I appreciate Google’s research, but it does feel like they’re behind the bar on demos/products consistently. A landing page and a research paper aren’t the best way to demonstrate software.
MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#32Everyone better get into construction soon. AI will replace drafters/architects/engineers but the walls going up is going to be a huge payout as Google ML engineers needing a 3rd or 4th house for their second family.
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps the lesson is that art ought to be done because it is inherently fulfilling and not a as a profession.
One could say the same thing about programming. If I'm playing or writing music for people, and they are enjoying it, I want to get paid.
> If I'm playing or writing music for people...
The whole point is that you won't be.
Like a lot of demand for small-time live music died with the record player.
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#34Art in all its forms had always serious problems getting funded but things only seem to get worse at each iteration. In older times the problem was that most people had other worries, so artist numbers were small and they seeked patronage from the elites that could afford it. Later we had mass commercialization which "democratized" art but artists got squeezed by the intermediaries / distributors that enabled the mas…
The combination of the physical/audible depiction of art + the human artist's biographical experience, together, makes a form of art that cannot be replicated. (That is, until we have sentient AI - and at that point, is its lived experience any less valid?)
There's debate here, of course, about the "death of the author" [0] and whether work should exist independent of its author's intentions and intentionality - but perhaps our social understanding of that question will evolve, at least for works created after the AI explosion.
As a crude example that buoys me somewhat, there are numerous virtual youtubers who one might discount as avatars of a corporate music product - but their fans love them not only for their musical works in isolation, but for the personality and personal journey that the character (and, by extension, their voice actor, as the lines fade quite quickly) streams to the world, baring a pseudonymized version of their lives for all to see. There's real human intent and struggle and perseverance there, and it's appreciated, and that's really cool. Even if the human is hidden, the humanity shines through.
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#35[deleted]
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#36Art in all its forms had always serious problems getting funded but things only seem to get worse at each iteration. In older times the problem was that most people had other worries, so artist numbers were small and they seeked patronage from the elites that could afford it. Later we had mass commercialization which "democratized" art but artists got squeezed by the intermediaries / distributors that enabled the mas…
Perhaps the lesson is that art ought to be done because it is inherently fulfilling and not a as a profession.
Great, go tell landlords, grocery stores etc.
It takes non-trivial investments of time to develop artistic capability, often with the aid of tuition or materials/equipment which also cost money. This is common knowledge and I frankly don't understand the point of ignoring it.
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#37Wow that is awesome. Hopefully the first feature they'll add will be to spit out midi rather than wavs (or ML that can decompose wavs to midi)
This is literally trained on and is processing at the level of the audio bitstream. So, getting it to 'spit out midi' would be no different than the current task of taking a full, mixed audio track and generating MIDI from it (which isn't easy). This is using a transformer architecture directly on tokenization of .wav audio. There is no underlaying stage of 'instrumentation' like a MIDI track is before it gets synthe…
Which is a Bad Thing, because it limits the ability to use it as an educational tool by anyone who wants to learn or modify the music.
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#38This is unbelievable. I would have never expected AI to take the jobs of creatives first, but here we are. Artists and musicians can create much better work than AI, but the AI creates consistent works usable for people who aren’t artists, and need assets for their projects — whether video games, prototyping, storyboarding, etc. It is going to be interesting to see artists revert to being a no-revenue passion again i…
> At the same time, a part of me feels art has no place being motivated by money anyway. Perhaps this change will restore the balance. Artists will need to get real jobs again like the rest of us and fund their art as a side project. As someone who has experienced both the career paths of a full-time musical artist and technical employee in the tech ecosystem, I find this comment saddening, because it revolves around…
If you look at my comment history you will see I am pretty outspoken in being against the system. But I am also fundamentally a technologist and believe in constant forward progress. AI is going to automate “commercial” artists. This is a fact. That was all I was speaking to. For better or for worse, this will happen, it needs to happen, it should not be resisted, and we all need to adapt to this new reality.
It is fundamentally another piece in the collapse of materialism and capital. Soon, all work will be machine-renderable, and what then? We will all be out of “jobs” and will need to rediscover what it means to be humans. A pursuit of experience, meditation, exploration, and significantly less tedious creation — it will be a radically different experience, and far more fundamental to our true nature, than what we experience now.
Me personally? I love to paint, write, and make video games. I love nature and would rather be hiking in remote terrain than pretty much anything else. But there is a lot of work to be done to make what I described in the previous paragraph a reality, and I have skills that can contribute to it, so I do that instead of what personally want. None of us are entitled to simply do what we want while most of us suffer and struggle. Some artists are skilled and lucky enough where they can make money. That bar is going to go a lot higher now with AI.
Artists should be compensated, but for whatever reason, fate would have it that work of the soul might involve acceptance of poverty. It isn’t about capitalism, it is about purity. I think we need universal basic income so that people can pursue their passions without concern of the finances. I also think that passionate people don’t care much about riches; and if they do, that occupies space in a mind that could otherwise be used for their art, and so someone else who properly uses that space will be more capable than them. This is why parasites can take so much from the top artists; they just don’t have the capacity left for that kind of bullshit.
The term “get a real job” might be harsh, but it simply means “get a job capital is interested in paying for”. This criteria constantly changes and AI is pushing it radically. Most people trudge through the shit show of that reality, just because someone calls themself an artist doesn’t make them exempt. I don’t agree with this reality so I would like to see it changed, but we cannot be offended by speaking about the way something is. This is the way it is. If we don’t like it, let’s change it.
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#39This is unbelievable. I would have never expected AI to take the jobs of creatives first, but here we are. Artists and musicians can create much better work than AI, but the AI creates consistent works usable for people who aren’t artists, and need assets for their projects — whether video games, prototyping, storyboarding, etc. It is going to be interesting to see artists revert to being a no-revenue passion again i…
I like to think about the things which this kind of tech makes possible that wouldn't have been possible at all before. E.g: > Music generated on the fly for any given scenario, that is unique every time. > Generating custom royalty-free samples which can be used by actual artists as part of a greater work. > A way to learn about musical styles, motifs and timbres by creating many custom examples > A way to experimen…
There are so many, but music on the fly is the top one for me. It would be game changing for all forms of media, able to create a new musical experience with every use of whatever media it is.
Re: MusicLM: Generating Music from Text
#40This is unbelievable. I would have never expected AI to take the jobs of creatives first, but here we are. Artists and musicians can create much better work than AI, but the AI creates consistent works usable for people who aren’t artists, and need assets for their projects — whether video games, prototyping, storyboarding, etc. It is going to be interesting to see artists revert to being a no-revenue passion again i…
I would argue that the people who use AI generated assets and combine them for a bigger thing such as a video game are still artists. They are simply realizing their vision on a higher level.
We agree, I am just speaking to what we currently view as artists.
There is a big backlash against AI by current artists and while I understand their pain, I wish we were able to all just stand in awe at the possibilities we’ll soon be having.
Unlimited dynamic catered experiences, accessible by all regardless of income. I just cannot imagine standing in the way of that future. I can’t imagine standing in the way of raw unbridled creation in the hands of everyone. It is just incredibly beautiful.