A survey published last week suggested 97% of respondents could not spot an AI-generated song. But there are some telltale signs - if you know where to look.

Here’s a quick guide …

  • No live performances or social media presence

  • ‘A mashup of rock hits in a blender’

A song with a formulaic feel - sweet but without much substance or emotional weight - can be a sign of AI, says the musician and technology speaker, as well as vocals that feel breathless.

  • ‘AI hasn’t felt heartbreak yet’

“AI hasn’t felt heartbreak yet… It knows patterns,” he explains. “What makes music human is not just sound but the stories behind it.”

  • Steps toward transparency

In January, the streaming platform Deezer launched an AI detection tool, followed this summer by a system which tags AI-generated music.

  • audaxdreik@pawb.socialEnglish
    14·
    3 days ago

    I was looking for videogame remixes one day and found a channel doing Little Nemo from the NES. I used to love that game and thought it was an odd pick for remixes, one you don’t see too often so I clicked on it and … it was incredibly underwhelming. I listened for a few minutes and something was kind of off but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It was AI of course.

    I’m not much of a music person, I’ve been listening to it daily for my entire life but I don’t know much about theory. Still, when it comes to remixes, you can usually tell why someone remixed a song. They like that particular song, or there’s a motif that really struck them. They’ll pick out certain sounds or elements and build on them, single them out and rearrange them. It’s very intentional and you can tell.

    AI-generated remixes lack this intentionality. It was like someone had twisted a dial that just said “complexity” and that was it. There were more intricate layers of beats and instrumentation on top, but it wasn’t doing anything. I sat there and listened for 15 minutes and it was like I heard nothing. Nothing new stuck in my head, there was no riff or little melody that made go, “Aw fuck yeah! This is what it’s about!”

    That’s how you can tell AI generated music.

    Sadly, a lot of slower and minimalist genres have been decimated by it though. Vaporwave, chillcore, dungeonsynth. A lot of these had large bodies of work to train on and it’s a lot harder to tell due to their subtler nature, but you’ll usually notice the artist has a new hour-long upload every day. If you click through it at random, you’ll begin to notice that while the tones shift, the overall pattern of the entire hour-long mix is still kind of the same?

    It’s bleak, man. Fuck that shit.

    • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      This is kind of irrelevant to the argument, but if I were to provide you with a mix of AI and organically produced music, would you be able to pick them out every time?

      It’s a bit like Andy Warhol’s “Brillo box” art installation. Is it just a Brillo box he got at the store? Or did he make it himself, thereby creating “art”? Could you know the difference? Would you?

      As a fun aside, a permanent exhibition of one of “his” Brillo boxes turned out to be fake (well, real, if you think about it, which is kind of the point of that piece of Warhol’s art), and there was a huge investigation into who had taken the “original”, but people had been coming and seen the exhibition for decades at that point, not knowing it was actually just a Brillo box.

      I think this touches on the complexity of the issues presented by AI that is actually a pretty ancient philosophical debate around art, meaning, and value.

      • audaxdreik@pawb.socialEnglish
        1·
        12 hours ago

        This is kind of irrelevant to the argument, but if I were to provide you with a mix of AI and organically produced music, would you be able to pick them out every time?

        I’d like to think much more often than not, yes. People talk about it being able to replicate low level pop and … fine. But that’s not really the kind of stuff I listen to. Maybe there’s a statement to be made there about how far down pop has fallen that it can be mistaken with formulaic AI slop …

        It’s a bit like Andy Warhol’s “Brillo box” art installation. Is it just a Brillo box he got at the store? Or did he make it himself, thereby creating “art”? Could you know the difference? Would you?

        Which I guess is what your point here is. What is art and who is the arbiter of that?

        Kind of different circumstances as I see it, though. Andy Warhol still performed the art of the Brillo box. He took something basic and skillfully crafted it into art to prod the artistic community into considering what we think of as art and why. It was in no way a trick but a very deliberate and intentional statement, or question even.

        AI on the other hand often feels like a trick. There is little to no intention, no human craft, and an effort to pass it off as a higher form of art than it really is. It’s not asking questions or making statements but an effort to deliver “content” to fill some need. The need for more content.

        But like, hey. That’s just my opinion, maaan …