# AI Music just like AI images



## Soundbed (Dec 17, 2022)

Riffusion


Stable diffusion for real-time music generation




www.riffusion.com





“[…] we made an interactive web app to type in prompts and infinitely generate interpolated content in real time, while visualizing the spectrogram timeline in 3D.

As the user types in new prompts, the audio smoothly transitions to the new prompt.”


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## Markrs (Dec 17, 2022)

Very interesting development. It doesn’t sound good yet, but the initial diffusion images created were pretty poor as well, so this could develop quite quickly


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## dainiak (Dec 17, 2022)

Markrs said:


> Very interesting development. It doesn’t sound good yet, but the initial diffusion images created were pretty poor as well, so this could develop quite quickly


Yep. So far they seem to have problems with transients. Most likely the resolution of their spectrogram processing is not high enough, or maybe musical transients need an entirely different neural network treatment than tonal material.


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## Jon W (Dec 19, 2022)

I just came upon this on another platform









This couple is launching an organization to protect artists in the AI era


Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon want creatives to be able to opt into or out of having their work used as training data for DALL-E and the like.




www.inverse.com





The embedded Ted Talk by Holly Herndon is interesting.


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## Sophus (Dec 21, 2022)

Of course, converting an image back to audio will lose information if the resolution isn't high enough.

I suspect for perfect 1-to-1 conversion you would need one pixel for each frequency from 0 to half the sample rate, so at least 24 000 pixel for 48 kHz. Especially high frequency sounds would need a lot more pixels than low frequency sounds. Stable Diffusion works with 512 pixels currently. Higher resolutions are upscaled. So that is definitely not enough for high quality sounding music.

But this looks like an interesting model to create short loops and and samples to be used in sample VSTs.

I will definitely try this out.


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## timprebble (Dec 21, 2022)

Are you a musician?
Nah... I generate interpolated content

lol


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## Soundbed (Dec 22, 2022)

timprebble said:


> Are you a musician?
> Nah... I generate interpolated content
> 
> lol


Ha — reminds me of a DJ meme. 

Business casual girl asks business casual guy “What’s your instrument?” And he replies, “Cutoff filter!”

Can’t find it at the moment but hopefully you can conjure a funny image in your head.


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## Soundbed (Dec 22, 2022)

Sophus said:


> But this looks like an interesting model to create short loops and and samples to be used in sample VSTs.
> 
> I will definitely try this out.


It would be interesting to see a sample instrument that uses something like this to generate more specific content, like a “jazz sax solo” where you feed it a lead sheet and it improvises riffs, etc.


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 22, 2022)

When factory produced goods came to dominate the market, we saw the arts and crafts movement gain traction in response. Automated factories led to there being fewer jobs in manufacturing; but it didn't replace manual labour. It did help move it to poorer countries where workers could be paid less.

Without Artificial General Intelligence, AI music and images cannot be art without people making choices. What gets discarded, what gets used, what prompts are given, how things are edited and presented and - very much so - how they are 'consumed': interpreted, employed in the lives of listeners.

But, just as with automation in factories, we do risk losing a lot of the craft from a lot of barely listened to music. Music that really is listened to, we'll still need that craft in order to get art in the performances, the nuances. Much like the invention of drum machines to real drummers. There will be drum machine artists and there will be drummers, both.

So, yes, it's a threat to jobs. It can be fun. It can make some things easier. It's impressive. But it isn't in and of itself art and will therefore have limited value. It think that will give it limited appeal, depending on how it can be used by artists.

That's not much comfort to people losing work. But there will be a lot of changes over the next century. And by the time AI music and pictures are getting good, we may find that other events make them less significant. War, famine, rising authoritarianism, followed by totalitarianism, the whole global warming shebang is going to kill off a lot of jobs anyway. Capitalism itself might diminish in scope and significance against that backdrop, for a hundred years or more. Money doesn't matter if there isn't enough land or food. Ownership doesn't matter if there are no workers or customers; only soldiers.

Cheery thoughts for Christmas!


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## timprebble (Dec 22, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> But it isn't in an of itself art and will therefore have limited value. It think that will give it limited appeal, depending on how it can be used by artists.



I really hope the novelty wears off, for example a very clever VFX artist whose work I like, has predominantly been posting AI generated work for the last month or two and... while some is 'spectacular' it frankly quite boring, a bit like if every piece of music you listen to is 'epic.' It soon becomes bland, and I have pretty much lost interest in their work. I think advocates need to be careful as to diluting their own actual work (but I also suspect AI/ML appeals most to people who don't actually make any work of their own, so they can 'curate' the AI/ML generated work and get a vague feeling of what it might be like to have the ability and motivation, perseverance etc to create their own work)


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 22, 2022)

timprebble said:


> I really hope the novelty wears off, for example a very clever VFX artist whose work I like, has predominantly been posting AI generated work for the last month or two and... while some is 'spectacular' it frankly quite boring, a bit like if every piece of music you listen to is 'epic.' It soon becomes bland, and I have pretty much lost interest in their work. I think advocates need to be careful as to diluting their own actual work (but I also suspect AI/ML appeals most to people who don't actually make any work of their own, so they can 'curate' the AI/ML generated work and get a vague feeling of what it might be like to have the ability and motivation, perseverance etc to create their own work)


Yes, I think I'm on the same page. If I could get a robot to play the guitar without fret buzz and wrong notes, that's great for some things. But not for much. And it's just not that interesting musically.

I have nothing against generative music. Controlled randomness where the controller is the artist. But when it is filtered through AI - at least at the moment - it becomes very limited. Easy for the user, good for a bit; and then dull.

I'm way out of date on the development of artificial intelligence more generally. Learning from data sets was important, but the limitation was always the programming of what could be learned and how it could be applied. And moving into Artificial General Intelligence, the most promising methods were unprogrammed ones. You want to create an intelligence? Breed dogs.

This doesn't mean in any way that I'm not impressed. But all the interesting, creative work is being done by people. And the more they absent themselves, the less interesting the work becomes over time.


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## diswest (Dec 22, 2022)

Potential market for AI-generated music is stocks. Like images it's not about art, it's more about accessibility.

And one more thing.
We've had auto-arrangers for decades. More people can make simple music for their lyrics or family videos.
We've had AI-based mixing and mastering tools for years. More people can achieve acceptable sound without mixing skills. Not so bad for composers, isn't it?
Auto-scalers and auto-harmonies, other smart tools. There are a lot of "skill-replacement" tools around even without AI.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder. What I love in art in opposite of engineering it's not so important how it's done, what really matters is an emotional response of audience. And in this way I like what's going on with an AI art. More people can materialize their ideas. Unconventional ideas.
Drum machine never replace a drummer, but we've got a lot of beautiful music with drum machines. It's different music.
Who knows what styles are on the way.

Will some people lose their low-tier clients? Definitely. 
Is it bad? Not so good for these people, but there are a lot of people who will benefit on this on the other side of the scale.
We can't stop progress, but we can get as much from it as possible if we will not cosplay luddites.


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 22, 2022)

diswest said:


> Potential market for AI-generated music is stocks. Like images it's not about art, it's more about accessibility.
> 
> And one more thing.
> We've had auto-arrangers for decades. More people can make simple music for their lyrics or family videos.
> ...


We seem to be largely in agreement, then. On progress, maybe not so much. Change, development; 'progress' suggests a fixed destination.


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 22, 2022)

diswest said:


> Potential market for AI-generated music is stocks. Like images it's not about art, it's more about accessibility.
> 
> And one more thing.
> We've had auto-arrangers for decades. More people can make simple music for their lyrics or family videos.
> ...


Sorry, I just realised that my last post might seem like some kind of passive aggressive thing. I genuinely meant that the focus on the artist seems like something we have in common. Drum machines are great due to the programming. Live drum playing offers more in some ways, but there is plenty of room for both.

I do enjoy musicianship, just like I enjoy a singers interpretive work. But there are lots of ways for people to express themselves.


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## dainiak (Dec 22, 2022)

timprebble said:


> I really hope the novelty wears off, for example a very clever VFX artist whose work I like, has predominantly been posting AI generated work for the last month or two and... while some is 'spectacular' it frankly quite boring, a bit like if every piece of music you listen to is 'epic.' It soon becomes bland, and I have pretty much lost interest in their work. I think advocates need to be careful as to diluting their own actual work (but I also suspect AI/ML appeals most to people who don't actually make any work of their own, so they can 'curate' the AI/ML generated work and get a vague feeling of what it might be like to have the ability and motivation, perseverance etc to create their own work)


What is funny about that is that some recent breakthroughs in AI were made possible by automating *both *the neural network that generates the content and the neural network that grades that content: so that both the *generator *and the [initial] *curator *are robots. The limitation remains in that the generative AI still in most cases produces things based on the humanly-created drawings or sounds, and thus follows the existing biases and aesthetics, while outstanding artists create new aesthetics or at least reinvent the old one. Yet I’m very excited about the using AI to create not the composition, but artificial timbres still grounded in reality. Would be fun to play with “IrisNovum++” that can turn a *description *of a sound into that sound. Like “a contrabass flute with guitar transient and shimmering sustain” So far seen AI used for timbre creation just for percussion in Steinberg Backbone though. Maybe there are more AI _sound design _things out there?


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## TWY (Dec 22, 2022)

dainiak said:


> Yet I’m very excited about the using AI to create not the composition, but artificial timbres still grounded in reality. Would be fun to play with “IrisNovum++” that can turn a *description *of a sound into that sound. Like “a contrabass flute with guitar transient and shimmering sustain”


Ooooooh yes. That would be exciting. It'll be much easier and accessible for those without budgets to create interesting and unique timbres for their projects.


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## timprebble (Dec 23, 2022)

dainiak said:


> Like “a contrabass flute with guitar transient and shimmering sustain”



indeed. Just bear in mind, you'll need to obtain a license to use that contrabass flute recording, and that guitar transient recording for machine learning. Rights of such use are not a default.


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## TWY (Dec 23, 2022)

timprebble said:


> indeed. Just bear in mind, you'll need to obtain a license to use that contrabass flute recording, and that guitar transient recording for machine learning. Rights of such use are not a default.


Ahh, good to know. Thanks. Perhaps it could allow for us to post a combination of samples that are bought.


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## timprebble (Dec 23, 2022)

TWY said:


> Ahh, good to know. Thanks. Perhaps it could allow for us to post a combination of samples that are bought.


check the EULA of whoever recorded & released the sounds.


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## Eulenauge66 (Dec 23, 2022)

I am a professional musician, and about 60 - 70% of my income depends on music production. But I think that in 2 - 5 years my income in this field will be down to almost zero, due to AI.

AI will disrupt the world of professional creative work, but even if it affects me directly, there's much more to worry about. AI threatens the job of almost everyone (ironically, this time, the jobs requiring lower education will be safest until robotics combined with AI really hits the market), and a formerly unknown level of unemployment will hit the world. Like before in history, transition periods due to the rise of new technologies are the biggest problem, before society finds a way to balance things out.

Funny enough, the rules of capitalism will bring the end of capitalism. Companies will be forced to use AI, else they can't compete. Which will further make human work obsolete. 

Comparison to former developments regarding new technologies brought up here in this forum are wrong, because AI is completely different. 

Back to music: I love technology, I love working with DAWs, and I have despite what I wrote usually a tendency to be cautiously optimistic. But I am preparing already by slowly going back more to live music and teaching, even if I don't want to. And even if I know that those fields will also fall sooner or later.

The positive thought about it all is that, in the end, it will be better than before, because how human life was for thousands of years, it just can be better. I agree with many AI experts - that AI is possibly the greatest threat to our mere existence ever (and it doesn't have to be a sentient, "evil" AI at all to wipe us out). But if that doesn't happen, life will be probably pretty cool. Nothing really to do, besides games and fun.

I also thought about learning a whole new job, but with 48 that thought is difficult, because I will not be able to reach a similar level of expertise compared to what I've reached in music. And all the jobs I would find kind of interesting are soon at the same risk.


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## AnhrithmonGelasma (Dec 23, 2022)

timprebble said:


> indeed. Just bear in mind, you'll need to obtain a license to use that contrabass flute recording, and that guitar transient recording for machine learning. Rights of such use are not a default.


Whether an EULA that tries to ban ML would be legally binding or not is an open question; what machine learning systems do is... well, learning, not copying, not taking sounds and adding effects to generate new sounds. But it is analyzing the sounds to ultimately generate new sounds. So in that sense it is "processing" the sounds to create "original" sounds.

If it were human learning to create an otherwise "original" sound, then I don't think an EULA would be legally binding---and there would be no requirement to even purchase sounds that are legally made freely available to listen to (audio demos, etc.), though I'd suppose the streaming service could contain a similar clause in its terms of service.


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 23, 2022)

AnhrithmonGelasma said:


> Whether an EULA that tries to ban ML would be legally binding or not is an open question; what machine learning systems do is... well, learning, not copying, not taking sounds and adding effects to generate new sounds. But it is analyzing the sounds to ultimately generate new sounds. So in that sense it is "processing" the sounds to create "original" sounds.
> 
> If it were human learning to create an otherwise "original" sound, then I don't think an EULA would be legally binding---and there would be no requirement to even purchase sounds that are legally made freely available to listen to (audio demos, etc.), though I'd suppose the streaming service could contain a similar clause in its terms of service.


I think that the EULA can legally limit the permissions granted in any way it likes, so long as it is not thereby committing a crime (for example, incitement to commit a crime). I don't see why a EULA couldn't limit the days of the week you are allowed to use the licensed samples in a DAW (provided it didn't thereby violate any, for example, anti-discrimination legislation). But, the law at large might permit people to use samples for AI learning without a license. So, if you don't agree to the EULA you could use the samples for this. If that is the case, then you'd be better off not buying them (and so agreeing to the EULA), but accessing them in some other way - whilst not using them for any of the things that wouldn't be legal without a license.

However, this may be one of those situations where no-one knows the law until it is tested, or until further legislation is put in place.

For all I know, such legislation does exist already and I just don't know about it; or, alternatively, it may be that it is relatively easy to predict what a court would do if this came to court.

As for the morality of using people's work this way without permission, that's a whole other kettle of fish. It would be a bit like auditing online classes by a university without permission. If the law permits this, it could hurt the income of universities; even though each individual auditor may only be doing something that they would never have chosen to pay for - thus not hurting the university in any way. So, in the university case, it may be no worse than being rude morally speaking. In the AI learning case, it may be a good deal worse than that morally; or it may not.


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## timprebble (Dec 23, 2022)

AnhrithmonGelasma said:


> Whether an EULA that tries to ban ML would be legally binding or not is an open question; what machine learning systems do is... well, learning, not copying, not taking sounds and adding effects to generate new sounds. But it is analyzing the sounds to ultimately generate new sounds. So in that sense it is "processing" the sounds to create "original" sounds.
> 
> If it were human learning to create an otherwise "original" sound, then I don't think an EULA would be legally binding---and there would be no requirement to even purchase sounds that are legally made freely available to listen to (audio demos, etc.), though I'd suppose the streaming service could contain a similar clause in its terms of service.


Are you speaking with legal expertise? or is this reckons from random internet person?



> well, learning, not copying



That isn't the issue. The issue is using machine learning to create derivative products which absolutely can be prohibited (and usually is in EULAs) i.e. using other peoples work to create new products.

Using your example, it would be like taking someone else's piano samples, reversing them, adding big shimmer verb and then making & selling a 'backwards shimmer piano' instrument. The original sounds have been transformed but that is irrelevant if the EULA prohibits derivative products.


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## Robin Thompson (Dec 23, 2022)

AnhrithmonGelasma said:


> Whether an EULA that tries to ban ML would be legally binding or not is an open question; what machine learning systems do is... well, learning, not copying, not taking sounds and adding effects to generate new sounds. But it is analyzing the sounds to ultimately generate new sounds. So in that sense it is "processing" the sounds to create "original" sounds.
> 
> If it were human learning to create an otherwise "original" sound, then I don't think an EULA would be legally binding---and there would be no requirement to even purchase sounds that are legally made freely available to listen to (audio demos, etc.), though I'd suppose the streaming service could contain a similar clause in its terms of service.


I don't think so. Machine "learning" isn't learning in the human sense. It's data input. As I understand the process, it is in fact copying and using the originals as raw material, not simply as inspiration, mashing their combined data sets together and using pattern recognition filters to carve away the noise in what is largely a subtractive process.

Further, consider that we haven't merely _chosen_ not to hold human artists accountable for their inspiration (beyond blatant imitation) - it would also be useless anyway. We just don't know how the mind works in this regard, and what truly is original or not, even in our very own output. And if you can't prove anything, what's the point in litigating it? But we CAN know in exact detail what an AI algorithm knows and how it uses it, and merely being able to follow that chain all the way from originals to derivative work might be the difference that makes it actionable.


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## jblongz (Dec 23, 2022)

I have been exploring with google's free and very capable tools for AI music and images. For creators, google has offered Magenta plugins that VST tools to experiment in the DAW. For the other nerds here, Magenta source code is available for Javascript and Python (my preference), and plenty of documentation available for Tensorflow around the net. There are a lot of paths to making your own commercial products too.


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## Chris Schmidt (Dec 24, 2022)

diswest said:


> We can't stop progress


Haha. We've done it before. We can do it again.

Anyway,

I see the development of AI generated art and music as a positive thing for two reasons. And I started to come to this conclusion after an AI-generated painting won an art competition:

1. I know it's not exactly a 1:1 comparison, but I would use the new Musescore Musesounds and VIs like Infinite Brass and Winds as an adjacent example: A big issue with current virtual music tech, which I'd argue has been largely stagnant until recently, is that it puts a lot of uninspiring, soul-crushing work on a single person.

But these aforementioned developments let the composer focus much more on just writing and playing and not screwing around with MIDI CCs endlessly, keyswitches, multiple tracks, layering articulations, etc.

That kind of thing is a massive, massive boon. I think Noteperformer also claims to use machine-learning, and this is what I mean: Things that reduce the amount of tedium and screwing around, but help you get the result you are after are very good.

2. It will force people who want to be composers and artists to git gud and take the craft seriously.

For the last little over 100 years of modernism and "post-modernism", the latter being a BS term to make it look like modernism actually evolved, charlatans have had the "it's all subjective maaaaan" argument to fall back on.

They are losing that now that someone can whip out their phone, type "Painting of a giraffe wearing a cowboy hat" and in minutes, see an original painting of a giraffe wearing a cowboy hat that actually looks good.

Suddenly, they're not so sure that the guy who tapes a banana to the wall or splashes a bunch of random paint or a puts shit in a jar (srs) is right in his claims that they're just too dumb and "uneducated" to "get" his work.

Likewise, no one is going to take the guy seriously anymore who uploads 9 straight minutes of perfectly-quantized, uniform-velocity, random piano chords and then wants to get into fights with people on forums about how "it's all subjective' and we can't AKSHULLY know that Mozart was a better composer, for real, than my cat running across a piano after a laser pointer. That's a real example, btw.

No one is going to buy that shit anymore when an AI can pump out something that sounds like actual piano music, and these AIs are aiming to emulate the high standards.

The more successful computers become in generating quality results, the less the masses will accept excuses for poor human results.

And no one is going to stop listening to real bands and going to see them live just because a computer can invent a new band or whatever. If anything, it may increase the value of good real ones.


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## AnhrithmonGelasma (Dec 24, 2022)

Robin Thompson said:


> As I understand the process, it is in fact copying and using the originals as raw material, not simply as inspiration, mashing their combined data sets together


Those are common misconceptions; AI art generators like Stable Diffusion don't work that way.

They analyze the structural qualities to generate a higher dimensional latent space, then apply diffusion (repeatedly adding Gaussian noise and de-noising). Once the model is trained, text prompts generate images from noise (or from reference images if provided).

Stable Diffusion does not download or save copies of the training set. (Incidentally, that would require a huge amount of storage space... literally billions of images.)



Robin Thompson said:


> Further, consider that we haven't merely _chosen_ not to hold human artists accountable for their inspiration (beyond blatant imitation) - it would also be useless anyway. We just don't know how the mind works in this regard, and what truly is original or not, even in our very own output. And if you can't prove anything, what's the point in litigating it? But we CAN know in exact detail what an AI algorithm knows and how it uses it, and merely being able to follow that chain all the way from originals to derivative work might be the difference that makes it actionable.


If a human purchases a sample with a very unique timbre and then makes a new sample with a very similar timbre, it might be fair to conclude that they were almost certainly "inspired" by the sample they purchased. (Or perhaps they imagined the timbre first, and purchased the sample because it came close to what they had imagined, but not close enough?) Though I'm not sure whether that would count as a copyright violation anywhere, no matter how unique the timbre is....

If a ML model uses a very large training set, and no overtraining or copying occurs (in a small minority of cases Stable Diffusion does overtrain on particular images that have been repeated a large number of times in the training set, and effectively produce recognizable "copies"---not exact duplicates, but images structurally similar enough to be potentially infringing; but other ML models do not seem to do that at all (provided the training set is large enough)), then it can be practically impossible to determine whether any specific element of the training set contributed to a particular image. But the LAION database of metadata contains the urls of each image used in the training set. In application to sample libraries, presumably there would be a record of what exactly was in the training set, and it could be argued that the ML application is a derivative product and competing product (assuming a generator of competing products also counts as a competing product) not allowed by the EULA, so you might have a point there.


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## AnhrithmonGelasma (Dec 24, 2022)

Here's a good explanation of the higher dimensional latent space:


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## PedroPH (Dec 24, 2022)

I read about using images in this way to generate sound somewhere. I had forgotten about it. I always wonder why AI seems to be more advanced regarding images than regarding sound and music. It's a bit counterintuitive. Shouldn't sound be easier? Apparently it's not.


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## PedroPH (Dec 24, 2022)

AnhrithmonGelasma said:


> Those are common misconceptions; AI art generators like Stable Diffusion don't work that way.
> 
> They analyze the structural qualities to generate a higher dimensional latent space, then apply diffusion (repeatedly adding Gaussian noise and de-noising). Once the model is trained, text prompts generate images from noise (or from reference images if provided).
> 
> ...


Yes, but it's problematic anyway. Because the training does use the original images. And without the training, you have nothing. So, the result can be considered "derivative" to some extent. But most art is derivative, anyway, to the extent that artists are influenced by other artists...


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## Soundbed (Dec 24, 2022)

AnhrithmonGelasma said:


> Here's a good explanation of the higher dimensional latent space:



One of the best descriptions I’ve seen! Thank you 🙏🏻 for sharing it.


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## Soundbed (Dec 24, 2022)

PedroPH said:


> I always wonder why AI seems to be more advanced regarding images than regarding sound and music. It's a bit counterintuitive. Shouldn't sound be easier? Apparently it's not.


I would guess it’s because everyone has eyes and is trained to put words with images from a young age. 

Whereas not everyone is trained to identify and put words to everything they hear that we call “music” … we don’t spend nearly as much time teaching people (who eventually go into machine learning / AI) all the best words to use to prompt all the types of music we hear. 

Only a guess.


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## Soundbed (Dec 24, 2022)

timprebble said:


> Are you speaking with legal expertise? or is this reckons from random internet person?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I don’t think the training material would be a sample library with a EULA in most cases. 

I’d think it would be finished recordings, usually performances by recording artists. 

The trick, like with visual art, would be identifying the piano or sax or guitar from the other instruments in the “picture”.


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## timprebble (Dec 24, 2022)

Soundbed said:


> I don’t think the training material would be a sample library with a EULA in most cases.
> 
> I’d think it would be finished recordings, usually performances by recording artists.
> 
> The trick, like with visual art, would be identifying the piano or sax or guitar from the other instruments in the “picture”.



I feel quite the opposite. But I think that reflects what I feel strongest about. There is already so much music available, that training AI to "create" more generic music is only going to compete with the masses of already existing generic music. For example, if you want to hear the music of a specific artist, you will find it & listen to it - there is no substitute. But if its just background music which is already in a playlist with no real name recognition eg "workout playlist" then really who cares? 
Or are you imagining its going to recreate Miles Davis? Because what makes Miles Davis so incredible can't be created by data interpolation.

But I do see it as a tactic for platforms like Spotify to (as per the disinformation tactic) 'flood the zone with shit' such that expectations are lowered to the point that you can't even tell (& don't care) if a particular bit of music is (a) original music or (b) a generic soundalike or (c) an AI generated cue. I highly recommend reading Cory Doctorows new book Chokepoint Capitalism and eg why playlists are so important to Spotify, rather than albums, as it speaks to exactly this issue.


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## Soundbed (Dec 25, 2022)

timprebble said:


> I feel quite the opposite. But I think that reflects what I feel strongest about. There is already so much music available, that training AI to "create" more generic music is only going to compete with the masses of already existing generic music. For example, if you want to hear the music of a specific artist, you will find it & listen to it - there is no substitute. But if its just background music which is already in a playlist with no real name recognition eg "workout playlist" then really who cares?
> Or are you imagining its going to recreate Miles Davis? Because what makes Miles Davis so incredible can't be created by data interpolation.
> 
> But I do see it as a tactic for platforms like Spotify to (as per the disinformation tactic) 'flood the zone with shit' such that expectations are lowered to the point that you can't even tell (& don't care) if a particular bit of music is (a) original music or (b) a generic soundalike or (c) an AI generated cue. I highly recommend reading Cory Doctorows new book Chokepoint Capitalism and eg why playlists are so important to Spotify, rather than albums, as it speaks to exactly this issue.


On the first point, I think about markets, yes.

Similar to what’s already happened with visual art, people will ask for a waltz in the style of Michael Jackson, or a bossa nova in the style of Taylor Swift. They will prompt for unusual combinations of things they already know. They will not ask for elevator music (although they might ask for “in the style of yacht rock”) … and if it turns out too generic they might keep trying to make something cool and impressive.

Because reality tv is one of the largest consumers of new music as I understand (and I might be biased but this is what I’ve been told) the editors and production companies might replace cue writers like myself with editing programs that generate cues for scenes based on prompts within the video editing program.

These would mimic the references I’m already given, and the briefs I’m given, which include things like “an action cue like Tom Holkenborg’s Tomb Raider soundtrack” … basically the same as replacing temp music with an “original” score that has the same vibe and tempo, etc.

So, the creators will invest time in making something that can be sold, which includes a lot of “in the style of” training.

That way, their product should have perceived value.

Not advocating these developments; only imaging a possible future.

***

Did not read the book you mention, but I saw the recent movie on the team that created Spotify, and the playlist scene was a key moment dramatizing how the product (Spotify) was going to gain value, while getting approved by the record labels… not sure if the model has changed since inception as depicted.

The movie is called, “The Playlist” and it’s streaming on Netflix.


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