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Irish Times
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Music and artificial intelligence: ‘AI isn't just a new sound. It's a new infrastructure baked into our products and services'
Artificial intelligence creates a dilemma for musicians. On the one hand it could help them develop as artists; on the other, it could seriously damage their livelihoods. Both possibilities are evident in the ways musicians are already using technology, says Martin Clancy. He is the founder of AI:OK , an Irish initiative to promote the ethical use of artificial intelligence in the music industry. He splits AI tools into two categories. The first is generative, which through applications such as Suno and Udio , can create lyrics, melodies, vocals and even complete songs almost instantly, prompted by lyrical themes and music styles that users suggest. The second is complementary, which enhances musicians' work through tools for mixing, mastering, session-player emulation and stem separation (which splits a recorded song into vocals, guitar, drums and so on, enabling users to remove individual components of the track). These tools, Clancy says, 'are now standard in the creative workflow, especially for younger or independent artists. Apple's Logic Pro is a digital audio workstation that comes with four AI-powered session players and stem separation, and is free on all new Mac computers. BandLab , which is used by over 100 million people, opens with a Create a Song with AI button. Another tool, Voice-Swap , allows producers to legally re-sing demos using approved, royalty-sharing artist voice models.' READ MORE Suno and Udio have gained tens of millions of users in the past 18 months, Clancy says. 'That's because the subscription model is cheap – for about $10 per month, Suno offers the user the potential to create 500 complete songs.' What does this fully AI-generated music sound like? One example is Carolina-O, an Udio-created homage to the writer Ernest Hemingway . Another is Verknallt in einen Talahon, which was the first AI-generated song to become a hit in Germany (where its problematic lyrics made a lot of people 'feel somewhat queasy', according to one report). AI systems create music by automatically extracting vast amounts of musical data from websites and other online sources – known as scraping – then analysing and emulating it. Ethically speaking, they should emulate other people's music only with consent from licensed or self-owned material. 'The artist or rights holder should be credited and paid, and the AI use should be disclosed to listeners,' Clancy says. 'Unethical use of AI would be music which is patterned or trained on scraped catalogues and publicly available data without permission,' says Clancy, who began his long career in music as a member of the band In Tua Nua in the 1980s. Artists now using generative AI in an ethical way include Holly Herndon , a Berlin-based American composer who creates music using Max , a visual programming language that lets users create customised instruments and vocal processes. Taryn Southern created her album I Am AI using several artificial-intelligence-based tools. The veteran musician and producer Brian Eno 's approach to creativity, Clancy says, is driven by curiosity and a commitment to experimentation. Are any Irish musicians following Eno's lead? 'There is a noticeable gap in artists doing anything interesting with this,' Clancy says. 'That's surprising and concerning, but it could be a 1975 moment, like it was before punk rock came along to shake things up. So far I'm not seeing it happening, yet I sense people are beginning to realise the possibilities.' Eno coined the term 'generative music', says Clancy. 'But he wasn't speaking about it in terms of AI systems – more in the areas of chance, randomness and order disarray. He views the recording studio as a musical instrument, as opposed to how most of us see it, as a technological processing plant.' Eno, Herndon and Southern use AI in principled and intelligent ways, valuing consent, creativity and copyright, Clancy says. Other creations have taken a different route, including Heart on My Sleeve, an AI-generated song from April 2023 that was written and produced by a TikTok user known only as Ghostwriter977 and features vocals that sound remarkably similar to Drake and the Weeknd . Both artists are hugely popular: the former has sold more digital singles in the US than any other artist; the latter set a record in 2024 as the artist with the most songs to have more than a billion streams on Spotify. Universal Music Group, to whose Republic Records label Drake and the Weeknd are signed, filed a takedown notice with multiple online platforms within two weeks of Heart on My Sleeve's release – by then the song was already a sizeable viral success, with more than 600,000 streams on Spotify, 275,000 views on YouTube and 15 million views on TikTok. For every use of technology that prompts a moral or legal dilemma, there is another with a more welcome outcome, such as the 'Abbatars' that stand in for the Swedish pop stars at the Abba Voyage show in London. The 3D projections of Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad are generated using motion-capture and machine-learning processes created by Industrial Light & Magic . The visual-effects company, which was founded by the film-maker George Lucas in 1975, put the four musicians in motion-capture suits, then used 160 cameras to film their movements and facial expressions. It fed its five weeks of data into a series of processing and modelling systems to create the digital (and de-aged) versions of the band in their 1979 heyday. Abba Voyage, which cost about €165 million to create (and also involved the work of 140 animators at Industrial Light & Magic), is a playful and transparent development of the live-concert experience, Clancy says. 'The technology dazzles but the event is firmly in service of nostalgia and showmanship, and it also employs a 10-piece live band. It's a recent example of how the marriage of live music and AI can work.' Clancy also points to virtual concerts by late artists such as Tupac Shakur, at Coachella in 2012, and the more recent hologram-generated shows featuring visualisations of Roy Orbison, Whitney Houston and Elvis Presley as further examples of AI establishing itself in popular culture. Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of our daily lives, Clancy says. 'AI isn't just a new sound,' he says. 'It's a new infrastructure that is baked into pretty much all forms of our products and services, which makes it intuitively personal.' Our smartphones are crammed with forms of AI that we already take for granted, such as Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, predictive text, facial recognition, customer-service chatbots, banking apps and Google Maps. (Possibly less usefully, Mercedes-Benz and have developed Sound Drive , an AI-powered in-car entertainment system that will remix your tunes and create 'musical expressions' of your acceleration, braking and steering.) 'The idea of human beings viewing AI technology as, possibly, an existential threat to their existing work, but also saying, 'Let's do something interesting with it,' is important,' Clancy says. 'That, however, takes an imaginative leap.' This won't happen of its own accord. Clancy hopes that AI:OK's 'literacy programme', a first-step educational tool based on the recommendations of the Government's Irish Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council, will, for example, help to create accelerator programmes to provide artificial-intelligence start-ups with funding, resources and mentoring. Clancy understands why some people are apprehensive about artificial intelligence. 'But the one thing you can't do is to think you can stop it,' he says. 'The positive argument, the positive message, is that AI is just a new technological development. It's business as usual, so don't worry.'
Fox Sports
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox Sports
The story behind the viral LeBron James songs
When LeBron James was on the verge of becoming the first NBA player to score 50,000 points, a 24-year-old named Vincent James felt a burning desire to celebrate the achievement, which may never happen again. So, he decided to make a song. Two weeks before James' historic milestone, Vincent scoured the internet until he found a beat that he loved. Then, on March 4, he received a notification on his phone: James had scored his 50,000th point with a 3-pointer against the New Orleans Pelicans. It was go-time. That evening, Vincent ran to Best Buy to buy a pair of wired headphones. He opened an app called BandLab and tried to record a tribute. The only thing was, he couldn't think of any lyrics. But he didn't let that stop him. Vincent sang "LeBron, LeBron, LeBron James" over and over again in a rhythm and blues style. He has a soulful voice. He harmonized with himself and added a few layers. The whole thing took him 20 minutes. "I'm not really good when it comes to lyrics," Vincent told FOX Sports. "So, I couldn't really come up with anything else." That video now has 6.7 million views on TikTok. And it started a viral movement, with dozens of other creators making tribute songs to the Lakers superstar, sparking a collection called "LeBronify." The phenomenon has even reached James. "Yeah, I mean it's almost impossible [not to hear]," James said, flashing a smile when asked about the music after the Lakers beat the Houston Rockets on Monday. "But my youngest son Bryce actually showed me one, I think it was yesterday. Yeah, it was yesterday. And we got a good laugh at it. But there's quite a few out there, for sure." For Vincent, who's a junior at UEI College in Phoenix studying to be an electrician, it has been a surreal experience. He had posted songs on TikTok before, but he was always overcome with embarrassment and quickly deleted them. But this was different. When his girlfriend first heard his LeBron song, instead of getting annoyed by his loud music as she usually did, she started bobbing her head and even acknowledged that [two] words were immediately stuck in her head. It had the same effect on others. LaVar Ball, the father of two NBA players and a famous rapper, posted a video on Instagram of him singing to Vincent's song after undergoing surgery to have his right foot amputated. Internet creators had a field day with it too, using his song to create funny videos, including one in which a bride walks down the aisle to the LeBron song. It was captioned: "When you let him choose your entry song," By popular demand, Vincent recently added the song to both Spotify and Apple Music. Vincent is still in shock. "I can't even describe the feeling," Vincent told FOX Sports. "It's like when you tell a joke that you're not realizing is funny, an off-hand joke, but you have the whole room laughing and you get that warm feeling inside. That's the best way I can describe it. It's something I did without thinking too much about it." Over the last few weeks, dozens of other LeBron-inspired songs have popped up on the internet, including remixes to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," Panic! at the Disco's "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" and R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly," to name a few. One of the most popular remixes was done by Shannon Blake, who rewrote Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" to honor James with "Man on the Lakers." It's incredibly catchy and takes you through the story of the Lakers this season, including them trading Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis. The song has gotten millions of views. It was shared by rapper Snoop Dogg. It was performed by the men's choir at Baylor University. Someone even recently sent him $23 over Zelle in honor of James, who wears No. 23. For Blake, a 32-year-old who works for Amazon Fresh and creates music in his free time, it has all been a dream come true. He freestyled the song in 30 minutes and can't believe the acclaim it's receiving. Heck, even one of the co-writers of "Man in the Mirror," Siedah Garrett, even commented on his remix, writing, "Love these clever lyrics to my song." Blake's ultimate goal was for James to hear his song. "I believe LeBron is the greatest basketball player to ever touch a basketball," Blake told FOX Sports. The fact that all of this has reached James is even more interesting because the 40-year-old acknowledged he's not even on one of the platforms where they're going viral. "My son, they all on TikTok," James said. "I'm not on TikTok. So they showed me." James, who's the face of the NBA, has seen thousands of tributes from fans over his 22 years in the league. But having songs written about him is new. And it was all started by a young man who just had to celebrate his idol's latest accomplishment. For Vincent, it was just a passion project. A way for him to honor his favorite player. He never expected it to catch fire. And honestly, while that has been amazing, there's something that has meant much more to him. "The fact that I did something that created a big enough wave that it reached somebody I look up to daily has heard it, is just insane," he said. "I honestly can't believe it. It just blows my mind away." Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @ melissarohlin . FOLLOW Follow your favorites to personalize your FOX Sports experience LeBron James Los Angeles Lakers National Basketball Association recommended Get more from National Basketball Association Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
