Three ways AI is transforming music

Each fall, I begin my course on the intersection of music and artificial intelligence by asking my students if they're concerned about AI's role in composing or producing music. So far, the question has always elicited a resounding "yes." Their fears can be summed up in a sentence: AI will create a world where music is plentiful, but musicians get cast aside. In the upcoming semester, I'm anticipating a discussion about Paul McCartney, who in June 2023 announced that he and a team of audio engineers had used machine learning to uncover a "lost" vocal track of John Lennon by separating the instruments from a demo recording. But resurrecting the voices of long-dead artists is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's possible – and what's already being done. In an interview, McCartney admitted that AI represents a "scary" but "exciting" future for music.