Written for Pex. Read the blog post over at Pex’s blog for full details on this tech.
The fusion of artificial intelligence (AI) and music composition proposes some radical changes to how music is created. While music creation may seem like a more challenging task for AI, we’re already seeing an explosion of AI music tools similar to what we saw with generative text models like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
With generative AI technologies and products evolving rapidly, their implications for music creation, copyright laws, and artistic authenticity have become pivotal discussion points that are growing more complicated by the month. First we’ll be covering the most prevalent players in the generative AI music space, before looking at the legal questions at play in court.
AI tools impacting music creation
Generative AI’s ability to create music from scratch has been steadily improving over the last several years, with all the major players already involved.
- Technologies like DeepMind’s Lyria and AIVA offer extensive capabilities, ranging from generating compositions based on word prompts to creating music in predefined styles like “modern cinematic”.
- Sony’s FlowMachines and Google’s Magenta AI have both demonstrated their capabilities by creating songs in the styles of The Beatles and Nirvana, respectively.
- IBM’s Watson Beat is another notable mention, which uses cognitive technology to collaborate with musicians, transforming their ideas into complex compositions.
- Meta’s foray into AI-generated music is marked by their release of AudioCraft, which includes MusicGen. This tool generates music from text descriptions and is trained on a substantial library of Meta-owned and licensed music.