When AI-generated music becomes strange and scary

Wow! I thought to myself. There is a new single out by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga. I love the solo work of both these artists, and I was really ecstatic when they got together for that wonderful duet, Die with a Smile. To find out that they had downloaded another duet was great news.

The new duet is titled Señorita, and it came with a well-produced music video with excellent visuals, featuring the Bruno and the Gaga. Although no match for Die with a Smile, Señorita is a nice song with a sexy Latin touch.

To my surprise, only a day or two later, I saw another Bruno/Gaga duet on YouTube. The song is titled Promise Me, and the video has a wedding theme.  Strange, I thought. Why would Bruno and Gaga drop another single so soon after Señorita and at a time when Bruno is getting ready to come out with a new album. Their labels would never allow that. But maybe times have changed.

And then I saw another song and another video, also by Bruno and Gaga, What If I Told You I Love You. And then another one, If Tomorrow Never Comes. And another, My Only One. Then Cataleya, Corazon, Spotlight, I am Healing, and who knows how many more. There is a deluge of Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga duets on YouTube. There is something very strange going on, and I did not feel happy anymore.

This can’t be real, I thought. And so, I decided to take a closer look at the credits. This is what I found.

“This is an original AI-generated production created by using advanced AI music composition and visual generation technology.  The vocal styles, artistic presentation and performances are inspired by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga are entirely AI generated interpretations.”

The songs and the videos are not real!!! They are AI creations. You must have already heard about AI. It means artificial intelligence. Note that word. Artificial. Not real. It is made by a machine.

Google defines AI as the ability of computer systems to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence, like learning, reasoning, problem solving, perception and language understanding by processing data and recognizing patterns to make decisions and act, often without explicit programming for every step.

“Whew!!!” That is one complicated explanation that my non-techie mind is unable to grasp. Maybe it is about time for me to set aside time and effort to improve my knowledge of how this AI thing works.

Okay, computer technology has advanced so much, it can now do stuff that once required brains, human intelligence. Those tunes and videos by Bruno and Gaga are probably the simplest examples of what AI is capable of.  I hate to imagine all the other stuff it can do and the extent to which it can deceive us humans.

On the other hand, though, is that type of cloning allowed? I get the sounding-alike singing, but not the images. Bruno and Lady Gaga are victims. And so are the users. This is theft of the unabashed kind.

It is fraud. Copyright infringement. Whatever. And seeing how prevalent the practice is getting to be, note that there also exist AI-generated music and videos by other artists, also industrial sabotage. Is it legal? Does YouTube pay performance royalties to the creators?

There is a disclaimer. “Creative AI production is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga or their official representatives. No copyright infringement is intended. All content is original AI-generated material credited for artistic and entertainment purposes.”

Does having a disclaimer absolve the creators and enablers of what I think is a crime? I find this situation very, very scary.