The Sound of AI Part 2: The Future of Music or a Threat to Artists?
AI’s application in music has taken a different turn, tools like OpenAI's Jukebox, Uberduck, LyreBird, and VoiceMod are used to imitate an artist's voice.
In April 2023, a viral video by an account called “Ghostwriter” popped up on TikTok, showcasing a new song with Drake and The Weeknd, two of the world’s biggest artists. The problem was that neither of these artists participated in the song. The song was generated with AI imitating their voices. The video garnered millions of views, and the audio had hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify. The controversy escalated as Universal Music Group, the distributor of both artists’ music, issued a statement denouncing the AI-generated song.
Since then, our social media feed has been bombarded by AI-generated songs that mimic the voices of famous artists. These songs range from absurd to shockingly impressive. In Ethiopia, for example, we’ve seen The Weeknd and Rihana singing covers of Teddy Afro’s songs, and don’t even get started with what Drake (or his AI version rather) has been putting out. The laughter and amusement we get from this aside, this phenomenon is a concern for artists all around the world. And the concern is warranted.
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