The company announced on Thursday that YouTube is introducing a new artificial intelligence-powered tool that will let users record audio with the voices of some of the most well-known musicians in the world today.
The new product, dubbed “Dream Track,” is an amalgam of nine musical artists, including Sia, T-Pain, Demi Lovato, and John Legend. Users can auto-generate up to 30-second short tracks in the voice and style of a participating artist by following text-based instructions.
Approximately 100 American creators will have access to the tool at launch. It will only be available on YouTube Shorts, the platform’s competitor for short-form video sharing, which is owned by Byte Dance, a major player in Chinese technology.
The announcement coincides with the video behemoth owned by Alphabet looking to make the most of the convergence of AI and music, as well as with artists and major record labels, as they consider the ethical and legal ramifications of this new technology. Labels and legislators have both criticized the practice of using artists’ voices for generative AI without their permission in the past, comparing it to plagiarism.
YouTube executives stated in a blog post on Thursday that “AI has brought music to the cusp of a new creative era” and that the company intends for its strategy to be “defined by partnership and responsibility.”
The experiment’s initial goal, according to YouTube head of music Lyor Cohen and vice president of emerging experiences and community products Toni Reid, is to “explore how the technology could be used to create deeper connections between artists and creators, and ultimately, their fans.” They posted this on their blogs on Thursday.
The business provided audio samples of AI-generated music experiments, developed in association with Google DeepMind, in the blog post. The artists themselves provided statements to the company, framing the platform as a means of participating in the nascent AI music industry.
“I am excited to see what the creators come up with during this time, and I am happy to have a seat at the table as an artist,” Legend remarked.
“I believe as artists we need to be a part of shaping what that future looks like,” Lovato continued, “because the development of AI technology is rapidly changing the way we navigate the landscape.”
Recently, AI-generated music has proliferated on the platform, amassing millions of views, all without the consent of recording artists or labels. One such is the well-known song “Heart On My Sleeve,” which features Drake and The Weekend’s artificial intelligence-generated vocals. The Universal Music Group filed a petition in April asking YouTube and other music-sharing websites to take down the song due to copyright violations.
Dream Track is the latest in a line of AI-related experiments that parent company Google has been releasing in an effort to stay ahead of the technology’s development. The company debuted “Dream Screen” last month, which enables users to easily add AI-generated backgrounds or brief videos to their content by simply typing in a prompt.
