enough grounds for a take down request and possibly a lawsuit?
- Cardinal7167 3y ago
  Already happened to Tupac at Coachella.
  - afavour 3y ago
    That was with his estate's permission, though. To the OP's example I actually think it's going to be much more common for this stuff to happen with permission if the surviving relatives are money-hungry enough. New Elvis album in a few years.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  Why not have Tupac explain the reasons for black voters to vote republican? I'm tired of seeing America's great cities turned to waste from Democrats and think Tupac could help.
pjc50 3y ago
AI vs the RIAA is going to be quite the fight. They're likely to argue that any algorithmic system which uses one of their works as input and produces something that sounds like it as an output is a derivative work.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  But we're ok with those algorithms curated content. It's a weird world.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    Not really a massive surprise that artists are more comfortable with algorithms recommending their work to listeners (and paying them for the listens) than algorithms converting their voice into an audio filter so that songs can be marketed as having their vocals without them being paid to sing on it...
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Those are different algorithms. And much simpler, too; I don't think anyone would regard Spotify's Discover Weekly as artificial intelligence.
- algoatecorn 3y ago
  Based on the history of the courts, I think a fair use claim wouldn't hold up in this context. Even if the AI is only used for lyrics as a voice filter, it's still quite close to the heart of the work. Then you have its market effect, where original artists will face a heavy economic impact from the infringement (if that's what the courts rule). That's just my prediction, but I have limited experience in the area.
- ketzo 3y ago
  I mean, if the whole thing is that the filter makes you sound like Drake, you are objectively using Drake’s likeness for commercial benefit without his permission. IANAL, but that’s about as straightforward of a copyright violation as it gets. Doesn’t matter if it’s AI or not. But as far as generative AI? That’s a way more interesting question. If I train a GAN to create original new songs, is it “sampling” songs in its training data, or is it “learning” from them and then transforming that information into something new? I would say the latter, but I’m sure the RIAA disagrees.
stall84 3y ago
Every week we are probably going to have "wow.." stories like this coming out.. Wild wild times
- K5EiS 3y ago
  Quickly followed by "oh so this wasnt AI after all".. its just fancy autotune. The dude made the beat, lyrics, vocals. He just changed his voice.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Did you think for a second that this song was totally generated by AI? The drake autotune is very impressive.
    - K5EiS 3y ago
      No, because I am familiar with AI, but someone who is not and hears "AI song" does.
alexb_ 3y ago
It's astonishing to me that some people are so incredibly anti-AI that they will side with the RIAA of all organizations. People who are fine with piracy now start acting as if copyright and IP are the most important things ever.
- dogleash 3y ago
  In politics, your traditional opponents can occasionally be right on policy. People who refuse a position because they've found themselves with strange bedfellows are one of the primary reasons things are so fucked these days.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    The HN readership consider some villains to be beyond redemption. RIAA, Metallica, Sony-BMG rootkit fiasco, etc.
- Sol- 3y ago
  Couldn't the same be said for your interpretation of this issue? I don't care much about the RIAA, but I don't particularly want AI impersonation to become commonplace and legitimized. That doesn't mean I "side" with excessive copyright enforcement and so on. Your dislike of the RIAA leads you to believe that someone who is critical of this AI song must be siding with them, which is not really correct.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Pirates were downloading music for their own personal use. RIAA overstepped by suing them individually. This OTOH is taking existing IP, creating a derivative product, and then uploading it to their Spotify profile, for monetary gain. I think most people can make that distinction.
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    Is a voice that sounds similar to Drake’s really copyrightable? What if the voice is 20hz higher than Drake’s? I don’t think you can enforce copyrights on someone sounding like someone else. You obviously can’t claim that it’s Drake, but I’m sure I can release a rap song where I rap like Drake (as many artists already do).
cush 3y ago
How is this not straightforward? Reverse engineering someone's talent and identity and using it to create new work under their brand and identity should be a crime Hell, take it one step further. Non-consentual deepfakes of any kind should be a crime.
- AirMax98 3y ago
  Kind of ironic here as Drake has pretty consistently stolen flows from his contemporaries. There are Drake tracks where he 1:1 takes flows from X, Baby Keem, Kodak... I'm sure the list goes on.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    That's not a legal issue though, more of an artistic integrity one, and that is something that can be settled by public opinion.
  - humanistbot 3y ago
    Two wrongs don't make a right.
  - cush 3y ago
    Whether he's a hypocrite, he's still right.
jetrink 3y ago
The podcast Switched on Pop had a fascinating episode[1] last year called 'Invasion of the Vibe Snatchers.' They cite a number of instances where people are assigned songwriting credits on tracks simply because the new song is heavily inspired by an existing song or body of work. To be clear, the new songs are not covers, they don't contain any samples and there's no concrete element of the song that you can point to as being copied. However, taken as a whole, it's clear that the new song is similar to the old one. I bring this up, because it seems to me that if we live in a legal environment where a song's "vibe" is now de facto copyrightable, there is no way anyone will get away with cloning someone's voice (outside of parody.) 1. https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/invasion-of-the-vibe-snatchers https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/invasion-of-the-vibe-snat...
- jedberg 3y ago
  In that case the artist is protecting themselves from possible issues, much like Weird Al gets permission from everyone he parodies even though he doesn't have to.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Sounds a bit like how authorship on academic journal articles works.
Sol- 3y ago
Intuitively it feels logical that this would be challenged, but what do I know about copyright law. Surely cloning a famous artist's voice and musical style to piggyback off of their popularity would be some kind of infringement? And it's not like you can pretend to be loosely "inspired" by them or so, you're definitely intentionally faking their singing and voice. Beyond this specific occurrence here, I think impersonating someone else's voice or appearance should generally be forbidden, except for say satirical use cases of course (which should come with some disclaimer).
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > Surely cloning a famous artist's voice and musical style to piggyback off of their popularity Let's just call a spade a spade. This is impersonation with the intent to deceive.
  - skeaker 3y ago
    Claiming intent hardly seems fair when it was advertised as being an AI impersonation, no? If they intended to deceive then surely they would have claimed it wasn't AI.
extr 3y ago
As a friend in the industry pointed out, regardless of the legality of releasing the actual song, this will be a huge boon for producers/songwriters. Imagine being able to produce a song and send an artist a demo of themselves. If they like it, they can immediately jump in and re-record it.
- dangerwill 3y ago
  I simply cannot understand how you can have this take. This is the same bizarre wishful thinking that infested this forum during the crypto bubble. Just because you have a hip new tech doesn't mean artists will go against their material interests to engage with it and be won over. What you are describing is a work loop where the artist is being pushed to the outside, and in the medium/long term this will make artist's working lives much more precarious. And just like with NFT scams, most artists saw the impact to their material interests much more clearly than the tech bro set imagined they would. It is a lot more likely that producers will simply cut artists out of the loop and produce mountains of bland but acceptable crap at near 0 cost, instead of keeping an artist on retainer to re-record/edit songs.
  - notefaker 3y ago
    I think the parent comment is referring to pitches sent to successful pop artists who write none of their own lyrics or melodies and take no part in the development of the music beyond recording their vocals. Their personality, looks, and voice are their valuable contribution, not their songwriting/production abilities. They’re always looking for hit songs to jump on and record, not write themselves.
poisonarena 3y ago
Lots of Israelis on here I know.. Kan and Aidode(israeli AI music generation startup) made a duet with two dead singers: Ofra Haza + Zohar Argov https://youtu.be/7ND1Pw6QD_0 https://youtu.be/7ND1Pw6QD_0 got 200k play in a few days, not bad for hebrew only. Very convincing. Completely lost in non hebrew speaking world (99% of the world), and just as impressive I think.
jrm4 3y ago
At the extreme risk of judging taste; The main reason(s) that this was not impressive were - Drake is VERY easy to imitate. He's little more than a Lil Wayne impression himself. - "The Weeknd" here definitely sounded like an imitation of the Weeknd, I'm fairly certain that if I wasn't told in advance, I would be like "something is way off, bad day at the studio? Not actually him?"
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  The Weeknd is so damn unique that I actually like his voice more than his songs. Starboy is a masterpiece, but I can listen to him sing songs that I know I normally wouldn't like if anyone else was singing them. That said, I actually kinda liked this song, but could tell it wasn't really The Weeknd.
  - jrm4 3y ago
    I would pay large sums of money to hear him sing the entirety of Timberlake's Justified, given that most of it was really written for you know who.. Also, Starboy? Funny, I FAR prefer everything before that.
notefaker 3y ago
Here’s a much better track and song that uses a Jay Z AI vocal replacement: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y7r6PAkFRfU&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y7r6PAkFRfU&feature=youtu.be The implications of this kind of technology are wild. Imagine seeing a tribute show where the lead singer runs their voice through a voice changer that matches whatever artist they’re covering.
- rchaud 3y ago
  That will just sound like lip syncing unless the cover band undergoes some heavy cosmetic surgery. The fun of a cover band is watching a rendition of a song where the band are being themselves.
  - notefaker 3y ago
    Why not skip the cosmetic surgery and just use a projected, AI mapped face swapper? I do think you would still hear the variation from the live performer, e.g. their rhythm, their breath, their vocal fluctuations, simply with the AI voice changer software slapped on top of it. I’m not sure how fun the concert would be – you’re right about that – but tech like this is definitely has the potential to transform many facets of the entertainment industry.
  - jakear 3y ago
    For a cover band sure, but a "tribute show" I associate more with trying to exactly match an experience no longer available (the tribute-ees are dead or aged out in some way). People aren't going to the Van Halen Tribute Show because they're really excited to see John Smith's creative reinterpretation of Eddie's guitar solos.
- rcpt 3y ago
  The Tupac hologram was not a good idea
l33tman 3y ago
Just like what happened with AI imagegen and the artists complaining about their styles being stolen will happen with this. After a few months of toying with simply using other artists specific styles, people will start to use the tools to do original works instead, that are not pure clones. In this case, what is interesting is not that someone can (and did) produce a "fake Drake" song but that you could synthesize a singing voice of your choice and use it to produce songs without finding a new singer or training your own voice in the desired direction. I'm sure someone will make a prompt-based AI voice where you can just say "nasal annoying out of tune male voice" or something and control it that way and you can keep tweaking until you get what you want. End result is of course even more (perhaps debatable) high quality content but with less star-appeal. We already have that on Spotify etc, there are loads of "troll" companies having hundreds of virtual fake artists releasing albums and tracks already. This will turbo-boost that.. However just like with AI images, it also enables someone with less talent of drawing or singing to do creative works. That has to be pretty valuable as well.
- rchaud 3y ago
  High quality music is made by humans, not machines. The number of successful Drake ripoffs will be roughly the same as the number of successful Metallica ripoffs. One or two will flourish, the rest will be forgotten, if heard at all.
  - rockemsockem 3y ago
    Some of the highest quality music is made by humans making the most of the newest machines. That's how hip hop came into being, with the advent of samplers and drum machines.
  - l33tman 3y ago
    This is not really true anymore in the streaming economy. On Spotify, you earn a LOT of money if your song ends up in any of the generic playlists that people listen to while going to the gym our out running or in a hotel reception etc. You definitely don't need to do hits to get on these lists and earn money. Sure, they won't be remembered, but they will be heard! This reflects a change in how people consume music I guess.
nonbirithm 3y ago
> "The training of generative AI using our artists’ music [...] begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation." Ironically it's been shown that the fans can also be on the side of AI. Some of them will happily download or train a LoRA based on their favorite artist and use it with Stable Diffusion, often to generate images the original artist would never draw (because of limited commission slots/doesn't take commissions at all, lack of experience/interest or explicitly stating they will not take commissions for certain genres).
- realce 3y ago
  Someone made a scarcity-reduction machine and my industry of commodifying sound waves will be harmed, let's shame anyone who engages in the reduction of scarcity so we can keep our copywritten sound waves at a high market value.
yrgulation 3y ago
[dead]
sethkim 3y ago
There's been a new media for music every ten years for the past fifty or so. Records, cassette's, CD's, mp3's, streaming. I've been doing the thought exercise with some of my more creative and/or musically oriented friends recently to try to determine what comes next (if anything). The only conclusion we're able to come to is some kind of procedurally-generated music that is more specifically catered to each listener. I'm not surprised this wave is starting to break and it's a great time for artists and legal teams to figure out how to work with this technology if there's any possible way to do so.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > The only conclusion we're able to come to is some kind of procedurally-generated music that is more specifically catered to each listener. How would this not represent the death of music? Music is much more than a sequence of pretty sounds.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rockemsockem 3y ago
UMG is taking a straightforward instance of impersonation (it was advertised as Drake and The Weeknd if I recall correctly and the song contained references to the singers' lives from the first person) and they are trying to snatch everything. Which is exactly what should be expected and watched for from the greedy music execs. They are going further than saying "take this song down" and are trying to go after training on any copyrighted data. It's a massive snatch and grab and a bit of a bait and switch too. Straightforward impersonation that presents an AI voice as any specific human shouldn't be permitted, and US law is pretty clear on that I think. But an AI vocals system that works like stable diffusion where you ask for a voice with certain vocal characteristics that has been trained on copyrighted music? That's a VERY different thing and is much murkier. IMO it should be allowed, but what's clear is that the law doesn't know if it's allowed yet (in the US anyway).
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
Why wasn't The Weeknd reprimanded for mimicking Michael Jackson? He "stole" his sound.
machdiamonds 3y ago
Couldn't someone simply train a model on a singer who has a similar sound to a famous artist, and then get the rights from that person at a more affordable price? Obviously, it's important not to use the real artist's name to prevent any misunderstandings.
sizzle 3y ago
Anyone know where I can hear the song?? Seems like they nuked it everywhere
- naturalauction 3y ago
  Not sure if this is the original, but I found this on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y0U4hmHt44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y0U4hmHt44
dergiggler 3y ago
[flagged]

115 points by miobrien 3y ago

CPLX 3y ago

This got a lot of attention this week. I guess it's novel. But the song sucked, as did the supposed AI contribution. I couldn't quite figure out why everyone used this as the example of how it's all over and AI will take over the world of music.

miobrien 3y ago
I thought the song was pretty catchy. As a first example of what AI can do in this space, I'm excited at the possibilities -- especially as someone who writes music but can't sing like the Weeknd or rap like Drake. I look at it less as something that's going to replace songwriting and more as another tool.
dotBen 3y ago
Not my kind of music either, but your opinion is subjective and completely misses the point of the story here.
jackomelon 3y ago
I liked the song. I think the buzz being generated by this thing is awesome.
Anuiran 3y ago
This just seems like goal post moving. If all AI stuff was 500x worse than it is currently that would still be a big deal. Tech does not stand still, with any rate of improvement this stuff will become insanely good quality.
rchaud 3y ago
> I couldn't quite figure out why everyone used this as the example of how it's all over and AI will take over the world of music. The bar for "AI" gets lower every day. I still think the ChatGPT reaction is something of a marketing psyop. Beyond a couple of novelty searches, I haven't noticed anybody using it as a daily driver.
skeaker 3y ago
That's fine if you feel that way, but millions of people enjoyed it. The comments on reuploads of it are full of people gushing over it, asking why it was removed, and being surprised that AI was involved in it.

forrestbrazeal 3y ago

I believe a big reason this song blew up on social media was that it was misleadingly hyped as an "AI-generated song". I expect many people thought that AI composed and recorded the (reasonably idiomatic) music and lyrics. For the record, here's my understanding of how this "AI-generated song" was made: 1. A human wrote the lyrics 2. A human recorded the beat 3. A human recorded themselves rapping 4. An "AI voice filter" made the recorded voice sound like Drake / the Weeknd. IMO, the real tragedy here is not some threat to Drake (he’ll be fine) but that some dude who wrote an original song had to pretend it was written by AI to get it heard.

uhtred 3y ago
If he did everything he could to make it sound like Drake or The Weeknd musically and lyrically then it wasn't original and didn't deserve to get noticed much. One less clone if a world of clones isn't a tragedy.
djxfade 3y ago
That's just how the music industry has become. As an indie musician myself, it's incredible hard to get heard. So while I don't agree with what was done in this case, I can understand why.
- tokai 3y ago
  Is it though? This never been easier just to upload something and get some amount of listeners. If you lived a bit rural and was a poor teenager in the 60s you could forget ever getting anyone to listen to your music, if you even had the instruments to play it. Nobody is owed a big audience.
  - koolba 3y ago
    In the 60s you could find a few local DJs, slide them a couple bucks or some reefer, and you’d get a non-trivial amount of ears. With the sheer volume of online music and lack of people to bribe or sleep with, it’s very difficult for a new entrant to get known.

azraeldv 3y ago

finally, the producer will get more credit as they can create music without the need to involve vocalists with their weird political agenda

999900000999 3y ago

Very very impressive, it’s a weak Drake song, but amazing some random guy was able to do this. I can imagine some independent artists being more open to allowing AI imitation.

dangerwill 3y ago
> I can imagine some independent artists being more open to allowing AI imitation. Stop with the bs tech optimism. Artists don't want this and rightfully so, no matter how big or small. The only people excited for this are tech-ies with no artistic talent happy to have a way to "disrupt" another industry, alongside an idle (but nervous) curiosity from consumers
- dvngnt_ 3y ago
  yeah I doubt Drake would care as much since he has close to a billion vs a struggling artist. I could see Drake using it for demos/reference tracks though since he has ghost writers
- 999900000999 3y ago
  As is you can buy a Benny the Butcher verse for like 300$. Of course it's the same verse his company is selling to everyone else. I'm sure eventually some artists will sell licenses to AI models of their voices. It's not a "real" feature since AI will never be an exact replica.
  - dangerwill 3y ago
    Why would you think artists will be able to sell licenses at a sustainable level for their voices? The whole point of these generative AI models is to avoid paying for human labor so the industry will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to do so. We have already seen all of these projects actively avoid paying for their training data, either by just not caring about copywrite or by using only fully open source training data. If the RIAA takes openAI, et al to court and wins then we may see licenses for this, but given the pittance that spotify pays now for streams, we should expect any license revenue to be utterly minimal for all but the biggest artists.

squarefoot 3y ago

I'm 100 certain we'll soon listen to (and later watch) home made virtual performances by deceased artists and actors, with also huge legal implications. Just suppose someone manages to create a very convincing new song with Elvis and Kurt singing along Amy Winehouse, then releases it without naming the involved artists, so that except fans one couldn't tell who they are with 100% certainty, could lawyers have enough grounds for a take down request and possibly a lawsuit?

Cardinal7167 3y ago
Already happened to Tupac at Coachella.
- afavour 3y ago
  That was with his estate's permission, though. To the OP's example I actually think it's going to be much more common for this stuff to happen with permission if the surviving relatives are money-hungry enough. New Elvis album in a few years.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
Why not have Tupac explain the reasons for black voters to vote republican? I'm tired of seeing America's great cities turned to waste from Democrats and think Tupac could help.

pjc50 3y ago

AI vs the RIAA is going to be quite the fight. They're likely to argue that any algorithmic system which uses one of their works as input and produces something that sounds like it as an output is a derivative work.

notyourwork 3y ago
But we're ok with those algorithms curated content. It's a weird world.
- notahacker 3y ago
  Not really a massive surprise that artists are more comfortable with algorithms recommending their work to listeners (and paying them for the listens) than algorithms converting their voice into an audio filter so that songs can be marketed as having their vocals without them being paid to sing on it...
- pjc50 3y ago
  Those are different algorithms. And much simpler, too; I don't think anyone would regard Spotify's Discover Weekly as artificial intelligence.
algoatecorn 3y ago
Based on the history of the courts, I think a fair use claim wouldn't hold up in this context. Even if the AI is only used for lyrics as a voice filter, it's still quite close to the heart of the work. Then you have its market effect, where original artists will face a heavy economic impact from the infringement (if that's what the courts rule). That's just my prediction, but I have limited experience in the area.
ketzo 3y ago
I mean, if the whole thing is that the filter makes you sound like Drake, you are objectively using Drake’s likeness for commercial benefit without his permission. IANAL, but that’s about as straightforward of a copyright violation as it gets. Doesn’t matter if it’s AI or not. But as far as generative AI? That’s a way more interesting question. If I train a GAN to create original new songs, is it “sampling” songs in its training data, or is it “learning” from them and then transforming that information into something new? I would say the latter, but I’m sure the RIAA disagrees.

stall84 3y ago

Every week we are probably going to have "wow.." stories like this coming out.. Wild wild times

K5EiS 3y ago
Quickly followed by "oh so this wasnt AI after all".. its just fancy autotune. The dude made the beat, lyrics, vocals. He just changed his voice.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Did you think for a second that this song was totally generated by AI? The drake autotune is very impressive.
  - K5EiS 3y ago
    No, because I am familiar with AI, but someone who is not and hears "AI song" does.

alexb_ 3y ago

It's astonishing to me that some people are so incredibly anti-AI that they will side with the RIAA of all organizations. People who are fine with piracy now start acting as if copyright and IP are the most important things ever.

dogleash 3y ago
In politics, your traditional opponents can occasionally be right on policy. People who refuse a position because they've found themselves with strange bedfellows are one of the primary reasons things are so fucked these days.
- rchaud 3y ago
  The HN readership consider some villains to be beyond redemption. RIAA, Metallica, Sony-BMG rootkit fiasco, etc.
Sol- 3y ago
Couldn't the same be said for your interpretation of this issue? I don't care much about the RIAA, but I don't particularly want AI impersonation to become commonplace and legitimized. That doesn't mean I "side" with excessive copyright enforcement and so on. Your dislike of the RIAA leads you to believe that someone who is critical of this AI song must be siding with them, which is not really correct.
rchaud 3y ago
Pirates were downloading music for their own personal use. RIAA overstepped by suing them individually. This OTOH is taking existing IP, creating a derivative product, and then uploading it to their Spotify profile, for monetary gain. I think most people can make that distinction.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  Is a voice that sounds similar to Drake’s really copyrightable? What if the voice is 20hz higher than Drake’s? I don’t think you can enforce copyrights on someone sounding like someone else. You obviously can’t claim that it’s Drake, but I’m sure I can release a rap song where I rap like Drake (as many artists already do).

cush 3y ago

How is this not straightforward? Reverse engineering someone's talent and identity and using it to create new work under their brand and identity should be a crime Hell, take it one step further. Non-consentual deepfakes of any kind should be a crime.

AirMax98 3y ago
Kind of ironic here as Drake has pretty consistently stolen flows from his contemporaries. There are Drake tracks where he 1:1 takes flows from X, Baby Keem, Kodak... I'm sure the list goes on.
- rchaud 3y ago
  That's not a legal issue though, more of an artistic integrity one, and that is something that can be settled by public opinion.
- humanistbot 3y ago
  Two wrongs don't make a right.
- cush 3y ago
  Whether he's a hypocrite, he's still right.

jetrink 3y ago

The podcast Switched on Pop had a fascinating episode[1] last year called 'Invasion of the Vibe Snatchers.' They cite a number of instances where people are assigned songwriting credits on tracks simply because the new song is heavily inspired by an existing song or body of work. To be clear, the new songs are not covers, they don't contain any samples and there's no concrete element of the song that you can point to as being copied. However, taken as a whole, it's clear that the new song is similar to the old one. I bring this up, because it seems to me that if we live in a legal environment where a song's "vibe" is now de facto copyrightable, there is no way anyone will get away with cloning someone's voice (outside of parody.) 1. https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/invasion-of-the-vibe-snatchers https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/invasion-of-the-vibe-snat...

jedberg 3y ago
In that case the artist is protecting themselves from possible issues, much like Weird Al gets permission from everyone he parodies even though he doesn't have to.
rchaud 3y ago
Sounds a bit like how authorship on academic journal articles works.

Sol- 3y ago

Intuitively it feels logical that this would be challenged, but what do I know about copyright law. Surely cloning a famous artist's voice and musical style to piggyback off of their popularity would be some kind of infringement? And it's not like you can pretend to be loosely "inspired" by them or so, you're definitely intentionally faking their singing and voice. Beyond this specific occurrence here, I think impersonating someone else's voice or appearance should generally be forbidden, except for say satirical use cases of course (which should come with some disclaimer).

andsoitis 3y ago
> Surely cloning a famous artist's voice and musical style to piggyback off of their popularity Let's just call a spade a spade. This is impersonation with the intent to deceive.
- skeaker 3y ago
  Claiming intent hardly seems fair when it was advertised as being an AI impersonation, no? If they intended to deceive then surely they would have claimed it wasn't AI.

extr 3y ago

As a friend in the industry pointed out, regardless of the legality of releasing the actual song, this will be a huge boon for producers/songwriters. Imagine being able to produce a song and send an artist a demo of themselves. If they like it, they can immediately jump in and re-record it.

dangerwill 3y ago
I simply cannot understand how you can have this take. This is the same bizarre wishful thinking that infested this forum during the crypto bubble. Just because you have a hip new tech doesn't mean artists will go against their material interests to engage with it and be won over. What you are describing is a work loop where the artist is being pushed to the outside, and in the medium/long term this will make artist's working lives much more precarious. And just like with NFT scams, most artists saw the impact to their material interests much more clearly than the tech bro set imagined they would. It is a lot more likely that producers will simply cut artists out of the loop and produce mountains of bland but acceptable crap at near 0 cost, instead of keeping an artist on retainer to re-record/edit songs.
- notefaker 3y ago
  I think the parent comment is referring to pitches sent to successful pop artists who write none of their own lyrics or melodies and take no part in the development of the music beyond recording their vocals. Their personality, looks, and voice are their valuable contribution, not their songwriting/production abilities. They’re always looking for hit songs to jump on and record, not write themselves.

poisonarena 3y ago

Lots of Israelis on here I know.. Kan and Aidode(israeli AI music generation startup) made a duet with two dead singers: Ofra Haza + Zohar Argov https://youtu.be/7ND1Pw6QD_0 https://youtu.be/7ND1Pw6QD_0 got 200k play in a few days, not bad for hebrew only. Very convincing. Completely lost in non hebrew speaking world (99% of the world), and just as impressive I think.

jrm4 3y ago

At the extreme risk of judging taste; The main reason(s) that this was not impressive were - Drake is VERY easy to imitate. He's little more than a Lil Wayne impression himself. - "The Weeknd" here definitely sounded like an imitation of the Weeknd, I'm fairly certain that if I wasn't told in advance, I would be like "something is way off, bad day at the studio? Not actually him?"

stronglikedan 3y ago
The Weeknd is so damn unique that I actually like his voice more than his songs. Starboy is a masterpiece, but I can listen to him sing songs that I know I normally wouldn't like if anyone else was singing them. That said, I actually kinda liked this song, but could tell it wasn't really The Weeknd.
- jrm4 3y ago
  I would pay large sums of money to hear him sing the entirety of Timberlake's Justified, given that most of it was really written for you know who.. Also, Starboy? Funny, I FAR prefer everything before that.

notefaker 3y ago

Here’s a much better track and song that uses a Jay Z AI vocal replacement: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y7r6PAkFRfU&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y7r6PAkFRfU&feature=youtu.be The implications of this kind of technology are wild. Imagine seeing a tribute show where the lead singer runs their voice through a voice changer that matches whatever artist they’re covering.

rchaud 3y ago
That will just sound like lip syncing unless the cover band undergoes some heavy cosmetic surgery. The fun of a cover band is watching a rendition of a song where the band are being themselves.
- notefaker 3y ago
  Why not skip the cosmetic surgery and just use a projected, AI mapped face swapper? I do think you would still hear the variation from the live performer, e.g. their rhythm, their breath, their vocal fluctuations, simply with the AI voice changer software slapped on top of it. I’m not sure how fun the concert would be – you’re right about that – but tech like this is definitely has the potential to transform many facets of the entertainment industry.
- jakear 3y ago
  For a cover band sure, but a "tribute show" I associate more with trying to exactly match an experience no longer available (the tribute-ees are dead or aged out in some way). People aren't going to the Van Halen Tribute Show because they're really excited to see John Smith's creative reinterpretation of Eddie's guitar solos.
rcpt 3y ago
The Tupac hologram was not a good idea

l33tman 3y ago

Just like what happened with AI imagegen and the artists complaining about their styles being stolen will happen with this. After a few months of toying with simply using other artists specific styles, people will start to use the tools to do original works instead, that are not pure clones. In this case, what is interesting is not that someone can (and did) produce a "fake Drake" song but that you could synthesize a singing voice of your choice and use it to produce songs without finding a new singer or training your own voice in the desired direction. I'm sure someone will make a prompt-based AI voice where you can just say "nasal annoying out of tune male voice" or something and control it that way and you can keep tweaking until you get what you want. End result is of course even more (perhaps debatable) high quality content but with less star-appeal. We already have that on Spotify etc, there are loads of "troll" companies having hundreds of virtual fake artists releasing albums and tracks already. This will turbo-boost that.. However just like with AI images, it also enables someone with less talent of drawing or singing to do creative works. That has to be pretty valuable as well.

rchaud 3y ago
High quality music is made by humans, not machines. The number of successful Drake ripoffs will be roughly the same as the number of successful Metallica ripoffs. One or two will flourish, the rest will be forgotten, if heard at all.
- rockemsockem 3y ago
  Some of the highest quality music is made by humans making the most of the newest machines. That's how hip hop came into being, with the advent of samplers and drum machines.
- l33tman 3y ago
  This is not really true anymore in the streaming economy. On Spotify, you earn a LOT of money if your song ends up in any of the generic playlists that people listen to while going to the gym our out running or in a hotel reception etc. You definitely don't need to do hits to get on these lists and earn money. Sure, they won't be remembered, but they will be heard! This reflects a change in how people consume music I guess.

nonbirithm 3y ago

> "The training of generative AI using our artists’ music [...] begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation." Ironically it's been shown that the fans can also be on the side of AI. Some of them will happily download or train a LoRA based on their favorite artist and use it with Stable Diffusion, often to generate images the original artist would never draw (because of limited commission slots/doesn't take commissions at all, lack of experience/interest or explicitly stating they will not take commissions for certain genres).

realce 3y ago
Someone made a scarcity-reduction machine and my industry of commodifying sound waves will be harmed, let's shame anyone who engages in the reduction of scarcity so we can keep our copywritten sound waves at a high market value.

yrgulation 3y ago

[dead]

sethkim 3y ago

There's been a new media for music every ten years for the past fifty or so. Records, cassette's, CD's, mp3's, streaming. I've been doing the thought exercise with some of my more creative and/or musically oriented friends recently to try to determine what comes next (if anything). The only conclusion we're able to come to is some kind of procedurally-generated music that is more specifically catered to each listener. I'm not surprised this wave is starting to break and it's a great time for artists and legal teams to figure out how to work with this technology if there's any possible way to do so.

JohnFen 3y ago
> The only conclusion we're able to come to is some kind of procedurally-generated music that is more specifically catered to each listener. How would this not represent the death of music? Music is much more than a sequence of pretty sounds.

deleted 3y ago

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rockemsockem 3y ago

UMG is taking a straightforward instance of impersonation (it was advertised as Drake and The Weeknd if I recall correctly and the song contained references to the singers' lives from the first person) and they are trying to snatch everything. Which is exactly what should be expected and watched for from the greedy music execs. They are going further than saying "take this song down" and are trying to go after training on any copyrighted data. It's a massive snatch and grab and a bit of a bait and switch too. Straightforward impersonation that presents an AI voice as any specific human shouldn't be permitted, and US law is pretty clear on that I think. But an AI vocals system that works like stable diffusion where you ask for a voice with certain vocal characteristics that has been trained on copyrighted music? That's a VERY different thing and is much murkier. IMO it should be allowed, but what's clear is that the law doesn't know if it's allowed yet (in the US anyway).

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

Why wasn't The Weeknd reprimanded for mimicking Michael Jackson? He "stole" his sound.

machdiamonds 3y ago

Couldn't someone simply train a model on a singer who has a similar sound to a famous artist, and then get the rights from that person at a more affordable price? Obviously, it's important not to use the real artist's name to prevent any misunderstandings.

sizzle 3y ago

Anyone know where I can hear the song?? Seems like they nuked it everywhere

naturalauction 3y ago
Not sure if this is the original, but I found this on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y0U4hmHt44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y0U4hmHt44

dergiggler 3y ago

[flagged]