Can you trust your ears to tell man from machine when it comes to music? Most people can’t, it seems.
In a recent study by the streaming platform Deezer and market research company Ipsos, 97% of respondents could not tell the difference between music tracks made entirely by artificial intelligence (AI) and those made by humans. In other words, AI-generated audio is really convincing.
And it’s already everywhere, including on the Billboard charts: “Walk my Walk,” from Breaking Rust — an entirely AI creation, from instrumentals to vocals to image — reached number one on the country digital song chart in mid-November. Then there is Xania Monet (whose video you see below), a similar virtual artist with Gospel and R&B charting singles who was recently signed for $3 million (€2.6 million) to a record label. And this summer, the band Velvet Sundown garnered 1 million Spotify monthly listeners before revealing itself as a “synthetic music project
LitmusPitmus on
I listen to a lot of Future Funk and in the last few months I’ve been getting the impression a lot of the new artists popping up from nowhere are really generative AI. It’s putting me off the whole genre tbh.
Mochinpra on
Im not on spotify but real artist gotta start slapping “AI-free” on their stuff. AI slop is rampant, regulate them on the consumer end.
varitok on
Theyre only topping the charts via sale manipulation. It makes sense when these corporate shit factories want to have all the money from music
tanstaafl90 on
Samples replaced musicians. Voices run through filters. Compression and standardized composition. This has been popular music getting worse for the last 20 years. That AI generated is indistinguishable isn’t surprising, as much of pop music sounds fake already.
unleashed_242-18 on
Aside from the fact that we are doomed, I just wonder if our ability to tell the difference in digitally created music and real artists has anything to do with the fact that even real artists digitize and dress-up so much of their music in the studio.
Tangentkoala on
Musicians: : this is unfair, AI has no soul its the devil.
Also musicians: proceeds to auto tune their voice use a piano synthesizer to find pre recorded drums, riffs, and bass. Repeats track at 1 minute mark with a recycled chorus.
Whats the difference here? Maybe we hop off the music simulator and go back on real instruments.
1RedOne on
This article is so annoying as it doesn’t include links to the fake songs! There is another one from deezer out this week rhat shows that only 14 percent of folks could correctly recognize AI songs when given a set of songs to label AI or not
That article also failed to provide the AI songs in question! How do you leave this detail out?
At least this one mentioned the name of two AI songs
MongolianMango on
This isn’t causing unease for the Spotify execs, it’s all part of their plan.
CranberrySchnapps on
It probably doesn’t help that DAWs and their plugins are already dripping with AI because it seems these days something isn’t valuable *unless* it has AI baked into it. <sigh>
I’m two thoughts about this… problem.
1. I will (almost) always support real artists putting in the work and talent to create. I have a pretty wide appeal to different genres and have grown up listening to artists. DAWs complicate this for me a little because while there is certainly a lot of talent that goes into some digitally created music, the bar to entry is a lot lower than learning an instrument. This is both good and bad.
2. Sometimes all I want is background ambient beats. I’m focusing on something else, so the message and art get lost and it just becomes something to tap my foot to while I’m working.
In scenario 2, I would be happy enough with a bot that knows my likes and dislikes and can generate an endless stream of meaningless background music. Sometimes I want artists I’m familiar with from a particular genre because I need that kind of groove. I’m not super happy with new “artists” trying to pass off generated music as their own for which they get royalties for. This has a knock on effect of actual artists getting paid less for their efforts and actual talent.
Just label it. Require transparency. Make easily decipherable labels so listeners can know whether track was completely AI generated or some of the DAW or pedal plugins have AI training.
People will vote with their listening habits much like GMO food.
Pavillian on
Man the very very wealthy really are just passing around their fake money creating even more wealth for themselves lol
ScottyOnWheels on
Unfortunately, so much pop music is created like any product.
However, it doesn’t take too much digging to discover the people behind the music.
This is the problem with these so-called AI artists.
Breaking Rust isn’t an artist and shouldn’t be allowed to present as such. That’s an insult to any musician.
Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor is the “Artist” creating AI slop. The service should be forced to tag the real people. AI cant create art.
The genre should be labeled as AI – Country.
I_Amuse_Me_123 on
I have been using Suno when i’m feeling like writing song lyrics and I have produced some songs that I actually like a lot. Like enough to compile them into an album playlist and listen to them when I’m driving around instead of commercial artists.
It takes thousands of generations, covers, extending, mixing in external software, etc (no problem since I had an actual electronic band with radio play in the early 2000s) so it’s definitely more of a tool; not just slop generation. And I make a point never to let AI help with the lyrics.
In all other aspects of my life I am VERY concerned about AI. But this is an excellent way to get that “I want to make a song” feeling out of my system.
I’m conflicted about releasing it because on one hand, I feel like a fraud, but on the other hand I did write all the lyrics and put a lot of time into the song creation, and it’s something if I stumbled up on I would want to listen to…
If it’s good enough for me to like it as much as the rest of the artists I have loved for years, and it’s presumably only going to get better, I see this as a death knell for traditional music.
But let’s be honest: that bell rung the moment the industry started heavy use of auto-tune anyway.
Weak_Drink_ on
AI isn’t topping any charts, this is sloppy reporting. Might even be slop reporting.
We’re about to leave an era that people will look back on with immense nostalgia and longing.
Get your fill of it folks. Get as much of it in as you can. The era of genuine human art is coming to an end, soon you’ll never trust a piece of art again. You’ll constantly second guess whether something is legit or AI, and at that point it may as well all be AI, because you’ll be too paranoid to enjoy it like you once did anyway.
You’ll watch videos of crazy shit happening and no longer think “that’s wild someone caught such a ridiculous thing on video” but instead “I bet this is AI”.
Music? “It’s crazy someone could be so talented to make this.” Will just become “probably AI”, even as you enjoy it to some degree
Digital and visual art? Basically dead already. The prevailing assumption will just be that it’s AI.
These are the last days of trusting media is genuine on the internet. And then it’ll never come back.
foolandhismoney on
I’m really into ai created edm/trance, it produces some bangers.
RiffRandellsBF on
Music is easy for AI. Lyrics are impossible. You can tell a 100% AI song if you listen to the lyrics. They’re just… bizarre. But if a good human lyricist writes the words, then AI can fill in the music and the songs aren’t bad at all.
I guess that’s the truly scary part. You can replace Elton John but not Bernie Taupin… yet.
givemeyours0ul on
Modern music is 3 chords and auto tune. Has been for 15+ years. Every “amazing” rap track is an “earworm” because of the simple rhythmic backbeats and hooks. Listen to them without the backing track, it sucks.
AI will completely replace top 40 artists, be it in the writing or the performance. In fact, it probably has already.
crazy0ne on
Okay, so how do we know it is actually humans consuming the AI music?
Boundish91 on
I hate this new world. How long before everything mainstream is just re-re-regurgitated AI slop.
It saddens and worries me.
MotherFunker1734 on
The only chart they are topping is the one made by Spotify where they recommend their own AI generated songs so they don’t have to pay royalties to real artists.
The present is dark but the future is even darker.
mikel_jc on
Confirmed, country fans have bad taste.
But yeah as others said, it’s gaming algorithms and so on that puts this stuff in the charts
LateToTheParty013 on
What stops anyone from now to create 4775575895 songs to top the charts?
Devious_TaKaTa on
I’m not surprised, my wife and I occasionally listen to a nonsense AI song in our native language titled ‘My brother is a lesbian,’ and it’s melody is so good while the lyrics are so bad it’s hilarious.
There’s still people kidding themselves that it will all be alright
itsquinnmydude on
Weeeeeeeee are Charlie Kirk we.carry the flame we’ll fight for the gospel and honor his name
callardo on
I wonder if they will stop with chart manipulation now and stop punishing older music to give this new crap an advantage as I can’t imagine people with talent being to happy about this.
CaptainFil on
I can’t always tell if it’s AI but once I know it definitely takes something away from the enjoyment of the music.
I don’t know, one of the things about art and experiencing art is the human connection and without that it lacks… something.
shfj on
can we collectively ignore these fear mongering articles? It’s just marketing for those ai services
D_Cakes_ on
I doesn’t help that 99% of top 100 music is made by some kid with a midi keyboard. Music made with REAL instruments is still fairly difficult to master by Ai.
Laserous on
Chart toppers have been slop for years. Ai is just doing slop better.
32 Comments
From the article
Can you trust your ears to tell man from machine when it comes to music? Most people can’t, it seems.
In a recent study by the streaming platform Deezer and market research company Ipsos, 97% of respondents could not tell the difference between music tracks made entirely by artificial intelligence (AI) and those made by humans. In other words, AI-generated audio is really convincing.
And it’s already everywhere, including on the Billboard charts: “Walk my Walk,” from Breaking Rust — an entirely AI creation, from instrumentals to vocals to image — reached number one on the country digital song chart in mid-November. Then there is Xania Monet (whose video you see below), a similar virtual artist with Gospel and R&B charting singles who was recently signed for $3 million (€2.6 million) to a record label. And this summer, the band Velvet Sundown garnered 1 million Spotify monthly listeners before revealing itself as a “synthetic music project
I listen to a lot of Future Funk and in the last few months I’ve been getting the impression a lot of the new artists popping up from nowhere are really generative AI. It’s putting me off the whole genre tbh.
Im not on spotify but real artist gotta start slapping “AI-free” on their stuff. AI slop is rampant, regulate them on the consumer end.
Theyre only topping the charts via sale manipulation. It makes sense when these corporate shit factories want to have all the money from music
Samples replaced musicians. Voices run through filters. Compression and standardized composition. This has been popular music getting worse for the last 20 years. That AI generated is indistinguishable isn’t surprising, as much of pop music sounds fake already.
Aside from the fact that we are doomed, I just wonder if our ability to tell the difference in digitally created music and real artists has anything to do with the fact that even real artists digitize and dress-up so much of their music in the studio.
Musicians: : this is unfair, AI has no soul its the devil.
Also musicians: proceeds to auto tune their voice use a piano synthesizer to find pre recorded drums, riffs, and bass. Repeats track at 1 minute mark with a recycled chorus.
Whats the difference here? Maybe we hop off the music simulator and go back on real instruments.
This article is so annoying as it doesn’t include links to the fake songs! There is another one from deezer out this week rhat shows that only 14 percent of folks could correctly recognize AI songs when given a set of songs to label AI or not
That article also failed to provide the AI songs in question! How do you leave this detail out?
At least this one mentioned the name of two AI songs
This isn’t causing unease for the Spotify execs, it’s all part of their plan.
It probably doesn’t help that DAWs and their plugins are already dripping with AI because it seems these days something isn’t valuable *unless* it has AI baked into it. <sigh>
I’m two thoughts about this… problem.
1. I will (almost) always support real artists putting in the work and talent to create. I have a pretty wide appeal to different genres and have grown up listening to artists. DAWs complicate this for me a little because while there is certainly a lot of talent that goes into some digitally created music, the bar to entry is a lot lower than learning an instrument. This is both good and bad.
2. Sometimes all I want is background ambient beats. I’m focusing on something else, so the message and art get lost and it just becomes something to tap my foot to while I’m working.
In scenario 2, I would be happy enough with a bot that knows my likes and dislikes and can generate an endless stream of meaningless background music. Sometimes I want artists I’m familiar with from a particular genre because I need that kind of groove. I’m not super happy with new “artists” trying to pass off generated music as their own for which they get royalties for. This has a knock on effect of actual artists getting paid less for their efforts and actual talent.
Just label it. Require transparency. Make easily decipherable labels so listeners can know whether track was completely AI generated or some of the DAW or pedal plugins have AI training.
People will vote with their listening habits much like GMO food.
Man the very very wealthy really are just passing around their fake money creating even more wealth for themselves lol
Unfortunately, so much pop music is created like any product.
However, it doesn’t take too much digging to discover the people behind the music.
This is the problem with these so-called AI artists.
Breaking Rust isn’t an artist and shouldn’t be allowed to present as such. That’s an insult to any musician.
Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor is the “Artist” creating AI slop. The service should be forced to tag the real people. AI cant create art.
The genre should be labeled as AI – Country.
I have been using Suno when i’m feeling like writing song lyrics and I have produced some songs that I actually like a lot. Like enough to compile them into an album playlist and listen to them when I’m driving around instead of commercial artists.
It takes thousands of generations, covers, extending, mixing in external software, etc (no problem since I had an actual electronic band with radio play in the early 2000s) so it’s definitely more of a tool; not just slop generation. And I make a point never to let AI help with the lyrics.
In all other aspects of my life I am VERY concerned about AI. But this is an excellent way to get that “I want to make a song” feeling out of my system.
I’m conflicted about releasing it because on one hand, I feel like a fraud, but on the other hand I did write all the lyrics and put a lot of time into the song creation, and it’s something if I stumbled up on I would want to listen to…
If it’s good enough for me to like it as much as the rest of the artists I have loved for years, and it’s presumably only going to get better, I see this as a death knell for traditional music.
But let’s be honest: that bell rung the moment the industry started heavy use of auto-tune anyway.
AI isn’t topping any charts, this is sloppy reporting. Might even be slop reporting.
I found this video on the subject interesting https://youtu.be/rGremoYVMPc
We’re about to leave an era that people will look back on with immense nostalgia and longing.
Get your fill of it folks. Get as much of it in as you can. The era of genuine human art is coming to an end, soon you’ll never trust a piece of art again. You’ll constantly second guess whether something is legit or AI, and at that point it may as well all be AI, because you’ll be too paranoid to enjoy it like you once did anyway.
You’ll watch videos of crazy shit happening and no longer think “that’s wild someone caught such a ridiculous thing on video” but instead “I bet this is AI”.
Music? “It’s crazy someone could be so talented to make this.” Will just become “probably AI”, even as you enjoy it to some degree
Digital and visual art? Basically dead already. The prevailing assumption will just be that it’s AI.
These are the last days of trusting media is genuine on the internet. And then it’ll never come back.
I’m really into ai created edm/trance, it produces some bangers.
Music is easy for AI. Lyrics are impossible. You can tell a 100% AI song if you listen to the lyrics. They’re just… bizarre. But if a good human lyricist writes the words, then AI can fill in the music and the songs aren’t bad at all.
I guess that’s the truly scary part. You can replace Elton John but not Bernie Taupin… yet.
Modern music is 3 chords and auto tune. Has been for 15+ years. Every “amazing” rap track is an “earworm” because of the simple rhythmic backbeats and hooks. Listen to them without the backing track, it sucks.
AI will completely replace top 40 artists, be it in the writing or the performance. In fact, it probably has already.
Okay, so how do we know it is actually humans consuming the AI music?
I hate this new world. How long before everything mainstream is just re-re-regurgitated AI slop.
It saddens and worries me.
The only chart they are topping is the one made by Spotify where they recommend their own AI generated songs so they don’t have to pay royalties to real artists.
The present is dark but the future is even darker.
Confirmed, country fans have bad taste.
But yeah as others said, it’s gaming algorithms and so on that puts this stuff in the charts
What stops anyone from now to create 4775575895 songs to top the charts?
I’m not surprised, my wife and I occasionally listen to a nonsense AI song in our native language titled ‘My brother is a lesbian,’ and it’s melody is so good while the lyrics are so bad it’s hilarious.
[yt link for anyone interested](https://youtu.be/yg_Ffh3azRk)
There’s still people kidding themselves that it will all be alright
Weeeeeeeee are Charlie Kirk we.carry the flame we’ll fight for the gospel and honor his name
I wonder if they will stop with chart manipulation now and stop punishing older music to give this new crap an advantage as I can’t imagine people with talent being to happy about this.
I can’t always tell if it’s AI but once I know it definitely takes something away from the enjoyment of the music.
I don’t know, one of the things about art and experiencing art is the human connection and without that it lacks… something.
can we collectively ignore these fear mongering articles? It’s just marketing for those ai services
I doesn’t help that 99% of top 100 music is made by some kid with a midi keyboard. Music made with REAL instruments is still fairly difficult to master by Ai.
Chart toppers have been slop for years. Ai is just doing slop better.