A survey published last week suggested 97% of respondents could not spot an AI-generated song. But there are some telltale signs - if you know where to look.
Here’s a quick guide …
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No live performances or social media presence
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‘A mashup of rock hits in a blender’
A song with a formulaic feel - sweet but without much substance or emotional weight - can be a sign of AI, says the musician and technology speaker, as well as vocals that feel breathless.
- ‘AI hasn’t felt heartbreak yet’
“AI hasn’t felt heartbreak yet… It knows patterns,” he explains. “What makes music human is not just sound but the stories behind it.”
- Steps toward transparency
In January, the streaming platform Deezer launched an AI detection tool, followed this summer by a system which tags AI-generated music.
Tip 1: It’s being promoted. The music industry would love to get rid of musicians.
There’s a pretty well known studio engineer that has a YouTube channel. He did a bit where even he couldn’t tell the difference.
We’re cooked at this point. There is really no need to bother learning a creative skill outside of it being just a personal desire to do.
There will be no money or career opportunities in the field of entertainment and arts.
I have yet to hear an AI generated song that didn’t have some obvious tells in the vocals. Like how you can hear autotune, but it’s even worse than autotune. Crackly/crunchy, heavily distorted but only on certain words. Weird pronunciation or annunciation.
You have yet to notice an AI-generated song that didn’t have some obvious tells.
Lol this is how pop music is created with formulaic, focus group approved garbage over engineered to be the most palatable and sell well.
If that gets killed off along with AI-generated music, that seems to be to be win/win.
The only thing more formulaic is Bach, who wrote music mathematically.
This description of AI songs could be a lament about most pop music: formulaic, sweet, generic, produced in a studio to sound perfect, not human. Works on radio or Spotify, but not so much for a live audience.
Sure, that’s hard to detect. AI reproduces what we’ve been exposed to for decades.
I’ve been trying to figure out if Stone Rebel is an AI band or not. They started in 2018 and have put out something like 77 albums since, but it’s relatively simple instrumental. They have almost no information online except a claim that they’re “based in France”
Honestly can’t tell if they’re a legit yet very private group, or if they were early adopters of procgen music
AI wasn’t making anything close to listenable music in 2018. If they have songs from before 2023 they’re human.
77 albums since 2018?
It’s AI. No question.
I fell hard for Dysmn, who was suspiciously dropping new music every few days. I really liked the sound, and I haven’t found anything that sounds like that since. 270+ videos in under 2 years. I realized it wasn’t human after a month or two.
Soooo, if anybody knows a great jazzy EDM metal noise, let me know.
Check out a band called Unprocessed. I just found them after they did a collab with Polyphia’s guitarist, another band to check out. It really sounds like this style.
You are the second person to recommend Unprocessed. Almost 10 minutes into the Angel album. It’s pretty good, definitely hits the target.
I’ll have to check out Polyphia as well.
Can’t say any legit bands that sound exactly like that, But some of the guitar and metal notes sounds inspired by Polyphia, Playing God (sorry for the yt link) might scratch your itch, otherwise look up the math rock genre, might find some gems there. Wish you the best of luck!
Gonna make a quick edit, Unprocessed 100% deserves a recommendation in this genre. Occasionally have some EDM but mainly more on the metal side, but still have some extraordinary strings akin to Polyphia
I’m enjoying a lot of Unprocessed’s Angel album. I’m also going to have to look at Polyphia and Playing God.
Math rock is one of the ways they advertised themselves. Also djent, but I’m not seeing that.
I looked that up, and it actually slaps. Not really my genre, but I can see how people would assume it’s real people.
Humans are primarily visual creatures, so we can detect the slop in AI images a LOT faster than we can in audio.
Human artists are going to have to get a lot weirder to out-innovate AI music, and I’m actually happy about that. Weird music is the best.
I think this might be a way AI and humans can actually work together. A lot of musicians are creating digitally anyway. They might have to rely on drum loops if they aren’t good at beats. Iterating with an AI to get the right beat would be better than a loop, and still be a human making it.
However, I have reservations about the AI doing everything with little or no human involvement.
Iterating with an AI to get the right beat would be better than a loop
That’s just like, your opinion
Right, pretty sure everyone but you knows it’s an opinion.
I think (think means opinion) most people, besides you, would agree that having a beat that is unique and not just downloaded from a loop library will produce a song that is more original.
“In my imagination I speak for all people and we all think I’m right” chatGPT is literally rotting your brain bro
“The main issue musicians are struggling with is originality; AI can help :)” get a grip. Notice how in order for you to insert “ai” into this process you have to construct a fantasy where a totally uncreative person lazily drags a low quality beat into their project without a further care in the world? The root of your little fantasy here is simple and inescapable: AI is only appealing to boring, uncreative, soulless people. I know it, and you know it, which is why out of all the limitless possibilities your first argument is that it would be superior to something you already consider shit.
“I refuse to have a polite conversation” - you. It’s exactly what you said, because it’s in quotes and I know how to use quotes. Hah.
I disagree.
If a person plays guitar-but not piano, and they feed their track into an AI and ask it to generate a backup piano track with specific instructions about how it should sound, they should be… denied that?
What should they do if they want a track that involves an instrument they can’t play? Hire someone? With what money? lol.
The artist is upfront that it is just one person making music, and they say it is AI assisted in their discord.
Bullshit. This only applies to fully prompt generated AI music. Tracks that heavily rely on AI based tech as a part of the process are harder to catch, and tracks that only use AI for mixing and mastering are impossible to detect.
I made a track but used AI to autotune and morph my voice to that of a woman’s. It even allowed me to tweak the expressiveness of the voice. The track is 95% human made but the vocals are AI modified. I’m willing to bet that the ration of AI use in a lot of pop music and EDM is a lot higher.
PS: I make music for myself, as a hobby. I just wanted to make something to share with my friends. If you want real music, try bands like Wet Leg, IDLES, GEESE, etc who lean into making low tech music.
EDIT: Thia is an example of a song that is fully generated by AI. All that was fed to the prompt were the lyrics. The AI did everything else itself, including picking the genre. I shared it with a few people to see who’d figure out it was AI slop.
Compression throws me off.
That AI ‘hiss’ is ringing it my ears, but its very, very similar to YT uploads that have been re-encoded like 10 times. Which is a lot of them.
Out of curiosity, I made spectrograms of the AI song and concert that sounds ‘clean’ yet kinda noisy/compressed to me. I won’t tell you which one is which:
Source song, if you are curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MydFq0io-tQ
I use Qobuz, but is Spotify the only service that shamelessly promotes ai music?
I’m in the camp of, “if it’s good, why should I care?” However, I’m all for transparency! Passing off AI-generated music as human-generated is fraud. Be honest!
There’s a LOT of grey areas though. If you’re a vocalist and you’re using an AI-generated background? How’s that any different from pressing “play” on a sequencer or even an audio file (of some sequenced or drum track)?
If you’re a lyricist, the actual music isn’t as important as the lyrics. Does it matter if they used AI to generate the music or should every lyricist be forced to pay someone to make the music for them or master an instrument (or sequencer)?
What if you’re trying to translate your music into a different language and use AI to translate it? Is that AI-generated music? You can give your whole damned song to AI and it’ll convert to a different language in-place without having to re-record it. It even uses your singer’s voice!
To me, it’s incredible technology and it’s enabling artists of all kinds to do cool things with their music. It seems rather paternalistic to suggest someone’s creativity doesn’t “count” if they didn’t sweat or spend years practicing to create it.
If AI removes the skill and expertise required to perform a task, it’s fucking trash
If a vocalist can’t play music, they should find people that can, and work with them. If they use AI, they’re are trash.
You must consider that the AI “helping” the artist is built from the stolen work of countless artists. Regardless of use case, the tool only exists due to theft. Plus, this tool exists as a way to not pay talent for content.
Since the bread and circuses machine must keep dispensing to keep the masses anaesthetized, the elites need a way to cut the costs or they will lose points are their net worth scorecard and get made fun of by the other billionaires.
Not to mention, AI is a shortcut that does not generate skills besides prompt engineering. We have research proving this with students and the labor force losing reasoning and straight memory by handing off to “AI”. Part of being a musician is the effort and practice and knowing an instrument. Asking the clanker for a tune because learning takes too long or is too difficult goes along with what the article says for detecting it. The work will be emotionless and have no soul. Musicians are allowed to make choices for their music, of course. AI rounding out an artist’s tools is what it is. I view the tool as a corrupting force but, it’s their perogative. But people without no knowledge or skill for making music cranking out these generic sounding similacra to make money is always going to set my teeth on edge.
Edit: spelling and tense correction. Revision and expansion of idea to express less derision.
Frequency.
A couple months ago, I found a really cool remake of one of the songs from KPop Demon Hunters. Everyone was doing covers of those songs, and many of them were indie artists, and I was rolling through them. So I found this video, and the video was just an image effect on the cover, which looked very AI-generated, but it’s just the cover image, right? Who cares about that? I asked them in the comments if they would release their stuff on Apple Music. And they quickly responded — no, they’re going to leave that money on the table, and have decided to stay exclusive to YouTube. Why would an artist choose to do that? Sure, a couple artists pulled their music off all other streaming platforms when they made their own, or their friends did. Garth Brooks has never been on streaming (except Amazon, I think they’re the only one whose ethics he agrees with or something?). But most indie artists are on all the platforms. Maximise revenue. So these people saying no, not only to Apple Music — maybe they didn’t like Apple kissing up to Trump — but also to Spotify, Amazon, Deezer, and all the rest. Turns out most of those platforms are stricter when it comes to AI music.
But here’s the thing — their songs are still by the original artist. They’re just stripping out the lyrics and putting new music to the lyrics. And that music is AI generated. Or so I later learned. I looked more into the YouTube channel, and they say they will make you a cover of a song, in any style you like, for $200. And they have hundreds of uploads… in a few months. Each song may have five or six variants. And the songs are still fine, but they have a generic, plastic, not real feel to them.
Of course, they also qualify the first thing in OP’s summary, no social media presence. They just have the sales site, and the YouTube channel.
But maybe it’s fine, or at least less bad, that they’re taking existing songs and just remixing them with AI? Only they’re saying the covers are better, and they’re monetising the videos, so they’re getting paid for the streams when that money should be going to the original artist. It’s fine if they actually covered the song and recorded it, but having a computer do all the heavy lifting? Just seems scummy.
I’m not going to name & shame, but if you look up KPDH covers and see something that looks like AI slop with click-bait titles… you’ve probably found the right one. (They cover other stuff too, not just KPDH.)
Garth Brooks has never been on streaming (except Amazon)
Garth Brooks is available on every single music streaming service I know about. 🤨
The drummer sounds like he has to many arms.
And the guitarist and the keyboard players sound like they clearly have more than 5 fingers on each hand. 😋every progressive genre wants to speak with you.
So Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford? /s
davie504 be like
Could just be Count Rugen though.
Rush?
That’s blasphemy!!!
I’m just saying. I hear about a drummer with 6 hands, it’s gonna sound like Neil Pert. Dude is part octopus.
You’re right. I miss that guy a lot. Every once in a while I’ll watch a ton of his videos in remembrance of his crazy talent.
AI imitates an overall sound. But doesn’t care much about “instruments” individually. For simple minimal segments it can easily lay down a simple clear beat or melody. But as more gets added. The more the sound becomes muddy and generic. That and if you’re familiar enough with a given instrument. It can often just sound “wrong”. Again because the AI is imitating a sound, not an instrument generally.
But yeah. The other points stand. Social media presence and output are great indicators.
Midnight Darkwave is one I’m highly suspicious of. Super generic name. Not much presence beyond the streaming sites. I like the overall sound, but it often gets muddy and kind of droning. And not in the coldwave sort of way. Something a bit more inhuman, over processed, and mechanical.
I can see a creative use for Suno Studio where you can feed it a clip of a chord progression you recorded, have the AI generate a few extrapolations, then arrange bits and pieces of it within Suno Studio to create the basic song structure and finally export the midi to your DAW. Basically, you can use it as a fancy sketchpad.
The problem I can’t get past is the environmental impact.
Absolutely, AI is just a tool. It can be used for good things and for bad things. And there are technologies currently being worked on outside the circle jerk Ponzi scheme of all the tech oligarchs right now to make it less environmentally impactful. They just don’t care and are rushing to make every last buck they can before the bubble pops.
