AI Prompt: "Can you write me a string quartet, "Eleanor Rigby"-style, to fit a song I've written?"

Steinberg Lounge
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That’s what I wrote Chat-GPT today, can I send them my song and get that string quartet from them to use in my Cubase project. I know nothing of string arrangement, but I know the style I want to be part of a song I wrote.

They said, paraphrasing, “Yes, no problem”. They’d send me something I can type into the MIDI Editor section of Cubase, with articulations and the like.

I can see taking what they gave me, using it as a template to modify so that I wind up with what works best for my song, and calling it a day.

I asked if the result of all this would be copyrightable by me, and they said yes absolutely, both in the US and internationally.

What I haven’t figured out is whether that would be ethical or not. It seems to me to not be to some degree, but I’m not sure. Is it because one could reasonably ask if it isn’t using George Martin’s IP without the permission of his estate?

Questions I’m asking myself: How different is the situation described above than grabbing a MIDI pattern in EZDrummer 3, inserting it into my project, then modifying it to fix my song?

Or applying Izotope Nectar’s AI mixing function to my raw tracks, then modifying that, so it “sounds better” than Nektar’s application (I haven’t done this)?

Man, I’d love to have some nice strings on my song … but is it worth it in terms of potentially being unethical?

I’d be interested in any thoughts anyone has :slight_smile:

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At various times, I’ve used everything from randomness on acoustic instruments to algorithmic composition software to create sounds, so personally, I think if you end up with something you like, into which you have creative input, then I don’t see any ethical issues at all.

You do know there’s no “they”, don’t you? :face_with_raised_eyebrow: It’s just an automaton. Anything you do on foot of your interaction is entirely on you, and you alone are responsible for the consequences.

Did “they” promise to testify for you in any eventual court case, and to cover your legal costs?

But seriously, if you publish the result, and you want to be totally upfront about it, why not just give chat ChatGPT credit? I’ve even seen drum machines listed on album credits.

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If you pay an arranger to write this arrangement in the style of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, their name will normally be credited as a contributor to the production.

Be honest and don’t be ashamed to credit AI. It’s become just another tool, and you’ll always have people offering positive or negative feedback. Nothing in this world pleases everyone.

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Thank you for your thoughtful replies @MrSoundman and @Rene_L .

Playing Devil’s Advocate here: if the musician used Izotope Nektar’s AI engine to mix and master, or Jamstix and EZDrummer to generate drum parts, and EZBass to generate bass lines (in all cases using the generated music as a springboard for editing to personalize the output) -

Would you similarly advocate putting “Mixed and Mastered with the help of by Izotope Nektar’s AI engine” in the credits?

Or, “Drums by Jamstix and EZDrummer, bass by EZBass” in the credits?

The above focuses on the ethics of giving or not giving credit. The other ethical issue I wonder about is whether the musicians who created the intellectual property that formed the basis of the AI engine’s output were properly reimbursed, and if not, whether use of that AI engine would be theft of some sort.

(PS: To be clear, this is a hypothetical discussion for me at least - the most exposure my songs get is friends and family, and the occasional open mic night and bar gig - no album for credits to appear on is anticipated in the least).

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That would be up to you – you would effectively be providing free advertising though. Companies pay people to do things like that. Omitting it would not raise any ethical issues in my opinion, and adding it could be your way of expressing gratitude to the developers of the software.

I think the consensus there is a resounding “no”, but I doubt we’ll ever find out.

Certainly not in the criminal sense, but does wearing a shirt implicate one in the past savage behaviour of colonialists on cotton plantations? Yet some people go to great lengths and expense to ensure their sources are from ethical and sustainable ones.

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It is theft. No composers, songwriters or other rights holders were ever asked by the AI companies “can we scrape the internet for all copyrighted works so that it can be used to generate new content and pay you nothing for it”. The composer and songwriter unions in Europe have been reacting strongly and working on how to handle this difficult situation since day one. There are several court cases going on as we speak.

To me as a composer, it feels completely wrong that this can be allowed in any way.

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I completely agree, but… What do we do with all the composers who wrote works in the style of…?

For example, perhaps we should remove Beethoven’s early symphonies; every time I listen to them, I feel like I’m hearing Haydn. Or maybe my ears are playing tricks on me…

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That’s quite a stretch. Beethoven was not an AI scraping the internet for copyrighted works. Every composer is being inspired by all the music that they have ever heard, and at some point you might argue that such a thing as an original work no longer exists, because some piece of music will always resemble something else, in some listeners’ view.

I’ve seen the argument before, that the AI is simply “being inspired” by other works just like human beings are. But here is where we need to separate actual human inspiration from machines, because machines cannot have an actual, intellectual inspiration. It only knows how to copy. The AI developers call it “training”, but to “train”, it first has to USE a copyrighted work, in a way that was never given permission for it to do.

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One who’d be up to mischief might ask: Are there any parallels between training AI models and potty training with regard to outcome? :thinking:

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@Reco29 I believe you’re on to something here, yes. :joy:

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I’m not trying to defend AI, but I believe that humans are also very good at copying.

Training is what musicians with even a modicum of serious and advanced studies do.

Copyright is also a stretch. Asking a human arranger or an AI to produce an arrangement in the style of Eleonore Rigby (George Martin) would likely yield two different results, neither of which would be a copy of the original. If we specify “in the style of…”, I don’t believe the AI ​​will create an exact copy, and the same goes for the arranger.

The difference is probably that one was INSPIRED by something, while the other deduced a process from it following a precise technical analysis based on the sophistication of its algorithm.

The result will be a pastiche, whether by a human or a machine.

Is producing a “pastiche” of a work reprehensible or a violation of copyright?

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That was my point. And not only a “technical analysis”, because that can also be done by humans. But for an AI to be “inspired” by something, it needs to violate copyrighted works by taking the actual master recordings and using them in ways that the creator of said AI never got the permission to do. A human can listen to a recording and be inspired without copying data 1:1. A machine can’t – it has to actually copy the original works. That’s why it’s not the same thing.

No, of course not.

Sure. But I’m not talking about the result, I’m talking about the methods used to get there. My point is that an AI cannot do the job without violating copyrighted works, because it has to actually copy them before it can “learn”.

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Beethoven didn’t write prompts in a computer because he could not write music.

Having a human spend decades to become a master and said human to sometimes be inspired by the masters that preceded that individual, is diametrically opposite in any way possible to scamming companies that steal music from unsuspected artists, so that they can make a quick buck, from incompetent musicians who either cannot be bothered to learn their craft, or don’t care, for said “musicians” be able to create music with a few typed words.

Absolutely appalling. It doesn’t matter how this is dressed. It’s appalling.

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In a way, it’s impossible for me to completely disagree with you. However, I would add a nuance.

We live in an era where technology is part of the creative world, and not just in music. I don’t believe we can stop that. It’s human nature to seek to push beyond the limits we encounter. Technology is no exception.

When ethical questions are raised, it’s easy to blame technological advancements, but technology knows nothing of ethics. From the discovery of DNA and its applications to the development of artificial intelligence, human beings are at the heart of its development and use, and if there is any ethical violation whatsoever, in my view, the responsibility lies with human beings. AI is simply an executor programmed for this purpose; what is it responsible for?

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Of course, nobody can blame the program; it’s a thing, not an entity, only their creators and the way they use it to fund their companies can and should be blamed in this instance…

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In preface to what follows, I clearly want to express that I admire, revere, and feel kinship with every musician everywhere, even every “creative” everywhere. I think there is truly a gift from above imparted on us mere humans whenever a song is created, and I always feel so grateful to the songwriter, performers, and all the producers, engineers, and other technicians who worked on the song, for giving me the opportunity to listen to their music from thousands of miles, and perhaps decades, away.

I know I’m not one nearly as skilled or accomplished, or whose personal economics may be as tied to music, as those musical creators I love, nor as most of the people here. But I still feel kinship. I wake up, go to bed, and a portion of my brain seems to spend every moment in between thinking about music - choosing/ revising chords and lyrics to the latest song I’m recording, where to take a breath or how long to hold a vowel while singing, what to play on my keyboard to support the guitarist without overwhelming, how to play my little solo, how can we get better gigs, how musician XYZ came up with their song … ad nauseum, if one were to ask my wife. (Oh, and how to get better at Cubase!).

All that to sadly express the following thoughts.

I’ve been thinking a lot about horse carriage makers of a little over 100 years ago. Some were true artisans, and the entire “industry” supported thousands, likely many more, people. Then disaster occured, and, poof, the entire industry was extinguished by technology as the Model T was invented, manufactured, and adopted by society, and all those artisans and workers became unemployed, and largely unemployable. And society didn’t care one whit about the fate of those carriage makers and their families, they just moved on in newly invented automobiles.

And so, what I’ve been asking myself is, “Is AI music the Model T, and are human music creators the horse carriage makers”? It is truly tragic that AI may extinguish a huge portion of human music makers’ craft and livelihood; but is the widespread adoption of that technology just as inevitable, and ethically agnostic, as events like a hurricane or tornado, an earthquake, or the widespread adoption of the Model T? And, on a personal basis - if a former carriage maker went to his grave refusing to buy a Model T, “on principle”, would that actually have wound up hurting him and his family in the end? Is their really any benefit for a music creator to avoid, “on principle”, anything to do with AI music?

I have a deep sense of mourning for what I sense is the end of an era, with all the tragic consequences that changes like this cruelly drag along with them.

(PS: @Rene_L - I see somehow this post was specifically addressed to you by the forum engine - that’s an error on my part, that wasn’t my intention, apologies!)

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As an aside, I haven’t yet heard a piece of music, generated autonomously by a machine, that I would like to hear a second time.

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There’s no real problem, I really liked your thoughts. I also don’t tend to take things personally.

We could debate for hours about the big bad wolf…

For me, AI is a tool. If I decided to use it for any reason in one of my productions, I would have the decency to inform people of its use for an accompaniment or a string arrangement or for anything else. I am the user of the tool, it is my responsibility to inform people of its use and to avoid using it for a simple copy of something.

If a person is against any form of possible ethical problem related to this tool, it is up to that person to refuse to use it. She does not have to blame the people who allowed its development, it is their work, their livelihood and they are brilliant to be able to achieve such a thing which cannot only generate negative, unless you want to see only black everywhere.

No one will stop progress and future tools will likely still cause ethical issues. Ethics belong to humans. Remember when nuclear energy was discovered, man had the choice to use it wisely, but he first preferred to make bombs and all the reasons in the world were justifiable.

If you don’t like AI, don’t use it and try to avoid anything created by it.

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You are suggesting that we simply don’t use the tool - that’s a bit like suggesting to just don’t watch the news if we don’t like what’s going on in the world.

Just because the tools and what they can do are in itself impressive, in no way takes away the fact that they are based on a massive theft of every copyrighted piece of music in the universe. I, and others like me, have every right to fight this, more than simply refusing to use the tools. You may choose to worry about the livelihood of the people who created Suno, or you may instead divert that energy to worry about your colleagues – every songwriter, composer or other creative being in the whole world, whose livelihood is being fundamentally challenged by this.

Every copyright organisation and composer/songwriter society more or less agree that these tools represent a massive copyright infringement on a scale like we have never seen before.

Of course it’s hard to fight the tech giants. But as long as we stand together and let our voice be heard, change is possible. Organisations like ECSA in Europe, and many of its member organisations from European countries are working hard on this. Of course we can’t reverse technology or progress, and neither should we. But in the very least we can come to some sort of agreement where the AI companies pay some sort of license to us, the music creators, for their exploiting our works without ever asking for permission. This for sure will never happen if we all took the passive stance and said “just don’t use the tools if we don’t like them”.

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Your point of view is very valid, I don’t dispute it, and I’m not against the idea of ​​a consensus or agreement where the parties involved can pay what they are owed.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this tool is available, and until such an agreement is possible or exists, if you use AI, which is not a person, to request an orchestration in the style of…, be aware that you are contributing to a massive copyright infringement (this is called complicity).

If you use it anyway, have the decency not to claim the result as your own and take the time to indicate the context of its use. And I maintain that you can always refuse to use such a tool until such an agreement is in place, out of respect for all creators.

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