AI starts remixing your music on YouTube
Do you like a song you put on a YouTube video, but want to put a new spin on it? The video platform is testing one new AI tool to do just that, at least when you post a Shorts video. YouTube lets a limited number of creators use the AI tool as a kind of co-producer. They can submit their music and a prompt about genre, mood, or other elements, and the AI will spin a new 30-second soundtrack that tries to fulfill the request.
The remix feature uses YouTube’s Dream Track, an AI toolkit released a year ago for a number of US-based artists. The AI works with the creators to compose songs based on prompts and pre-recorded vocals. Artists like Charli The new tool brings Dream Track to the popular track remix facet of the music industry by restyling it into a new vibe and type of sound. They can turn a pop song into a jazz ballad or an R&B song into a formal, baroque sound.
All Dream Track features use the Lyria music generation AI model developed by Google’s DeepMind team. Lyria interprets words and audio and combines the ideas behind both into unique music. Despite being new songs, YouTube has said that the AI origins and human artist behind the new song will be clear.
“If you’re a creator in the experiment group, you can select an eligible song > describe how you want to restyle it > then generate a unique 30-second soundtrack to use in your Short,” according to YouTube’s description. “These updated soundtracks will clearly reference the original song via the Short itself and the Shorts audio spin page, and will also clearly indicate that the track has been restyled with AI.”
Music dreams
The ability to quickly tailor music to a specific genre, mood or theme is clearly attractive to creators. And the industry probably won’t be too upset thanks to YouTube’s proactive measures to avoid copyright issues. YouTube and Google have made ostentatious efforts to compensate creators and rights holders when it comes to AI support. YouTube and Universal Music Group (UMG) signed a deal last year to work out an AI compensation scheme to defuse that demand before YouTube releases an AI music generator.
Compare that to the annoyance of creators who have seen their videos scraped to train AI models without their consent. Still, YouTube wants AI to fill its platform in as many ways as possible. The platform has already tested all kinds of AI tools for the public. AI can help inspire new video ideas with YouTube’s Brainstorm with Gemini tool and get a head start on the kinds of rights issues raised by artists with an AI tool for removing copyrighted music from your video without removing it completely .
