A group of AI-savvy creators has forged a new song in the style of Nirvana that is turning heads in the music community.
Dubbing their tune, “Drowned in the Sun,” the creators relied on Google Magenta to lay down the beat, rhythm and melody of the song.
And they turned to other AI software to come-up with song lyrics.
The result: A catchy, Nirvana-like offering – sung by a Kurt Cobain impersonator — that sounds authentic to the casual listener.
You can check-out Nirvana reincarnated on YouTube.
The creators – Over the Bridge, a mental health organization – are the first to admit they had AI help from human beings.
Specifically, humans edited down the raw music and lyrics churned-out by AI to create a final production.
Even so, “Drowned in the Sun” offers an early listen to AI’s increasing involvement in music production.
In fact, AI has been inspiring music lovers to create automated music for a number of years now.
YouTuber ‘Funk Turkey,’ for example, had some fun last year using AI to generate lyrics for an AC/DC knock-off tune.
“I put the lyrics of AC/DC into a bot and asked it to write a song,” Funk Turkey says.
The title of AI’s AC/DC-aided lunge at rock-and-roll fame?
“Big Balls,” of course.
Meanwhile, music Web site Lyrics.rip dabbled in AI-generated music with its own knock-off of Metallica.
Specifically, Lyrics.rip fed the entire catalog of Metallica’s lyrics into an AI-text generator and in industry jargon, ‘let-it-rip.’
The result: a song entitled, “Deliverance Rides.”
It features endearing verses like, “Curses rest on our brains / No, there’s an evil feeling in vain / I can’t believe I stand alone / Beast under wicked sky.”
Music accompaniment to the wide-eyed rants was written by a flesh-and-blood collaborator.
And over at Georgia Tech, AI researchers unleashed Shimon on the world in 2020 – a ‘singing’ robot that uses lyrics composed by AI.
The mechanized crooner — who is often backed-up by human musicians — was ready to tour in early 2020, but had to put the kibosh on plans of stardom when Coronavirus hit.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*AI Automates Crime Reporting in Sweden: Swedish news service Siren is using AI to automate crime reporting for news outlets across the country.
Siren uses an AI tool from United Robots to reach down into government databases and churn-out news stories about law enforcement encounters, criminal court orders and district judgements.
The AI tool generates more than 3,000 news stories a day.
That enables news outlets to pick-and-choose stories they believe will most interest their local readers.
Says Matti Larsson, CEO, Siren News Agency: “The software makes its own judgment on news value from a specific number of variables, including some background information on the defenders.
A crime involving a successful businessman involved in a serious crime, for example, will have a higher news value than a youngster involved in a petty crime, according to Larsson.
*GPT-3: Your Next Investment Advisor?: MarketWatch writer Jurica Dujmovic prompted GPT-3 to come up with its own investment advice.
The results: Not bad.
In response to Dujmovic’s question, “How to invest in cryptocurrencies by GPT-3,” for example, GPT-3 responded:
“The growing popularity of cryptocurrency means there are hundreds of opportunities to choose from, but no matter how tempting it is to buy a partially inflated coin or invest in a minor one with big expectations, only a few cryptocurrencies really offer good investment opportunities.
“The market is incredibly volatile and risky so it’s essential to read-up on the fundamental value and technology of the crypto companies you’re going to invest in.
“The market capitalization of a cryptocurrency is no indication of its worth and there are many coins which are technically worth more than their price would indicate.
“You can try trading, but if you don’t wish to risk losing your money you can always treat it like betting on horses.”
Granted, the chance that GPT-3’s market analysis prowess has Paul Krugman squirming in trepidation is probably slim-to-none.
Still, GPT-3’s recommendations are lucid and logical.
For a look at other market observations by GPT-3, check-out Dujmovic’s article.
(For an in-depth look at GPT-3, check out: “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.)
*AI Literacy in PR: New Survey Aims to Take a Measure: The Chartered Institute of Public Relations is encouraging PR pros to take its survey, which assesses their proficiency with AI-powered PR tools.
Specifically, the group hopes to use the survey to grasp the needs of PR pros regarding their AI skills, data skills, education, training and development.
CIPR has repeatedly warned PR pros that they need to get up-to-speed on AI – or face being left behind.
“The broad warning is the need to develop better skills in data, artificial intelligence and machine learning in your own role — as well as advising business and organizations on AI,” according to Dan Slee.
He’s co-founder of Coms2Point0 , an online community for communications pros.
*New Tool Promises AI Writing With No Coding Required: Primer AI has rolled-out a new tool that promises to generate AI writing for you – no coding required.
Dubbed ‘Primer Automate,’ the app interfaces with Primer’s AI-generated writing software.
Currently, the tool is primarily targeting analysts who are already using Primer — and are looking to automate reports without coding.
Observes Sean Gourley, CEO, Primer AI: “With Automate, we’ve achieved something pretty unique: Analysts now have the tools to train machines to automate all those mundane, repetitive tasks that they are doing each and every day.
“Not only that, but automation at scale can surface things that would have otherwise remained hidden using manual workflows — which gives analysts new insight into their world.
“We believe that Primer Automate is going to profoundly change knowledge work — literally everything that you do with text will be transformed — and we can’t wait to see what our customers achieve with it.”
*Scriptwriters Continue to Toy With AI: While a viable, full-length, movie script still evades the ability of AI writing machines, writers are still experimenting with the tech.
Two film students in California, for example, are auto-writing short scripts with AI, which they’re using to make short films.
The two, who refer to themselves as Calamity AI, use a program called Shortly AI to help generate the video yarns.
Says Jacob Vaus, one of the students: ““We started putting in the beginnings of scripts and letting it write the rest.
“We were taken aback by how well it was able to copy the voice and tone of the script.”
A few of the AI-written short films have been posted to YouTube.
*GPT-3: The New Apps Keep Coming: DigitalTrends writer Luke Dormehl offers his own look at some of the new apps emerging using GPT-3 as an AI engine.
Those goodies include:
~Augrented: A tool renters can use to generate automated letters to help negotiate rent decreases
~Layout Generator: A tool that auto-creates design components for Web site authors
~GPT-3 based search engine: A tool that responds to any Web query with a written answer that includes a URL for more information
Says Aditya Joshi, a machine learning scientist: “I did not expect a single language model (GPT-3) to perform so well on such a diverse range of tasks — from language translation and generation to text summarization and entity extraction.”
*AI Has Alternatives to Mega Auto-Text Generators Like GPT-3: AI researchers turned-off by mega auto-text generators that demand huge gulps of computing power are experimenting with more modest tools that still get the job done.
Observes Hayden Field, an emerging tech writer for Morning Brew: Such tools “center on smaller systems that can do some of the same tasks as larger models — but in a more computationally efficient and explainable way.
Currently, there are three tasks that fit nicely into the wheelhouse of modestly powered AI tools, according to Field:
*Moderate, retrieval-based language models that save on computing power by storing much of their data externally
*AI-augmented versions of rule-based models, which offer users a look at how the AI generates its results
*The tinyML movement, which creates AI tools created to perform extremely narrow tasks
*AI Writing Company Bryter Snags $66 Million in Funding: AI company Bryter saw a big payday earlier this month, bringing in $66 million to prop-up its ‘no-code, decision making automation’ software.
One interesting application of Bryter’s technology: A tool that can auto-generate a nondisclosure agreement in minutes.
*AI and Journalism: A Race With Machines: Equal Times writer Laurence Dierickx offers an in-depth analysis of the impact of AI on journalism with this piece.
The article finds AI’s current and future negative impact on writers’ jobs as questionable at best.
Observes Dierickx: “There is currently no evidence to suggest that the automation of news production is linked to loss of employment.
“The only company that has resorted to mass redundancy in a move to ‘fully automate’ is tech giant Microsoft at its MSN News portal.
(For a contrasting perspective on the current and future impact of AI on all genres of writers, check-out: “The Robots Cometh: How artificial intelligence is automating writing jobs,” by Joe Dysart.)
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.