Tobi Opeyemi Amure
Key Takeaways
- YouTube unveils Dream Track: AI-Generated Music for Short Videos.
- YouTube partners with top pop music acts like Charlie Puth, Sia, John Legend and many more to make this possible.
YouTube is set to release an artificial intelligence tool known as Dream Track, which helps users generate music for concise videos with the voices of famous pop music artists. Dream Track is scheduled to be active on YouTube Shorts, one of YouTube’s sensational initiatives, to compete with the viral social media app TikTok. Some artists that users can generate music with their voices include British music maestro Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, CharliXCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Papoose, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan.
Since it is a novel introduction, a small group of select US creators can only access the service. Reacting to YouTube’s latest development, the 2019 Grammy award nominee Charlie Puth said,
“I’m extremely excited and inspired…YouTube has been a great partner in outlining its approach to AI and understands the need to work together to develop this technology responsibly, ensuring it will accelerate creativity instead of replacing it.”
How Does It Work?
All that is required of users is to enter an idea into the creation prompt and select an artist from the provided carousel to participate. After selecting an artist, the system creates an original Shorts soundtrack with the artist’s AI-generated voice.
For instance, the prompt “A rap song for my pet dog’s birthday who likes to eat mud” could be given. The user has the option to choose T-Pain’s voice for that. Within seconds, the song would be created by the song generator.
“I’ve always strived to push the limits of technology and use it to my advantage to create music that my fans will find engaging.” Rapper T-Pain, who performed the 2007 hit song “Bartender,” said, “Who knows what the future holds, but teaming up with YouTube + Google to help shape that future feels like a great first step.”
In an introductory video, YouTube described how users can use Dream Track to make original soundtracks by just typing in a concept or, for example, humming a melody to have the AI create a saxophone track.
“The potential of AI is incredibly exciting. But with any new technology, we have to approach it responsibly. And that’s not lost on us,” said Lyor Cohen, global head of music for YouTube and Google, in the video. “It starts by recognizing that artificial intelligence is meant to amplify human activity, not replace it.”
According to Cohen and Toni Reid, VP of emerging experience and community projects, the Dream Track experiment aims to investigate how technology might strengthen bonds between artists and creators and, eventually, their fans. The blog post that accompanies the video makes this statement.
