“Heart on My Sleeve,” a song generated using artificial intelligence, has over six million views on YouTube. The track, which transformed vocals from an online creator to sound like vocals from popular artists Drake and The Weeknd, is a deepfake — it sounds exactly like something the pair could have made. The vocals, lyrics and cadence of the song are strikingly similar to those which are found in the artists’ actual music, however, the song was created without either of the artists’ knowledge.
AI, and the rise in its accessibility to the average person, has recently taken the music industry by storm. Through altering the existing voices of musicians, people are creating completely new songs and, in many cases, making a profit.
The use of advanced technology is not new to the music world. In the 1950s, computer scientists began to test the idea of letting computers create music. It recently has gained a lot of attention as AI technology has rapidly expanded in precision, clarity and originality, thanks to programs such as ChatGPT.
David Carlisle, instructor of music at the University of Mississippi and principal percussionist with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, believes AI could be used for good and bad.
“My concern is that most use of AI in the arts will be for monetary gain, not a sincere effort in making great art,” Carlisle said. “But some use of AI will be sincere. I’m interested in genuine human production, and AI could cheapen that human aspect — the center of all the arts — for composers, performing musicians and the audience.”
A shift toward heavy AI use in music production could be detrimental to creativity.
“AI might sap away an artist’s creative output. I’m rooting for human artistic output,” Carlisle said.
In a less controversial manner, AI can be used to suggest songs to listeners. Spotify uses AI to map a user’s listening habits, further using these statistics to make customized playlists for the user.
Songwriters and composers are also concerned about the negative impact AI may have on the music industry regarding their own jobs. A company does not need to remunerate AI for its output as it would a human employee.
“I think AI, if it gets further along, could seriously hurt musicians and composers, especially musicians and composers who perform and write for media,” aspiring composer Zachariah Mayberry said. “When all a director wants for their project is a certain musical mood and texture for a certain amount of time, are they going to spend money on a composer and potentially several performers, or will they simply use AI to generate a free musical track? For those who desire nothing more than to consume music of a certain mood and style, AI will be their primary option.”
In the case of an AI generated song like “Heart On My Sleeve,” the creator, Ghostwriter977, made the beat, sound, notes and lyrics themselves. To get Drake and The Weeknd’s voices on the track, they had to sing their own vocal melodies and then use AI to mask their voice to sound like the singers. There were rumors that the song was being considered for a Grammy, but the CEO of the Recording Academy made it clear that was not the case.
“The Vocals were not legally obtained, the vocals were not cleared by the label or the artist, and the song is not commercially available,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said.
Universal Music Group, Drake’s label, ordered a takedown notice of the song. They were too late to prevent its popularity with a curious public: It was uploaded on numerous platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Music, a one-minute clip on Tik Tok and Soundcloud. “Heart On My Sleeve” had over 600,000 streams on Spotify and 15 million views on TikTok before it was removed.
Despite the question of whether AI will consume music in the future, there are still people who believe that human emotions will persevere.
“I do think that there are still plenty of people interested in the element of interior human communication that only exists in music written and performed by human beings,” Mayberry said. “Those who listen and create for this kind of mysterious communion will never be satisfied with AI, even if they can’t tell the difference between AI and human music at first listen.”
