Is AI-Generated Music the Future of Recording?
This week in AI and ML news: Musk joins lawmakers on Capitol Hill, AI-generated music wows listeners, and more.
Author’s Note
Few sectors are hungrier for AI-driven innovation than the restaurant industry. On the latest episode of The Main Course, our Co-Founder and CPO, Elizabeth Spears, joins host Barbara Castiglia to discuss computer vision’s expansive role in evolving restaurants. Their conversation covers a broad range of high-impact use cases and forecasts an exciting future for vision AI solutions from the kitchen to the drive-thru. Check it out.?
Elon Musk Meets with Lawmakers to Discuss AI and the Economy
Governments the world over are just beginning to lay the groundwork for policies that will help to regulate AI development in the name of both innovation and consumer protection. Both the Cyberspace Administration of China and the US Department of Commerce have invited the public to comment on proposed regulations and next steps while The Hague hosted a conference on responsible military AI for international delegates back in February. Axios broke the news earlier this month that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was leading Washington through early efforts to author AI legislation. Schumer and other lawmakers met with AI thought leader and Twitter CEO Elon Musk this week to discuss emerging tech.?
Both Schumer and Musk spoke to the press and described the conversation as positive without getting into specifics. “We talked about the future,” said Musk, while Schumer noted some discussion of Tesla’s plant in Buffalo. The Senator did not say whether or not Musk had reviewed or commented on the proposed framework for AI regulations that is reportedly being circulated on Capitol Hill. Musk has previously met with President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and last month signed an open letter advocating for caution in large-scale AI development.???
Emphasizing Privacy, Chat-GPT Adds New Features
OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it was introducing new controls that allow users to delete their conversation histories and opt out of using their prompts to help train conversational models. Chat histories had previously posed a serious privacy concern. In March, an error briefly exposed some user chat histories, inspiring still-unresolved regulatory discussions in Italy.?
Tuesday also saw the debut of a new export feature. Users can now backup their saved conversation history to local storage as HTML and JSON files. Soon, business and enterprise users will have access to a new business version of the chatbot which will automatically opt them out of model training.?
Meanwhile, Chat-GPT competitors are changing as well. Google’s recent unveiling of Bard was met with some disappointment when users learned that the chatbot could not yet code. Google had good news this week, showcasing Bard’s new capabilities for programming and software development. On Wednesday, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg spoke to shareholders about his company’s pivot to AI. Describing plans to introduce new AI-enabled features to billions, Zuckerberg stated, “we are no longer behind in building our AI infrastructure.”?
AI-Generated Music Sounds an Alarm Throughout the Recording Industry
Music fans and industry executives alike were taken by surprise when “Heart on My Sleeve” appeared on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music earlier this month. Composed by TikTok user ghostwriter977, the track features AI-powered facsimiles of Drake and The Weeknd. On April 17th, just two days after the full song’s debut, Universal Music Group (UMG) filed a takedown notice. Before its initial removal, the song managed to amass more than 15 million views on TikTok and more than half a million on YouTube. Versions of the track continue to be uploaded and deleted. Investigations are underway to determine ghostwriter977’s identity. Some have theorized that Drake or UMG may even be responsible.?
Before Heart on My Sleeve’s debut, Drake had already responded to AI recreations of his voice negatively. “This is the final straw,” one Instagram comment read. Grimes, on the other hand, has embraced AI and invited her fans to recreate her voice and even collaborate on tech-enabled projects. The Canadian musician and producer, who has interviewed an AI ‘clone’ of herself and composed a lullaby with AI, tweeted that she would “split 50% royalties on any successful AI-generated song that uses [her] voice.” Fans quickly began sharing their creations to enthusiastic responses. Grimes has both suggested that she may make copyright claims against songs with especially problematic lyrics and wondered aloud if she could legally do so.??
About the Author & Plainsight
Bennett Glace is a B2B technology content writer and cinephile from Philadelphia. At Plainsight, he plays a central role in planning and delivering content that supports Plainsight’s efforts to make vision AI success a repeatable, scalable reality for enterprises across a range of industries.?
Plainsight provides the unique combination of AI strategy, a vision AI platform, and deep learning expertise to develop, implement, and oversee transformative computer vision solutions for enterprises. Through the widest breadth of managed services and a vision AI platform for centralized processes and standardized pipelines, Plainsight makes computer vision repeatable and accountable across all enterprise vision AI initiatives. Plainsight solves problems where others have failed and empowers businesses across industries to realize the full potential of their visual data with the lowest barriers to production, fastest value generation, and monitoring for long-term success. For more information, visit plainsight.ai.