AI Is Testing What Society Wants From Music

Human beings may have sang before they spoke. Scientists from Charles Darwin onward have speculated that , for our early ancestors, music predated—and possibly formed the basis of—language. The “singing Neanderthals” theory is a reminder that humming and drumming are fundamental aspects of being human. Even babies have some musical instinct, as anyone who’s watched a toddler try to bang their tray to a beat knows. This ought to be kept in mind when evaluating the rhetoric surrounding the topic of music made by artificial intelligence. This year, the technology created songs that amassed millions of listens and inspired major-label deals. The pro and anti sides have generally coalesced around two different arguments: one saying AI will leech humanity out of music (which is bad), and the other saying it will further democratize the art form (which is good). The truth is that AI is already doing something stranger. It’s opening a Pandora’s box that will test what we, as a society, really want from music. The case against AI music feels, to many, intuitive. The model for the most popular platform, Suno, is trained on a huge body of historical recordings, from which it synthesizes plausible renditions of any genre or style the user asks for. This makes it, debatably, a plagiarism machine (though, as the company argued in its response to copyright-infringement lawsuits from major labels last year, “The outputs generated by Suno are new sounds”). The technology also seems to devalue the hard work, skill, and knowledge that flesh-and-blood musicians take pride in—and threaten the livelihoods of those musicians. Another problem: AI music tends to be, and I don’t know how else to put this, creepy. When I hear a voice from nowhere reciting auto-generated lyrics about love, sadness, and partying all night, I often can’t help but feel that life itself is being mocked. Aversion to AI music is so widespread that corporate interests are now selling themselves as part of the resistance. iHeartRadio, the conglomerate that owns most of the commercial radio stations in the country as well as a popular podcast network, recently rolled out a new tagline : “Guaranteed Human.” Tom Poleman, its president, decreed that the company won’t employ AI personalities or play songs that have purely synthetic lead vocals. Principles may underlie this decision, but so does marketing. Announcing the policy, Poleman cited research showing that although 70 percent of consumers “say they use AI as a tool,” 90 percent “want their media to be from real humans.” The AI companies have been refining a counterargument: Their technology actually empowers humanity. In November, a Suno employee named Rosie Nguyen posted on X that when she was a little girl, in 2006, she aspired to be a singer, but her parents were too poor to pay for instruments, lessons, or studio time. “A dream I had became just a memory, until now,” she wrote. Suno, which can turn a lyric or hummed melody into a fully written song in an instant, was...

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