Current AI methods for copy cat pop

[ElmerJFudd]

 

chatGPT for lyrics

 

captain melody for the melody https://mixedinkey.com/captain-plugins/captain-melody/

 

an actual singer for the source performance

 

 https://lalals.com for Dua Lipa’s timbre. 

[KenElevenShadows]

That whole process was quite fascinating, thanks. 

 

I'll let everyone else pile on about how crappy it is for musicians, deep fakes, and artistry in general.

[KuruPrionz]

2 hours ago, KenElevenShadows said:

That whole process was quite fascinating, thanks. 

I agree that the process is fascinating. I don't have much to say about the music, it isn't my thing but that's irrelevant if others like it. 

He managed to fool another producer, I'll give him that. 

[Stokely]

I don't find it fascinating, I find it pretty awful in principle.  

Not so much for music.  People have been running tracks and faking performances for ages now, this is just the evolution of that.

Mainly because I don't feel that human societies are well-equipped to handle the vast amounts of free time we are about to have, provided we make it through climate change upheavals and other challenges as a high-tech society.  If you ain't living to work, you are worthless is something I've heard from many people basically.   Something will have to give.

My own job as a coder and analyst is likely one of the many at risk, but most likely by my estimation I'll be retired by the time that happens.  I have no idea what to tell my kids to "be"--other than a landlord for some properties we own.  They don't listen to me anyway  

[zeronyne]

This is fantastic. If you want to see how much this is already used, look into Kpop...not the industry, but the community. YouTube has countless videos of fans taking one group's song and reconfiguring it to sound like a different group. For those of you not steeped in the genre, it will not make any sense, but even these non-musician teens can work the AI to generate subtle but identifiable differences among vocal timbres.

[Thethirdapple]

Quote

I want to believe that what I make is a good start, a strong place to begin. I then hope that at least it will be better in the user's (listener's) mind than it is in mine. I want to plant seeds that will grow when they leave me. If I thought the music was only going to remain as I left it, then why would I want to release it? You release things so that they will grow, and have interesting other lives without you. Just like kids.

 

-Brian Eno

 

I leave it to those who have a stake in the game and are far more talented...

 

 

PEACE

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[KenElevenShadows]

19 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

I agree that the process is fascinating. I don't have much to say about the music, it isn't my thing but that's irrelevant if others like it. 

He managed to fool another producer, I'll give him that. 

 

That's not my kind of music either, and I am not so familiar with Dua Lipa that I could say, "Oh yeah, he totally nailed that!" But the music was bumpin', I'll give him that.

 

I was interested to see how he problem-solved some of that, and generally went about imitating an artist's vibe.

 

I don't like that one can do this, but it doesn't stop the process from being fascinating. I'm just not going to keep doing the "Harumph! You kids get off my damn lawn!" thing because everyone is here to do that for me.  

[KenElevenShadows]

8 hours ago, Stokely said:

I don't find it fascinating, I find it pretty awful in principle.  

Not so much for music.  People have been running tracks and faking performances for ages now, this is just the evolution of that.

Mainly because I don't feel that human societies are well-equipped to handle the vast amounts of free time we are about to have, provided we make it through climate change upheavals and other challenges as a high-tech society.  If you ain't living to work, you are worthless is something I've heard from many people basically.   Something will have to give.

 

I find it fascinating. And I find it awful.

 

You seriously think that people are going to have vast amounts of free time? This has been the promise of technology for how many decades now, and what has happened? People in the United States work more hours and make less money than ever before. Remember 40 years ago when we used to say, "Oh hey, look at the Japanese! They work like donkeys and have so much pressure! We certainly don't want to be like that!" Notice how no one says that any more? That's because we blew past them years ago. 

 

 

5 hours ago, Thethirdapple said:

 

I leave it to those who have a stake in the game and are far more talented...

 

 

PEACE

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Great Eno quote.

[Stokely]

Who knows.  I won't be around to be affected by it, and any advice I'd give my kids on a "safe from automation and AI" profession would be complete guesswork that they'd be wise to ignore.

Some people think AI is a game changer for a lot of professions.

I'm far more worried about climate change in the next 50-100 years and what it will do to society than AI anyway.  Not even in the ballpark.

[Mike Kent]

Probably timely: Universal Music Group and Roland have started a project of sorts, defining "Principles for Music Creation with AI" to "establish a guideline for the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence in music." https://aiformusic.info/

 

I don't know what this kind of project can/will do to place limits on the use of these technologies. I've been in this music technology industry for decades. I've been there from the start of MIDI, sampling, the advent of DAWs, autotune, music based on prerecorded loops, etc. They are all great technologies, incredible creative tools for musicians and producers. I'm proud to be part of an industry that brings joy and health to people. Music is like vitamins for the musician. Like health food for the listener. On the other hand, these incredible technologies also open the doors for music with no soul, no intelligence, no depth, disappointing. I assume I might be equally disappointed with how people use AI and the impact it will have. I'm afraid AI might have a more negative than positive influence on music production. Maybe it's these concerns that prompt this aiformusic.info/ project.

[Anderton]

[I know this is a long post and most people won't read it. But I think the points it raises are important.]

 

5 hours ago, Mike Kent said:

I don't know what this kind of project can/will do to place limits on the use of these technologies. 

 

Good intentions tend to accomplish little, I think you have to define specifics. For background, I was a member of the Local 802 Musician's Union in NYC for many years when I was a studio musician. So, I know about agreements, scale, leaders getting double scale, etc. I recently consulted to someone high up in the movie industry who was involved in SAG/AFTRA negotiations. He wanted advice on whether it was possible to put practical limits on AI.

 

My first suggestion was about avoiding a situation like Hollywood wanted to do with extras - hire them for a day, own their likeness, and use it ad infinitum with no compensation. I said that would be like hiring a musician for the day, and record scales, chords, riffs, lead lines, chord progressions - the DNA of music - which could then be reassembled on other sessions. My suggested remedy was that the material could be used on the same project for which the artist was hired, so a producer could, for example, piece together something for the outro if the musician wasn't available. But for projects outside the scope of the original project, the producer would need to negotiate with the artist for re-use.

 

There's precedent. That would be no different than what happens with articles where I own the copyright (which is virtually all of them). If someone wants to reprint it, we negotiate a one-time license. Everyone wins: I'm willing to license for cheap because I wasn't expecting it anyway, whoever reprints it gets one of my articles for cheap, I still own the copyright, and it expands my audience. Also note that one of the main aspects of the SAG/AFTRA agreement is artist approval/permission.

 

My upcoming Open Channel column for Mixonline.com (coming out sometime in April) addresses this subject in more detail if y'all want to know more.

 

The above is one example of the kind of specifics I proposed regarding limiting AI. Another possibility is to use blockchain-based "smart contracts" that would clearly identify all steps involved in the creative process, including all contributors, terms of contracts, licenses, etc. This would "attach" itself to the work in such a way that works without the blockchain identification would be considered a violation of copyright. Getting into that in this post is going way too deep into the weeds, but suffice it to say that trying to stop copying or even outright thievery by the public is a losing proposition. However, authenticating and validating that which is real hopefully still has value. If someone tried to pass off something as a Dua Lipa album and tried to make some $$$ but couldn't because he didn't have access to the blockchain that would identify a genuine Dua Lipa production, would a consumer really want to be duped into buying a fake? They don't seem to want to do that with paintings.

 

5 hours ago, Mike Kent said:

I assume I might be equally disappointed with how people use AI and the impact it will have. I'm afraid AI might have a more negative than positive influence on music production. 

 

The bottom line is simple: In the hands of artists and creative people, AI will have more of a positive influence. In the hands of hacks, poseurs, and bean counters, it will have more of a negative influence. So, perhaps the goal shouldn't be about limiting AI. Perhaps it should be about making sure that creative people are compensated for their work.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Apple and Amazon spend billions on creating video content, but don't spend anything on developing new music content - despite distributing music commercially and making money from it. Ditto Spotify, SoundCloud, Tidal, etc. If there's no incentive to make great music, it's unrealistic to expect people to devote their lives to making great music. That creates a perfect vacuum for AI-generated crap that costs nothing to make. And as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum.

 

[Mike Kent]

5 hours ago, Mike Kent said:

I don't know what this kind of project can/will do to place limits on the use of these technologies.

 

When I wrote that out of pessimism, I should have followed it with: But we have to try. I applaud this effort.

Mike.

[Thethirdapple]

5 hours ago, Anderton said:

The bottom line is simple: In the hands of artists and creative people, AI will have more of a positive influence. In the hands of hacks, poseurs, and bean counters, it will have more of a negative influence. So, perhaps the goal shouldn't be about limiting AI. Perhaps it should be about making sure that creative people are compensated for their work.

[your post is a great read]

My initial sentiment is to fully align with this. Although the “limiting” principle is where we humans always seem to trip ourselves up. By creativity, one should include derisive creative endeavors. 

A new “tool” should be thoroughly dismantled and reconstituted by the person using it to express themselves. Taking the innovation as its presented to us is the very notion of lemmings being led off a cliff.

 

Nothing more alluring to people than telling them how awful something is so that they want it even more cause they don't believe its as bad as made out to be…

 

Projects from yesteryear such as : 

 

Quote

Hurlements en faveur de Sade (English: Howlings for Sade) is a 1952 French avant-garde film directed by Guy Debord. Devoid of any images, the film was an early work of Lettrist cinema

After the initial screening, as audience members left the cinema, they lambasted the film to the line of next audience members waiting to see the film. Which only made the crowd want to see the film even more… 

 

We are creatures of awesome possibilities with such a limited capacity of foresight and I look forward to using AI (whatever that means) to fuck with AI.

 

Detournement

Quote

An artistic practice conceived by the Situationists for transforming artworks by creatively disfiguring them. In ‘A User's Guide to Détournement’ (1956), Guy Debord, a key Situationist theorist, and Gil Wolman, argue that détournement has a double purpose: on the one hand, it must negate the ideological conditions of artistic production, the fact that all artworks are ultimately commodities…

 

PEACE

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[Mr -G-]

5 hours ago, Anderton said:

I said that would be like hiring a musician for the day, and record scales, chords, riffs, lead lines, chord progressions - the DNA of music - which could then be reassembled on other sessions.

How is that different from what the Mellotron did years ago?

[Anderton]

4 hours ago, Mr -G- said:

How is that different from what the Mellotron did years ago?

 

The main difference is the Mellotron couldn't play itself.

 

If you hired someone with a distinctive style like Jeff Beck and recorded "scales, chords, riffs, lead lines, chord progressions - the DNA of music," AI could assemble a "Jeff Beck" solo in seconds. 

[Thethirdapple]

Just heard AI referred to as Algorithmic Intelligence rather than artificial!?!? A nuanced difference which makes me wonder which term has been target grouped for better public acceptance… The term artificial intelligence seems to be colloquially used since mid 20th century if not earlier in terms of math. 
 

Is this not a similar situation which the industry faced with unauthorized  “sampled” tracks and remixes? 
 

 

 

 

PEACE

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[Anderton]

46 minutes ago, Thethirdapple said:

Is this not a similar situation which the industry faced with unauthorized  “sampled” tracks and remixes? 

 

Superficially, there are similarities. But with unauthorized sampled tracks and remixes, you could usually trace the copy back to the source. That's why it was possible to have lawsuits. The matter was often cut and dry, not unlike plagiarism.

 

With AI, you don't know what source was scraped or stolen. You don't know who specified what it wanted AI to do, nor do you know how AI arrived at the result it did. Parallel discovery? Coincidence? Theft? Becoming sentient, and creating original content?

 

This is why I think blockchain authentication would be a natural fit. It would also shed some light on the problem of ownership that I covered in one of my Mixonline columns, Does AI Stand for Attorneys Incoming? (Which FWIW was licensed for reprinting elsewhere, with my permission .)

 

46 minutes ago, Thethirdapple said:

Just heard AI referred to as Algorithmic Intelligence

 

That sounds more like a definition that's closer to Machine Learning. Machine learning can't break out of the algorithms that govern its analysis and behavior. The point of AI is ultimately to be able to break free from those constraints, and mimic human thought processes.

[Thethirdapple]

10 hours ago, Anderton said:

and mimic human thought processes

All of this “ai” seems both vague as well as specific at the same time… if all “ai” does is attempt to mimic “thought” or “logic” then I have NO worries about my creative art work, whether hammering rocks to a sculpting stone or hammering some notes on a piano into an emotional expression.
 

“What’s LOVE got to do with it?” EVERYTHING

 

Robert Sapolsky has his old Stanford Course online and I watched (tried to learn) all episode a few years back. He is researching “agency” or deterministic behavior thru chemical brain science… fascinating subject

 

Understanding whether our human conscience is fundamental or emergent seems to be defining the two main approaches to creating “machine intelligence”. 

our “ability” to be non predictive is perhaps not what we think it is. Remaining in a state of “self” while pivoting into unforeseeable decisions is key. I have experienced some of the most intense wonderment and inspiration thru the ability to un-moor myself from a given idiom. Binary systems are by design unable to deviate. And it seems to be that all of computer science has been focused on eliminating any deviation which is exactly that which makes us “human”. So unless we find a way to compute using photons or some other dual state equations, never gonna get there.

 

1+1 can never equal other than 2 in the numerical logic we have created to rule our world.

 

Edited “random” additional thought: There is no 1 in nature, as distinct from some other. 1 is a only theoretical. And when we “add” in arithmetic we are not actually adding we are simply grouping. Bake a cake and it ceases to be 2 eggs, 1 cup of flour, etc… why? Our science seems to refute the wholeness of it all…

 

do WE really even deviate?

 

When I sit at the piano and “start” I don't always know where I am going and there is no sense of predictability after the first note starts to resonate. It has nothing to do with reason, logic, nor decision making. Its a feeling! What the heck is that!?!? Oh right its a relationship to the world around me and certainly not a definable dataset of predictive outcomes. Nor is it something which is learned once and then executed on demand.

 

From what little I think I know and that which friends in the various fields have shared; I am inclined to prefer the “real world learning” approach rather than the “predefined dataset” approach. How de we filter out “evil” in these datasets, these algorithm's have to experience the results of their calculation and need to have “weights” assigned when “wrong” or undesirable outcomes result. Whether we like it or not, existence is in itself the ultimate algorithm. 

 

I go back to my concern of sociopathic algorithms…

 

Granted , we are only at the start of this “yellow brick road”, hopefully its not just yellow snow!

 

 

 

PEACE

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[Anderton]

7 hours ago, Thethirdapple said:

Understanding whether our human conscience is fundamental or emergent seems to be defining the two main approaches to creating “machine intelligence”. 

 

Machines will be able to write songs, but that doesn't mean they'll be able to write "standards."

[ElmerJFudd]

On 3/24/2024 at 6:52 AM, Thethirdapple said:

All of this “ai” seems both vague as well as specific at the same time… if all “ai” does is attempt to mimic “thought” or “logic” then I have NO worries about my creative art work, whether hammering rocks to a sculpting stone or hammering some notes on a piano into an emotional expression.
 

“What’s LOVE got to do with it?” EVERYTHING

 

Robert Sapolsky has his old Stanford Course online and I watched (tried to learn) all episode a few years back. He is researching “agency” or deterministic behavior thru chemical brain science… fascinating subject

 

Understanding whether our human conscience is fundamental or emergent seems to be defining the two main approaches to creating “machine intelligence”. 

our “ability” to be non predictive is perhaps not what we think it is. Remaining in a state of “self” while pivoting into unforeseeable decisions is key. I have experienced some of the most intense wonderment and inspiration thru the ability to un-moor myself from a given idiom. Binary systems are by design unable to deviate. And it seems to be that all of computer science has been focused on eliminating any deviation which is exactly that which makes us “human”. So unless we find a way to compute using photons or some other dual state equations, never gonna get there.

 

1+1 can never equal other than 2 in the numerical logic we have created to rule our world.

 

Edited “random” additional thought: There is no 1 in nature, as distinct from some other. 1 is a only theoretical. And when we “add” in arithmetic we are not actually adding we are simply grouping. Bake a cake and it ceases to be 2 eggs, 1 cup of flour, etc… why? Our science seems to refute the wholeness of it all…

 

do WE really even deviate?

 

When I sit at the piano and “start” I don't always know where I am going and there is no sense of predictability after the first note starts to resonate. It has nothing to do with reason, logic, nor decision making. Its a feeling! What the heck is that!?!? Oh right its a relationship to the world around me and certainly not a definable dataset of predictive outcomes. Nor is it something which is learned once and then executed on demand.

 

From what little I think I know and that which friends in the various fields have shared; I am inclined to prefer the “real world learning” approach rather than the “predefined dataset” approach. How de we filter out “evil” in these datasets, these algorithm's have to experience the results of their calculation and need to have “weights” assigned when “wrong” or undesirable outcomes result. Whether we like it or not, existence is in itself the ultimate algorithm. 

 

I go back to my concern of sociopathic algorithms…

 

Granted , we are only at the start of this “yellow brick road”, hopefully its not just yellow snow!

 

 

 

PEACE

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Perhaps slips into the question of whether or not we have free will, is this whole story just playing out as created, are we predictable machines, etc.  

[Thethirdapple]

1 hour ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Perhaps slips into the question of whether or not we have free will, is this whole story just playing out as created, are we predictable machines, etc.  

 

without a doubt, a huge part of my internal process is clearly devoted to a predictive awareness. Some speculate that “humans brains” developed such circuitry due to our physical fragility compared to environmental conditions.

 

I always enjoy catching a falling object by anticipating (predicting) where it will be as opposed to where it is… and my life accumulated dataset is unique to me yet the predictive ability is not. And not to mention that wonder of evolution: the bunion, which lets us know when its gonna rain! 🙃

 

We are machines making machines in some very strange ways!

 

 

PEACE

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[Anderton]

3 hours ago, Thethirdapple said:

I always enjoy catching a falling object by anticipating (predicting) where it will be as opposed to where it is…

 

Are you a David Hume fan? Sounds very "is/ought" gap to me. 

[Thethirdapple]

8 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

Are you a David Hume fan? Sounds very "is/ought" gap to me. 

Hume definitely has some very interesting perspectives. Yet the current framing of the dynamic misses the point from my experience. It is the “/“ which intrigues me the most. This notion of the liminal which seems misplaced and out of focus.

 

I’m ok with the idea that it’s all turtle, all the way down.  A fractal reality of sorts…

 

Didn’t a bunch of guys make some song about terrapin? 🐢

 

PEACE

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