YouTube wants to help you make “music” with AI. The Google-owned video platform launched an AI music incubator this week that promises to “protect artists.” The new platform, which was created in partnership with music industry giant Universal Music Group (UMG), appears to be designed to protect well-known musical artists from having their content used in ways they don’t legally approve of. Licensing has been a big issue in the emergent trend of AI music, and this new partnership appears to be a stopgap in that ongoing legal debate.
In a broader sense, I’d just like to vaunt the argument that the term “AI-generated music” is something of a misnomer. Look, no offense, but if you think you’re making “music” by clicking a button and having an algorithm repackage sounds from actual music to create new synthetic auditory content that you put no actual effort into…you’re an idiot. That’s not music, it’s just noise.