Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:
The new tool allows users to describe what they want to hear in a personalized playlist that reflects the “full arc” of their tastes, according to the company. That means the playlist focuses not only on the songs you like now, but your entire Spotify listening history from day one — something that differentiates the feature from other playlists, the company says.
I’ve published a first draft of an AI Use Policy to define how, where, and – more to the point – where we won’t use AI.
This is a first attempt at putting my thoughts into words, and I will probably revise this over time as my own feelings about AI keep evolving. But I wanted to get something out there now, because everywhere else seems to be sprinting in the opposite direction.
Read More “Chorus.fm’s AI Use Policy 1.0”
Joe Wilkins, writing for Futurism:
Though the abomination of an ad only has 20,000 views on YouTube, backlash in the comments was so intense that McDonald’s shut down comments over the weekend, before delisting the video entirely. (Some marketing research databases managed to scrape the clip, if you’re curious.)
Matt Birchler, with my favorite line of the week so far:
If a tool makes my job meaningfully better, AI or not, I’m gonna use it, you don’t have to convince me. Maybe some people are resistant to learn anything new, but my impression is that the gains bosses have promised have been too grand and the use cases too broad, so employees get a bad taste in their mouth.
Again, I’ll shout it from the rooftops, if a piece of software is revolutionary and will make workers’ jobs easier, they will use it. If you find you have to keep making the hard sell to your employees, maybe it’s not bringing as much value to them as you think.
Amen.
iHeartRadio’s chief programming officer and president, Tom Poleman, sent a letter to staff on Friday (Nov. 21), obtained by Billboard, pledging that the company doesn’t and won’t “use AI-generated personalities” or “play AI music that features synthetic vocalists pretending to be human,” among other promises.
The pledge marks the beginning of iHeart’s new “Guaranteed Human” program, which will also see the company publish only “Guaranteed Human” podcasts, according to Poleman’s letter.
For the first time, all three of the major labels – Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, along with their respective publishing arms – have struck individual licensing deals with the same artificial intelligence-focused music startup: Klay.
I don’t even have anything snarky to say. I find all of this so much more soulless than the most generic copycat awful neon-era scene music.
Suno, the AI music company, has raised a $250 million dollars and is now valued at $2.45 billion.
Instead, Suno more than doubled the predicted tranche and tacked on another $450 million to the post-cash valuation. Menlo Ventures led the sizable Series C, which drew additional support from NVIDIA’s NVentures, Hallwood Media (the professional home of Xania Monet), Anthropic stakeholder Lightspeed, and Palo Alto’s Matrix.
Addressing the raise, Suno co-founder and head Mikey Shulman, whose platform is said to be approaching 100 million total users, described his company as having a hand in “the future of music.”
The study found that 73% of respondents supported disclosure when AI-generated tracks are recommended, 45% sought filtering options, and 40% said they would skip AI-generated songs entirely. Around 71% expressed surprise at their inability to distinguish between human-made and synthetic tracks. Deezer, which has 9.7 million subscribers, has seen daily AI music submissions rise to more than 50,000 — about a third of total uploads, up sharply from 18% in April.
This week, Breaking Rust landed the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart for the second week in a row with the song “Walk My Walk.” But Breaking Rust is not a real person or a real band. It’s an AI project credited to songwriter Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, but the mysterious “artist” has over 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Another AI-generated country singer, Cain Walker, also dominated the Country Digital Song Sales chart this week with tracks in the third, ninth, and eleventh spots. Billboard distinguishes both Walker and Breaking Rust’s music as “virtual acts,” which offers some degree of transparency that the artists and/or the art is AI generated.
We really don’t have to do this.
Ashley King, writing for Digital Music News:
If you thought only streaming platforms were feeling the onslaught of artificial intelligence-created (AI) artists and generated music, think again. Even radio stations aren’t safe from the budding industry of AI-generated content. According to Billboard, an AI singer called Xania Monet has become the first known AI artist to earn enough radio airplay to debut on a Billboard radio chart.
You know, we don’t have to do this…
Monet is actually an AI-powered creation of a Mississippi woman named Telisha Jones, who writes her own lyrics but uses the AI platform Suno to make them into music.
The deal inked by Jones — a multimillion-dollar agreement signed by ex-Interscope exec Neil Jacobson’s indie music company Hallwood Media — marks the latest advance of AI into every corner of American life. But the buzz surrounding the deal, which some of the major labels ultimately backed away from, highlights the legal limbo that music companies and creators face as they adopt the new tech.
Andy Baio has the best break down of the Will Smith AI(?)-crowd controversy I’ve seen:
This minute-long clip of a Will Smith concert is blowing up online for all the wrong reasons, with people accusing him of using AI to generate fake crowds filled with fake fans carrying fake signs. The story’s blown up a bit, with coverage in Rolling Stone, NME, The Independent, and Consequence of Sound.
[…]
But here’s where things get complicated.
The crowds are real. Every person you see in the video above started out as real footage of real fans, pulled from video of multiple Will Smith concerts during his recent European tour.
Ashley King, writing for Digital Music News:
YouTube reveals [they’re] using artificial intelligence to make video enhancements to content on its platform without first informing content creators. Confirmed to be applied to a subset of YouTube Shorts, the undisclosed changes have left some creators feeling unsettled about how their work is being used. It also raises questions about the overall implications of undisclosed algorithmic mediation.
“That’s why we’re calling on the UK government to protect copyright and introduce new transparency obligations for AI companies so that music rights can be licensed and enforced, as well as calling for the clear labelling of content solely generated by AI,” Jones indicated.
The latter adverb raises interesting questions about what an across-the-board labeling system would look like in practice. For obvious reasons, if they do incorporate AI, established artists probably won’t want their music labeled as such – hence the “solely” clarifier.
This seems like a no-brainer to me.
Has an AI “artist” topped 474,000 Spotify monthly listeners (and counting) in just weeks? It sure seems that way, and the development is raising new questions about machine-generated tracks’ streaming prevalence.
Word of that presumably AI-powered “band,” The Velvet Sundown, appears to have started circulating earlier this week on Reddit. There, multiple users said some of the relevant tracks had arrived in their Discover Weekly playlists.
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