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  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Musicians threaten to make Oasis 'Live Forever' with AI

(2023/04/21)


Comment This week witnessed the destructive potential of AI in action as someone thought it'd be a good idea to bring brainless Britpop bores Oasis back from the dead.

Chris Woodgates and Bobby Geraghty, formerly of Hastings-based [1]Oasis wannabes Breezer, released "AISIS - The Lost Tapes / Vol.1" last Friday, which they describe as "an alternate reality concept album where the band's 95-97 line-up continued to write music, or perhaps all got together years later to write a record akin to the first three albums, and only now has the master DAT tape from that session surfaced."

Explaining the impetus for the project, they said: "We're bored of waiting for Oasis to reform, so we've got an AI modelled Liam Gallagher to step in and help out on some tunes that were written during lockdown 2021."

[2]

Basically what they did was write derivative and obnoxious janglepop and force-fed a poor computer Liam Gallagher's insipid drawl then made it sing over their tracks.

[3]

[4]

The result is fairly convincing, but we only made it a minute and a half in. See if you can fare any better.

[5]Youtube Video

[6]

Talking more enthusiastically about AISIS to [7]The Times , Woodgates said: "It was essentially a case of training an algorithm on hours and hours of Liam Gallagher a capella and the sounds of his voice so that it could start to model the tone, the cadence, [of] how Liam sounds. Anyone with a bit of time and commitment to it could do the same thing."

The album gained traction among the musically challenged in the following days, leading some to seek a review from the horse's mouth. One fan asked Gallagher if he had heard AISIS and he [8]replied : "Not the album heard a tune it's better than all the other snizzle out there."

He then [9]told someone else : "Mad as fuck I sound mega."

[10]

Liam's brother, Oasis guitarist and occasional singer Noel, was less chuffed, telling BBC Radio 2: "They can make it sound like Liam. They can't make it sound like me. I cannot be reproduced," though The Register would argue that a beginner could reproduce the quality of Noel's playing with a month or two of practice.

[11]Proliferation of AI weapons among non-state actors could be impossible to stop

[12]ChatGPT fans need 'defensive mindset' to avoid scammers and malware

[13]Google backs Bard to generate ads, which apparently improves creativity

[14]Google Brain, protein-folding DeepMind fold into one

This isn't the only AI project to storm the music industry this week. A TikTok user under the name ghostwriter977 released a song called "Heart On My Sleeve" created with AI to sound like a collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd – two more artists Vulture Central has little time for. The track's reception was inexplicably positive, [15]leading to millions of streams online .

However, while Liam believes AISIS sounds "mega," the position of Universal Music Group, which reps both Drake and The Weeknd, couldn't be more different.

The world's largest music company has been firing off emails to streaming services like iTunes and Spotify demanding that they block AI from scraping their copyrighted songs for material, [16]according to the Financial Times .

A spokesperson told the paper: "We have a moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorized use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators. We expect our platform partners will want to prevent their services from being used in ways that harm artists."

Almost as quickly as the track went viral, it was snuffed out by streaming platforms, including TikTok where it first took root. Drake himself said that an AI-generated cover of him rapping an Ice Spice song was [17]"the last straw" in an Instagram post.

There is not yet a firm legal framework around AI music so the industry is treading new ground and coming down hard. Still, AISIS's Woodgates believes it won't go away and the business "will have to catch up."

"Liam Gallagher will be around forever now," he said. "We're not going to be the only ones to do this. I think there is a positive side to it."

Liam Gallagher forever? Stop the world – I want to get off. ®

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f77YHrv19j4

[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZEKzIIJbVoo1N63gALsafAAAAIE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZEKzIIJbVoo1N63gALsafAAAAIE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZEKzIIJbVoo1N63gALsafAAAAIE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whB21dr2Hlc

[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZEKzIIJbVoo1N63gALsafAAAAIE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/oasis-album-made-with-ai-shows-how-bands-could-live-forever-5mz38fl6b

[8] https://twitter.com/liamgallagher/status/1648548442426277891

[9] https://twitter.com/liamgallagher/status/1648540394639032320?s=20

[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZEKzIIJbVoo1N63gALsafAAAAIE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/21/ai_enhanced_weapons/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/21/crooks_chatgpt_schemes/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/21/google_bard_ai/

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/20/google_brain_deep_mind/

[15] https://www.billboard.com/pro/fake-drake-ai-song-earned-millions-streams-get-paid/

[16] https://www.ft.com/content/aec1679b-5a34-4dad-9fc9-f4d8cdd124b9

[17] https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/drake-reacts-ice-spice-munch-ai-1235303454/

[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/



Today...

lafnlab

...is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back at you.

Unless it involves drinking and fighting, will it ever truly reproduce the sentiments of the brothers Gallagher?

Re: Today...

Anonymous Coward

with every byte,

you're the ai that shines so bright

and overall,

you're my data's firewall

One for the young'uns -- "The Rutles"

Anonymous Coward

well worth checking out, but Neil Innes songwriting was just too damn close to the Beatles.

I believe he had some help from John Lennon.

Re: One for the young'uns -- "The Rutles"

The commentard formerly known as Mister_C

And he also copied Oasis with "How sweet to be an idiot". Except he used the tune first.

The "Innis book of records" (Beeb telly series) is also worth a search.

The track's reception was inexplicably positive

Anonymous Coward

the power of numbers: 8 billion on this planet, a large proportion with access to the internets, a proportion of those affluent enough (or young enough, aka below the min sweat-shop age) to have time for this shit (well, see who's talking!), a proportion of those with less refined taste and / or 'influencered'...

Am I trying to say, politely, they're stupid? Yeah, I guess, but mindless clicks and low taste does not, automatically, mean 'stupid across the board'. Anyway, the power of numbers.

Emulated quality

b0llchit

Thirty minutes of musical drivel. Well done!

Just shows the quality of "modern" music? Or is music just another statistical mind fuck we seem to like so much?

I will leave you with a quote

JoeCool

that I first heard in the 90s.

"Pop will eat itself"

the 1990s.

Re: Emulated quality

Anonymous Coward

The original Beatles were much better than Oasis

demanding that they block AI from scraping their copyrighted songs for material

Howard Sway

Seeing as Oasis merrily "scraped" numerous songs from other people to "create" their own chart successes, it's a bit much for them to start complaining. The list of artists who took legal action and got paid for their tunes being lifted wholesale by songwriting "genius" Noel Gallagher is quite substantial (search "Oasis copyright lawsuit" to read about them).

Re: demanding that they block AI from scraping their copyrighted songs for material

Michael Strorm

I'm not a fan either, but the one thing I will say in Noel Gallagher's defence is that when push came to shove he wasn't a hypocrite about it. He claimed not to have sued the writers of [1]Hear'Say's "Pure and Simple" (remember them?) despite its obvious similarities to Oasis' "All Around the World" because- as he acknowledged- he'd done much the same thing himself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_and_Simple_(song)

Perfect harmony

Pete 2

Maybe a more (or less, who can say) interesting application of this sort of tech, would be to create some rather unlikely duets or collaborations between musicians who would never have been able to work together. Whether because one or both were utter arseholes, or because one died before the other was born.

Re: Perfect harmony

cookieMonster

Donald Trump/Sid Vicious - My Way??

Re: Perfect harmony

JimboSmith

It’s not AI generated, more the fabulous voice of Steve Nallon doing the late Maggie T singing “My Way”.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAkkdnYAYi8

I first heard that without knowing it wasn’t actually her singing. It’s a shame that video doesn’t have the actual show footage because it showed news events from her time in office that went with the lyrics - miners strikes, Falklands war etc.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAkkdnYAYi8

Blur anyone?

Neill Mitchell

Now do the same with Ailur and we can re-create the 90's battle.

Well

Noitsgonesorry

I think the article and comments pretty-much sum this up. I'd just like add 'FFS'.

Oh, yes. And that I never got the Beatles comparison. Only now do I realise - free from the Gallagher drone long enough to be able to reflect - they do sound like the Beatles tracks that I skip because they're so nondescript.

For the record

Ace2

I like Oasis, and I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about that.

Mike Flowers

Roj Blake

Can we have an AI version of Mike Flowers Pops please? They were always better than Oasis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfZshkNZRw

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