Suno AI can produce pro songs. What’s it mean for musicians?
Suno AI可以制作专业歌曲。这对音乐家意味着什么？
A new AI company called Suno can generate entire songs from simple text prompts. The productions include all the basic elements – vocals, melody, chords, etc. – and feature lyrics and titles from ChatGPT. Even the accompanying album covers are AI-generated. Version three of Suno’s technology is now available publicly for free.
一家名为Suno的新AI公司可以从简单的文本提示中生成整首歌曲。这些作品包括所有的基本元素-人声，旋律，和弦等-以及ChatGPT的特色歌词和标题。甚至附带的专辑封面也是人工智能生成的。Suno技术的第三版现在可以免费公开使用。
“They extensively trained an audio generation model. … Some people are, understandably, a bit up in arms about this: They won’t reveal what they trained it with, what songs, what audio they gave it. And I don’t think it’s a wild supposition to imagine that some copyrighted material was included because one of the lead investors in Suno told me that, ‘Hey, we might get sued,’” says Brian Hiatt, senior writer at Rolling Stone.
“他们广泛训练了一个音频生成模型。可以理解的是，有些人对此有点生气：他们不会透露他们用什么训练它，什么歌曲，他们给了它什么音频。我不认为这是一个疯狂的假设，因为Suno的一个主要投资者告诉我，’嘿，我们可能会被起诉，’“滚石杂志的高级作家布莱恩·希亚特说。
Hiatt recently visited the Suno offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and tried his hand at creating a song. Inputting the phrase “solo acoustic Mississippi Delta blues about a sad AI,” the program generated an entire tune within 15 seconds.
希亚特最近访问了位于马萨诸塞州剑桥的Suno办公室，并尝试创作一首歌。输入短语“关于一个悲伤的人工智能的独奏声学密西西比三角洲蓝调”，程序在15秒内生成了一个完整的曲调。
Hiatt says other music AI programs like Google LM had been good at creating instrumental, futuristic dance tracks that were artificial and synthetic in nature. He says he chose Mississippi Delta blues because it was something so human he didn’t think Suno could reproduce it.
希亚特说，其他音乐人工智能程序，如谷歌LM，一直擅长创造乐器，未来主义的舞蹈轨道，是人工和合成的性质。他说，他选择了密西西比三角洲蓝调，因为它是如此人性化的东西，他不认为苏诺可以复制它。
“This was the most organic thing I could think of. I think some people thought I was hyping my reaction. No hype at all. I was really amazed, disturbed, unsettled, freaked out. I still get goosebumps listening to it because it’s an alien thing. It shouldn’t exist.”
“这是我能想到的最有机的东西。我想有些人认为我在夸大我的反应。一点也不夸张。我真的很惊讶，不安，不安，吓坏了。我听着还是会起鸡皮疙瘩，因为这是外星人的东西。它不应该存在”。
He adds, “The other reason why I was so blown away by this is it’s just way ahead of schedule.” Throughout his past year covering AI in music, leading experts had told Hiatt that it’ll be a long time before an interface exists where you could just type a description and then receive a full song. But with Suno he says, “I’ll be damned…It’s just way ahead of schedule.”
他补充说，“我被这件事震惊的另一个原因是它比计划提前了很多。”在过去的一年里，他一直在报道音乐中的人工智能，领先的专家告诉希亚特，要想有一个界面，你只需要输入一个描述，然后就可以收到一首完整的歌曲，还需要很长时间。但对于Suno，他说，“我会被诅咒的……这只是提前了。”
KCRW producer Zeke Reed also submitted his own prompt to Suno: “Make a soulful danceable R&B song.”
KCRW制作人Zeke Reed也向Suno提交了自己的提示：“制作一首深情的舞蹈R&B歌曲。
As Hiatt notes, Suno may not be immune to legal action for its algorithmic training practices. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is currently facing multiple lawsuits for reportedly using copyrighted data to train their technology.
正如希亚特指出的那样，Suno可能无法因其算法训练实践而免受法律的诉讼。ChatGPT背后的公司OpenAI目前正面临多起诉讼，据报道，该公司使用受版权保护的数据来训练其技术。
However, the legal precedent for copyright owners to take action against AI companies is still being developed. “I think people forget that there actually is not, to my knowledge, a legal precedent that you’re not allowed to do that. That’s still being established,” Hiatt notes. “There was one mention … from the [Suno] investor that maybe eventually there’ll be some licensing system. So we’ll see.”
但版权所有者对AI公司采取行动的法律的先例仍在制定中。“我认为人们忘记了，据我所知，实际上没有一个法律的先例，你不允许这样做。这仍在建立中，”希亚特指出。“有一个提到……来自[Suno]投资者，也许最终会有一些许可证制度。我们走着瞧。”
Hiatt points out that Suno will not make money if someone uses their tech to make a song and then uploads it to Spotify. Instead, the company says for now it intends to enable people to make songs to share with friends. Their ultimate goal is to turn music consumers into music producers en masse, like a personalized streaming service with all original, unique content.
希亚特指出，如果有人用Suno的技术制作一首歌，然后上传到Spotify，Suno就不会赚钱。相反，该公司表示，目前它打算让人们能够制作歌曲与朋友分享。他们的最终目标是将音乐消费者变成音乐制作人，就像一个个性化的流媒体服务，提供所有原创的、独特的内容。
“They think that it’s so fun to play with that people will pay the $10 a month or whatever it is to play with it. And I have to say, although I’m still working out my own feelings about the ethics of this, it is really fun to play with.”
“他们认为玩这个游戏太有趣了，以至于人们愿意每月支付10美元或其他费用来玩它。我不得不说，尽管我仍在研究自己对这个游戏的道德规范的看法，但玩这个游戏真的很有趣。”
So what does this all mean for human musicians? Hiatt mentions that a major manager of producers and songwriters told him that Suno could upend the market for songs in commercials and TV shows, known as sync licensing. For many indie artists, money from sync deals is a lifeline in a tough industry. The end of this revenue stream as we know it could be financially devastating.
这一切对人类音乐家意味着什么？希亚特提到，一位制作人和词曲作者的主要经理告诉他，Suno可以颠覆商业广告和电视节目中歌曲的市场，这被称为同步许可。对于许多独立艺术家来说，在一个坚韧的行业中，来自同步交易的资金是一条生命线。正如我们所知，这种收入流的结束可能会在财政上造成破坏。
On a more optimistic note, Hiatt and other AI music prognosticators imagine ways in which artists might use AI as a useful tool in their toolkit. For example, musicians might leverage AI programs like FADR to break Suno-generated songs into stems, a.k.a. their individual parts, and apply those elements to build something new. Hiatt suggests, “There’s frankly a billion use cases that I haven’t even gotten my head around. If you have a set of lyrics, you can generate infinite songs from that set of lyrics. And I can also imagine, if the songwriter was open to it, just using [the AI product] as an idea starter.”
从更乐观的角度来看，Hiatt和其他人工智能音乐专家设想了艺术家可以将人工智能作为工具包中有用工具的方法。例如，音乐家可能会利用FADR等人工智能程序将Suno生成的歌曲分解成词干，即他们的各个部分，并应用这些元素来构建新的东西。Hiatt建议，“坦率地说，有十亿个用例我甚至还没有得到我的头。如果你有一组歌词，你可以从这组歌词中生成无限的歌曲。我也可以想象，如果词曲作者对此持开放态度，只是使用[AI产品]作为创意启动器。
Even as music AI becomes more advanced, there’s no guarantee that it will replace the intangible things people love about their favorite artists. In response to a technologist’s prediction that there will be AI-generated artists as popular as Taylor Swift within 10 years, Hiatt scoffed. “I basically was like, ‘You are nuts, you don’t understand people.’ Because people are so attached to the artists that it’s almost like the audio product is just a part of what an artist does. And I think if you can’t connect it to a human, it’s not going to have the same thing.”
即使音乐人工智能变得越来越先进，也不能保证它会取代人们喜欢的艺术家身上那些无形的东西。一位技术专家预测，10年内会有像泰勒·斯威夫特（Taylor Swift）一样受欢迎的人工智能艺术家，对此希亚特嗤之以鼻。“我基本上是这样的，’你是坚果，你不理解的人。因为人们对艺术家如此依恋，以至于音频产品几乎只是艺术家所做的一部分。我认为如果你不能把它和人类联系起来，它就不会有同样的东西。“
In the coming months, Hiatt says he’ll be watching people’s evolving responses to AI-generated works. He points to how public opinion about the technology has shifted from wonder and awe to strong opposition.
在接下来的几个月里，希亚特说他将观察人们对人工智能作品的反应。他指出，公众对这项技术的看法已经从好奇和敬畏转变为强烈的反对。
“There’s a real anti-AI feeling that I completely understand. When Napster [the audio file-sharing platform] came out and people were downloading music for free, the overwhelming public mood was like, ‘Who cares about the record industry? Who cares about the artists? They’re ripping us off,’” Hiatt says. “Now, because AI feels threatening to everyone, I think there’s an interesting new level of solidarity that I’ve never seen before…and if that leads people to care more about creators, that’s great.”
“有一种真实的反人工智能的感觉，我完全理解。当Napster（音频文件共享平台）问世时，人们免费下载音乐，压倒性的公众情绪就像是，“谁在乎唱片业？谁在乎艺术家？他们在敲诈我们，”希亚特说。“现在，因为人工智能对每个人都有威胁，我认为有一个有趣的新的团结水平，我以前从未见过……如果这导致人们更多地关心创作者，那就太好了。