YouTube announced some new experimental AI services on Thursday, including a tool dubbed Dream Track in YouTube Shorts. It generates 30-second soundtracks from AI-generated clones of musicians’ voices. Though musicians have generally opposed AI (and their voices being used to train models without permission or remuneration), YouTube recruited nine famous names from the music business to participate, including John Legend, Troye Sivan, Charli XCX, and T-Pain. The feature was supposed to be announced during the Made on YouTube event in September, but it has been delayed due to rights and payment issues with music companies.
Dream Track may be accessed by entering a concept into the creation prompt and selecting one of the participating artists. It makes use of Google DeepMind’s Lyria — a new, sophisticated music generation model intended exclusively for producing high-quality vocals and instrumentals while offering the user more control over the end result. Any work created by Lyria will have a SynthID watermark to identify it as such.
Charlie Puth and T-Pain developed Dream Tracks samples that YouTube has shared as inspiration. Many of the artists participating, however, voiced concern about AI and hoped that collaborative effort would result in constructive, non-exploitative prospects. “When I was first approached by YouTube I was cautious and still am, AI is going to transform the world and the music industry in ways we do not yet fully understand,” CharliXCX, who is a singer, said. “This experiment will offer a small insight into the creative opportunities that could be possible and I’m interested to see what comes out of it.”
Music AI Tools will also be available on YouTube in conjunction with the Music AI Incubator. These programs may generate guitar riffs from hummed melodies or convert a pop song into a reggaeton chorus. Louis Bell, a producer and songwriter, developed a sample video to illustrate it.
YouTube is treading carefully as it strikes a balance between deploying AI features and defending against exploitation. The video platform recently announced new regulations for labeling AI-generated films and allowing prominent figures like artists to report deepfakes.
Dream Track is presently only available to a restricted number of producers and musicians, but Music AI Incubator participants should be able to test the tools later this year.
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