Suno AI "text to music" generator: so good, you gotta try it to believe it. But what does it mean for musicians & the music industry?
OpenAI's "Sora" & Lore Machine's "Story Visualization System" blew your minds. Suno will blow your ears (and perhaps ultimately the pockets of artists)
Time for your Monday morning AI media and entertainment brAIn dump, April Fool’s edition! This one is another mind-blower - ears, actually. OpenAI’s “Sora” rocked our video minds (watch one of their demo videos here). Lore Machine opened them (watch their “story visualization system” demo here). And now Suno and its AI text-to-music generator will blow your ears. I mentioned Suno last week, but it deserves to be its own feature story this week because it’s shockingly good. Trust me.
But first, “the trAIler” - 10 key media-related AI headlines from last week (the “AI:10”). Then, after the “mAIn event,” “the cocktAIl” - AI mixology that highlights some “must attend” events. Finally, “the AI legal case tracker” - updates on the key generative AI-focused copyright infringement cases.
I. the trAIler - 10 “quick hit” AI headlines from last week
(1) Is generative AI overhyped? Nah, but it’s certainly been a rough week! First, now ironically named, one-time text-to-image generative AI darling “Stability AI” just lost its CEO after months of turmoil. Ongoing major copyright infringement litigation certainly didn’t help. Read more here (you can track its ongoing litigation with Getty Images and others in my “AI case tracker”). Then, after raising $1.3 billion, generative AI “startup” Inflection was largely reflected back into its biggest investor, Microsoft. Read more here. And then there’s this — Axios’s article titled “Chatbot letdown as hype hits rocky reality.” Read it here. My take? Even massively funded genAI “startups” can’t compete against Big Tech goliaths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Apple with resources that dwarf theres. Essentially, Big Tech is too big to fail in these genAI wars (and right now Microsoft is the biggest genAI player of them all).
(2) We hear you, Mr. PresAIdent! The U.S. OMB just implemented new cross-government policy for AI risk mitigation consistent with Joe Biden’s AI executive order. The guidance focuses on privacy and safety, including opting out of TSA facial recognition. Read more here. Lots of cooks in the AI policy/regulatory kitchen both here and around the world right now, so how can you keep track of it all? This helpful article mentions relevant resources (besides this newsletter, of course!).
(3) Exhibits A, B and C for why AI privacy and safety matter - and now! First, Samsung-backed “Leonardo” AI image generator is being used to generate non-consensual sexual images. Read more here. And Samsung isn’t alone. Even seemingly “safe” Etsy, isn’t (safe). Read more here. And now at least one site “nudifies” photos for free, reports WIRED.
(4) YouTube to the deepfake rescue? I’ll believe it when I see it. But reportedly YouTube will require creators to label AI generated content that appears to be “realistic,” asking users whether their videos contain altered or synthetic content. Sounds like the “honor system” to me. Will that work? Read more here.
(5) Don’t forget about AI-mazon! The suave shopping giant just stealthily invested an additional $2.75 billion into OpenAI competitor Anthropic, bringing its total investment in that company to $4 billion. Read more here via TechCrunch.
(6) Speaking of Anthropic, its “Claude 3” chatbot just won the latest generative AI speed test! That means that Sam Altman’s OpenAI GPT-4 has some AI-splaining to do. Read more here via Ars Technica. Relatedly, CEO Altman is falling out of Silicon Valley favor, so says Business Insider. Real story? Tech bro envy? Or click bAIt?
(7) Spam-AI-lot! Hey, Mr. Altman, then there’s this. Your new chatbot store is apparently filling up with spam. Read more here. But AI spam is an equal opportunity player, and is now beginning to bury TikTok too. Shocking, I know! Read more here.
(8) Writers beware - AI wants your jobs! Not alarmist, just plain true. Exhibit A is Google’s new generative AI for newsrooms product which “would help news outlets write, distribute and monetize their work,” according to TheWrap. Not to be outdone, check out Oracle - which just announced that it’s adding “more than 200” new AI features into its software bundle, including “Assisted authoring.” Read more here.
(9) Does this all lead to AI training upon training upon training on AI generated works (and ultimately “model collapse”)? Here’s this week’s “must read” via The New York Times, titled “A.I.-Generated Garbage Is Polluting Our Culture” - which is not meant to alarm you, but is an important piece to ponder as we move forward in a largely unbridled generative AI world.
(10) And through it all, is AI self-aware at all? Fascinating article about researchers putting AI chatbots to the test, resulting in seemingly sentient responses. But are they? Read more here via WIRED. Relatedly, is this the movie “her” in real life? Check out Hume AI’s new “Empathic Voice Interface” (EVI), which the company says is the first conversational AI with emotional intelligence (but does it star the voice of Scarlet Johansson?).
II. the mAIn event - Suno’s “must try” text-to-music generator. Shockingly good. So what now for musicians and the overall music industry?
Believe the hype. Suno is a hot new AI “text to music” generator. Simply type a prompt and create a professionally sounding music track in seconds - complete with auto-generated lyrics, title and cover art. Literally in seconds. It’s available right now. For free. So you have no excuse not to try it.
I did, and the results were shockingly good. I asked Suno to create “a somber acoustic folk song in the style of artist Radical Face about how AI is taking over human songwriting.” In seconds, Suno generated this song it titled “The Song That Wasn’t Penned,” here. It’s scary good, and its lyrics are scarily apt.
But “here’s the deal” (as a certain Joe would say). Suno’s “secret sauce” is the wide world of copyrighted songs and recordings that it sucks into its training vortex. I’m virtually certain (because I asked the company several times and received no response) that the music it uses for its AI training hasn’t been licensed.
So (as I wrote last week), is this just one big “heist?” (in the provocative but defensible words of one music writer). If we can all create high quality music in seconds with just a few keystrokes, then won’t there inevitably be less room for human created tracks? Spotify is already overrun by AI generated tracks, so won’t there be meaningful market substitution for songs by the human artists on which the generative AI received its music training? Of course there will. Some meaningful fraction of market demand for human-generated music will be lost to our new artificial composers.
Some would argue, of course, that artists have always been inspired by — and “copied” — the art of others, so the only difference here is that we are substituting machines for humans. But no – it’s not the same! Wholesale ingestion of entire copyrighted songs and recordings is fundamentally different than artists building on top of the creative building blocks of others. Human artists aren’t creating systems that are specifically designed to enable mass market substitution.
Others would say — correctly this time — that new technology has always disrupted the media and entertainment industry, destroying some jobs while creating entirely new categories of jobs. Take trailblazing New Wave music legend Gary Numan, for example. Synthesizers enabled him to create an entirely new musical genre, and he initially received significant blowback for it. Session musicians protested the loss of in-studio jobs at the synthetic hands of synths (watch and listen to my interview with Numan here). But Numan was no tech behemoth. He didn’t create the tech, he just used it.
So what does this all mean for artists, musicians and the overall music industry? Just like OpenAI’s Sora is a Hollywood and Madison Avenue wake-up call, Suno is a music industry alarm clock. We can’t know exactly how and how much the music industry and music livelihood will be transformed by generative AI, but we certainly know that it will be. And as I’ve said before, since we’re just 15 months since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT into the world, imagine how things will be 3 years from now. 5 years? 10?
What do you think? Send me your feedback and thoughts at peter@creativemedia.biz.
III. the cocktAIl- your AI mix of “must attend” AI events
After all, it’s always happy hour somewhere!
(1) Watch my interview with The Police’s Stewart Copeland about AI and music!
Last week I hosted a virtual roundtable session with Stewart Copeland, drummer of legendary band The Police - and Alex Ebert, multi-platinum singer of the band Edward Sharpe - asking both of them how they feel generative AI will impact their music (and their livelihoods). Their views are fascinating (including Ebert’s revelation that he is designing an “EEG Music Machine” that anyone can use and just “think” of a song, thereby bringing it to life. No LLM “training” needed).
Watch the full interviews here via this link.
(2) This Thursday, April 4th, I’ll be moderating a high power panel about AI and gaming with leading experts in those worlds. It’s hosted by ThinkLA and takes place at LA’s Skirball Center. Check out the information here and register for the event.
(3) Check out Digital Hollywood’s first generative AI-focused virtual summit, “The Digital Hollywood AI Summer Summit,” on four days in July (July 22nd - 25th). The sessions are outstanding. Learn more here via this link.
(4) AI LA’s “A.I. on the Lot” on May 16th, 2024 is a “must attend” event. Check it out and sign up here. I attended last year. It’s where all the LA-based media and generative AI “movers and shakers” meet, learn, and collaborate. You gotta be there.
Reach out to me at peter@creativemedia.biz with your feedback & submissions. I may feature them.What do you think? Send me your feedback and reach out to me at peter@creativemedia.biz.
check out Creative Media and our AI-focused services
IV. the AI legal case tracker - updates on key AI litigation
Rather than lay out the facts of each case - and the latest developments - here in every newsletter, click on this “AI case tracker” tab on “the brAIn” website. You’ll get all the up-to-date information you need. These are the cases I track.
(1) The New York Times v. Microsoft & OpenAI
(2) Sarah Silverman, et al. v. Meta
(3) Sarah Silverman v. OpenAI
(4) Universal Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
(5) Getty Images v. Stability AI and Midjourney