from Hacker News

AI song featuring fake Drake and Weeknd vocals pulled from streaming services

by miobrien on 4/18/23, 2:20 PM with 201 comments

by forrestbrazeal on 4/18/23, 2:36 PM
I believe a big reason this song blew up on social media was that it was misleadingly hyped as an "AI-generated song". I expect many people thought that AI composed and recorded the (reasonably idiomatic) music and lyrics.
For the record, here's my understanding of how this "AI-generated song" was made:
1. A human wrote the lyrics
2. A human recorded the beat
3. A human recorded themselves rapping
4. An "AI voice filter" made the recorded voice sound like Drake / the Weeknd.
IMO, the real tragedy here is not some threat to Drake (he’ll be fine) but that some dude who wrote an original song had to pretend it was written by AI to get it heard.
by alexb_ on 4/18/23, 3:08 PM
It's astonishing to me that some people are so incredibly anti-AI that they will side with the RIAA of all organizations. People who are fine with piracy now start acting as if copyright and IP are the most important things ever.
by pjc50 on 4/18/23, 2:46 PM
AI vs the RIAA is going to be quite the fight. They're likely to argue that any algorithmic system which uses one of their works as input and produces something that sounds like it as an output is a derivative work.
by rockemsockem on 4/18/23, 5:16 PM
UMG is taking a straightforward instance of impersonation (it was advertised as Drake and The Weeknd if I recall correctly and the song contained references to the singers' lives from the first person) and they are trying to snatch everything. Which is exactly what should be expected and watched for from the greedy music execs.
They are going further than saying "take this song down" and are trying to go after training on any copyrighted data. It's a massive snatch and grab and a bit of a bait and switch too.
Straightforward impersonation that presents an AI voice as any specific human shouldn't be permitted, and US law is pretty clear on that I think. But an AI vocals system that works like stable diffusion where you ask for a voice with certain vocal characteristics that has been trained on copyrighted music? That's a VERY different thing and is much murkier. IMO it should be allowed, but what's clear is that the law doesn't know if it's allowed yet (in the US anyway).
by notefaker on 4/18/23, 3:58 PM
Here’s a much better track and song that uses a Jay Z AI vocal replacement:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y7r6PAkFRfU&feature=youtu.be
The implications of this kind of technology are wild. Imagine seeing a tribute show where the lead singer runs their voice through a voice changer that matches whatever artist they’re covering.
by squarefoot on 4/18/23, 2:43 PM
I'm 100 certain we'll soon listen to (and later watch) home made virtual performances by deceased artists and actors, with also huge legal implications. Just suppose someone manages to create a very convincing new song with Elvis and Kurt singing along Amy Winehouse, then releases it without naming the involved artists, so that except fans one couldn't tell who they are with 100% certainty, could lawyers have enough grounds for a take down request and possibly a lawsuit?
by Sol- on 4/18/23, 3:20 PM
Intuitively it feels logical that this would be challenged, but what do I know about copyright law. Surely cloning a famous artist's voice and musical style to piggyback off of their popularity would be some kind of infringement? And it's not like you can pretend to be loosely "inspired" by them or so, you're definitely intentionally faking their singing and voice.
Beyond this specific occurrence here, I think impersonating someone else's voice or appearance should generally be forbidden, except for say satirical use cases of course (which should come with some disclaimer).
by l33tman on 4/18/23, 4:18 PM
Just like what happened with AI imagegen and the artists complaining about their styles being stolen will happen with this. After a few months of toying with simply using other artists specific styles, people will start to use the tools to do original works instead, that are not pure clones.
In this case, what is interesting is not that someone can (and did) produce a "fake Drake" song but that you could synthesize a singing voice of your choice and use it to produce songs without finding a new singer or training your own voice in the desired direction. I'm sure someone will make a prompt-based AI voice where you can just say "nasal annoying out of tune male voice" or something and control it that way and you can keep tweaking until you get what you want.
End result is of course even more (perhaps debatable) high quality content but with less star-appeal. We already have that on Spotify etc, there are loads of "troll" companies having hundreds of virtual fake artists releasing albums and tracks already. This will turbo-boost that..
However just like with AI images, it also enables someone with less talent of drawing or singing to do creative works. That has to be pretty valuable as well.
by poisonarena on 4/18/23, 3:37 PM
Lots of Israelis on here I know..
Kan and Aidode(israeli AI music generation startup) made a duet with two dead singers:
Ofra Haza + Zohar Argov https://youtu.be/7ND1Pw6QD_0
got 200k play in a few days, not bad for hebrew only. Very convincing.
Completely lost in non hebrew speaking world (99% of the world), and just as impressive I think.
by jetrink on 4/18/23, 3:12 PM
The podcast Switched on Pop had a fascinating episode[1] last year called 'Invasion of the Vibe Snatchers.' They cite a number of instances where people are assigned songwriting credits on tracks simply because the new song is heavily inspired by an existing song or body of work. To be clear, the new songs are not covers, they don't contain any samples and there's no concrete element of the song that you can point to as being copied. However, taken as a whole, it's clear that the new song is similar to the old one.
I bring this up, because it seems to me that if we live in a legal environment where a song's "vibe" is now de facto copyrightable, there is no way anyone will get away with cloning someone's voice (outside of parody.)
1. https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/invasion-of-the-vibe-snat...
by extr on 4/18/23, 3:27 PM
As a friend in the industry pointed out, regardless of the legality of releasing the actual song, this will be a huge boon for producers/songwriters. Imagine being able to produce a song and send an artist a demo of themselves. If they like it, they can immediately jump in and re-record it.
by nonbirithm on 4/18/23, 4:26 PM
> "The training of generative AI using our artists’ music [...] begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation."
Ironically it's been shown that the fans can also be on the side of AI. Some of them will happily download or train a LoRA based on their favorite artist and use it with Stable Diffusion, often to generate images the original artist would never draw (because of limited commission slots/doesn't take commissions at all, lack of experience/interest or explicitly stating they will not take commissions for certain genres).
by 999900000999 on 4/18/23, 2:43 PM
Very very impressive, it’s a weak Drake song, but amazing some random guy was able to do this.
I can imagine some independent artists being more open to allowing AI imitation.
by sethkim on 4/18/23, 4:32 PM
There's been a new media for music every ten years for the past fifty or so. Records, cassette's, CD's, mp3's, streaming. I've been doing the thought exercise with some of my more creative and/or musically oriented friends recently to try to determine what comes next (if anything).
The only conclusion we're able to come to is some kind of procedurally-generated music that is more specifically catered to each listener. I'm not surprised this wave is starting to break and it's a great time for artists and legal teams to figure out how to work with this technology if there's any possible way to do so.
by say_it_as_it_is on 4/18/23, 5:45 PM
Why wasn't The Weeknd reprimanded for mimicking Michael Jackson? He "stole" his sound.
by machdiamonds on 4/18/23, 6:08 PM
Couldn't someone simply train a model on a singer who has a similar sound to a famous artist, and then get the rights from that person at a more affordable price? Obviously, it's important not to use the real artist's name to prevent any misunderstandings.
by CPLX on 4/18/23, 2:35 PM
This got a lot of attention this week. I guess it's novel.
But the song sucked, as did the supposed AI contribution. I couldn't quite figure out why everyone used this as the example of how it's all over and AI will take over the world of music.
by cush on 4/18/23, 3:09 PM
How is this not straightforward?
Reverse engineering someone's talent and identity and using it to create new work under their brand and identity should be a crime
Hell, take it one step further. Non-consentual deepfakes of any kind should be a crime.
by sizzle on 4/18/23, 6:47 PM
Anyone know where I can hear the song?? Seems like they nuked it everywhere
by jrm4 on 4/18/23, 3:39 PM
At the extreme risk of judging taste;
The main reason(s) that this was not impressive were
- Drake is VERY easy to imitate. He's little more than a Lil Wayne impression himself.
- "The Weeknd" here definitely sounded like an imitation of the Weeknd, I'm fairly certain that if I wasn't told in advance, I would be like "something is way off, bad day at the studio? Not actually him?"
by stall84 on 4/18/23, 2:53 PM
Every week we are probably going to have "wow.." stories like this coming out.. Wild wild times
by azraeldv on 4/18/23, 2:40 PM
finally, the producer will get more credit as they can create music without the need to involve vocalists with their weird political agenda