Artificial intelligence has created a never-before-heard sound with a tool that ‘could revolutionize music’.
A research team has developed an AI model that doubles as an audio generator, claiming that it can create sounds that have never even been heard before now.
The new model is called Fugatto and was built by a team at the company Nvidia.
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The tech giant said that it wanted to make a ‘Swiss Army knife for sound’.
And they did just that - the generator means that users can edit or create an audio using text prompts.
Richard Kerris, who is the vice president and general manager of media and entertainment at Nvidia, wrote in a blog post: “Fugatto can make a trumpet bark or a saxophone meow. Whatever users can describe, the model can create.”
A video was posted which shows just how the text prompt can be used, after Fugatto created a sound using this prompt: “Deep, rumbling bass pulses paired with intermittent, high-pitched digital chirps, like the sound of a massive, sentient machine waking up.”
Ido Zmishlany, a producer and songwriter who is also a part of Nvidia’s Inception program said: “This thing is wild. Sound is my inspiration. It’s what moves me to create music. The idea that I can create entirely new sounds on the fly in the studio is incredible.”
Zmishlany went on to add: “The history of music is also a history of technology. The electric guitar gave the world rock and roll.
“When the sampler showed up, hip-hop was born. With AI, we’re writing the next chapter of music. We have a new instrument, a new tool for making music – and that’s super exciting.”
The AI took a year of development where millions of audio clips were used to train the technology to generate its own sounds.
However, while the innovation could mean exciting things for music, fears are growing on how AI could impact the industry.
The Australian Association of Voice Actors spoke to a parliamentary committee earlier in the year where they said 5,000 people could be out of work if employers choose to replace voice actors with artificial intelligence.
There are also concerns surrounding copyright law and how AI programs like Fugatto could infringe them.
The Recording Industry Association of America instigated a lawsuit against AI tools after they were allegedly copying their artists’ work.
It seems that with the rapid advancement of AI technology, rules surrounding the tech is still the wild west.
But time will tell how things progress.