When I heard that Artificial Intelligence was creating music, I was very intrigued. How could AI be creating songs? Who truly owns the songs that AI creates? What do these AI songs sound like? And, most importantly, what effect does this have on the music industry today? 

To address my first question of how these songs are being created by AI, I did some research. I discovered that AI can’t just spit out songs by itself; it still needs the help of a human to enter the prompt and click generate. After someone inputs a prompt, AI will analyze patterns and data from existing music and will create its own. Not only can AI create a song, it can also sing it. For me, finding this out raised concerns about the future of the music industry. Artificial intelligence is already raising problems in the film industry with AI actors, but now there are AI singers as well– this truly threw me for a loop. What’s happening is that machine learning models are generating visual artists by using the prompt or audio inputs from a human. Already, an AI artist, Xania Monet, has appeared on multiple Billboard charts.

This brings me to my next point: if there are “AI artists” but it’s human-generated, then who truly owns the songs that are being created? In my opinion, no one really does. I mean, yes, it was a human who entered the prompt, but they didn’t come up with the lyrics, or even perform the song. And can artificial intelligence really “own” a song when it can’t create one without a prompt from a human and uses other human artists’ voices and lyrics to create the song? There is also the question of copyright. These songs that are being AI-generated are pulling lyrics, songwriting styles, and even voices from existing artists. This is already becoming a very complex topic that is being debated since no one has ever dealt with it before. 

Now, while it’s being debated who owns these songs, how do they even sound? Should the music industry really feel threatened, or is this just a way for people to have fun using AI? I decided that in order to formulate my opinion on this, I had to listen to the top three trending AI songs critically. The first one was “Livin’ on Borrowed Time” by Breaking Rust, an AI-generated music artist. This song definitely sounded like a country song, and the message was not caring what others thought, which is ironic in this situation since everyone is judging AI. I personally didn’t think that it was anything special, and human country artists definitely have way better songs. 

The next one was “Walk My Walk” also by Breaking Rust, which recently topped the U.S. Billboard charts. When I first hit play, I was very creeped out at how realistic it sounded to a human-made and performed country song. It had a good beat to the song, so I could see why it had gained so much popularity; however, it almost sounded threatening. The lyrics, “But I ain’t slowing down, I was born to rise”, is an exact description of artificial intelligence. AI was created to improve aspects of human life, and it has taken off considerably in the past five years. 

Finally, I listened to “Heart on My Sleeve” by Aditya2546, where AI used Drake and The Weeknd’s voices to perform the song it wrote. When listening, it definitely sounds like a combination of those two artists, which is scary, just how accurate AI can get it to sound like actual people. The song overall was not that good though in my opinion, and so far I don’t see any reason for human music artists to feel threatened yet. 

Now, to get to the question that is on everyone’s mind, what effect does AI music have on the music industry? So far, it has topped Billboard charts and tricked people into thinking that it was created by an actual human, which, in my opinion, is a little concerning that something computer-generated is on a chart for human artists. It is also devaluing a human artist’s talent, creating copyright problems, and job displacement. Overall, I believe that AI has had some pretty negative effects on the music industry so far and will continue to do so. One could argue that I’m being too harsh and that there is a positive; AI is empowering creativity. However, I don’t believe this to be true since all you do is enter a prompt and AI creates it for you. 

Ultimately, after answering all the questions I know that have been circulating around AI in the music industry the best I can, I believe that there needs to be some sort of control over AI music artists and songs that are being produced. I also think that though the music industry shouldn’t feel overly threatened by AI working itself into the industry, they should still take it seriously and have some control over it in order to protect human artists.