Following in the footsteps of Elon Musk’s baby-momma and EDM Queen Claire Elise Boucher who goes by the name Grimes, the DJ duo known as The Chainsmokers want to use AI to recreate their own voices in multiple new versions to use in their music. They’re not the first to venture into the brave new world of AI (you like that Aldous Huxley reference?). In addition to Grimes, musicians including John Legend, Sia and Demi Lovato have all lent their voices to be used by AI to create new music.
Some view Generative AI as challenging the very idea of creativity, while others see it as a mechanism for innovation. Where some people see AI and robots one day taking away their jobs, others see them as freeing us from the mundane and elevating our consciousness to a new level, including me.
Drew Taggart and Alex Pall, the duo behind The Chainsmokers, have embraced AI, saying “As an artist, I want every possible tool to make my art better. The only answer is to embrace [AI] and figure out a way to harness it.”
Now, they’re putting their money where their mouth is. The Chainsmokers have started their own VC firm called Mantis VC, and have raised nearly $1 billion dollars in assets that they have invested in startups including those in the AI space.
AI-generated music is crushing it on social media. Last Summer an AI-generated song, made using the voices of Drake and The Weeknd, called “Heart on My Sleeve” tore it up online, before it was revealed to be a fan-generated song and not an original sung by Drake and The Weeknd.
And recently an Ariana Grande AI-generated cover song of the Korean singer Kim Jong-dae’s song “Everytime” received over 7.6 million views on TikTo, and was the top-liked search result on the social media platform.
Then we get into the topic of copyrights, which allow artists to protect their creative works and grant them exclusive rights. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows a rights-holder to request for a violation to be removed from an online platform such as YouTube or TikTok. The Chainsmokers have said that they aren’t opposed to hearing AI-generated music in their style, but they do want to make sure that their own IP is protected. In an interview Alex Pall said “It would be cool if someone could make Chainsmokers music and couldn’t upload it without the permission of us. Now we have the option to reach out to the person, collaborate with them on the idea, or say ‘this is fine, release it.’ But there’s a framework set up so we’re all doing this fairly and legally at the end of the day.”
My take on AI-generated anything is that it should be used as a tool for research and possibly inspiration in the form of a muse, but when it gets to the point of a kid in their bedroom madly typing into a ChatGPT AI-generators that spits out music that sounds like a famous artist, or produces a story in the same style as a famous writer, then they take credit for it as their own that’s when I have an issue with the result of generative AI, but not with the technology itself.
DJ duo The Chainsmokers want to use AI to clone their own voices