Why Fake Drake and AI-generated music are here to stay

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Gideon: OK.

lauren: It’s time for a pop quiz.

gideon: Oh no.

lauren: So you’re the editor-in-chief here at WIRED, and you’ve been talking a lot about AI, so I wanted to see how good you are at differentiating regular human-made music from AI-generated music.

Gideon: I mean, sometimes I can barely tell one human’s music from another’s. So, you know, you might be disappointed, but I’ll do my best.

lauren: OK, here’s the first clue.

[Clip of AI Rihanna singing “Cuff It”]

lauren: Let’s hear the second.

[Clip of Beyoncé singing “Cuff It”]

lauren: First, I’m curious if you know who the artist is.

Gideon: I have no idea. None at all.

lauren: Gideon! You’re not a card-carrying hive member, are you?

gideon: I’m not.

lauren: That was Beyoncé.

gideon: OK.

lauren: but what was it in fact Beyonce?

Gideon: So one of them was definitely AI and the other was really Beyoncé?

lauren: Yeah.

gideon: Oh wow. Um, I’m going to say the first one was AI, just because I liked the second one better.

[Correct Answer bell rings]

lauren: That’s right.

gideon: OK. Alright. So taste really plays a role here.

lauren: You can keep your job as editor-in-chief of WIRED.

gideon: Thank God, I was so worried.

lauren: What did you like more about the second one?

Gideon: Here, I’ll have to use musical words that I don’t know the meaning of, but I felt like it was, I don’t know, the sounds were more balanced somehow. More harmonic, more… I’m doing shit here. Uh, I like the sound better. They felt more like a thought had entered that song.

lauren: Yes. Sounds good to me. Let’s move on to the second pair, which I think will be a bit more challenging. Alright, here’s the first clue.

[Clip of “Controlla” by Drake]

lauren: Ok, here’s the second one.

[Clip of AI Arianna Grande singing “Controlla”]

Gideon: I’m going to say the female voice is AI generated, just because it sounded a bit more Auto-Tuned to me. But honestly, if you had played both songs somewhere and I hadn’t known that one of them had to be AI generated, I would have said that both were human.

[Correct Answer bell rings]

lauren: You are right. The female voice is generated by AI. The first was real. That was actually Drake.

Gideon: OK. So I may be completely useless in music, but at least I can tell an AI from a human when they’re singing. That’s something.

lauren: Yeah.

gideon: That’s what the WIRED editor should be able to do. Good?