AI is changing music industry, creating music, virtual celebrities

K-pop

Published: 19 Jun. 2023, 15:16

AI is changing music industry, creating music, virtual celebrities

Singer Lee Hyun, center, who recently released a new song "Masquerade" with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) on May 15 during a press conference on the same day. [HYBE]

A new paradigm of music has opened up thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which has become a game changer for K-pop as the latest technology helps music transcend real-world boundaries such as gender and language.

Going further than simply aiding songwriting and composing, AI has been providing new personas to existing singers and even creating its own persona as a virtual celebrity. The latest example is Midnatt, who recently released a new song, "Masquerade," with the help of AI.

Under a new stage name Midnatt, singer Lee Hyun, also a member of R&B trio 8eight, released the song on March 15. His goal is to use AI to break free from his soft image, for which he has been known for the past 17 years.

"My desire for a change in musical style took precedence over using AI," Lee said in a press conference on May 15 to explain why he decided to implement AI technology in his music.

"Masquerade," a rhythmic synthwave song consisting of electronic tunes, was composed using new AI technology from Supertone, an AI company HYBE acquired earlier this year. There was no need for an actual singer to sing the female part of the song. The part, in fact, was sung by AI, which switched Lee's voice into a woman's while retaining his distinctive, rough singing style.

"We created the optimal female vocal for the song, based on Midnatt's [original] voice," Jung Woo-young, CEO of HYBE, said.
"Even if the song is performed live at a concert, the audience can hear that part in a real-time female voice, thanks to AI."

AI was also used as a multilingual pronunciation correction tool, allowing Lee to release "Masquerade" in six different languages — Korean, English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese — all at the same time. A native speaker of each language recorded the lyrics to the beat of "Masquerade" and then applied them to each foreign language version of the song Lee sang.

This is the first time such a technique has been used to preserve the voice of the singer while adding the clarity and accentuation of a native speaker.

"The influence of K-Pop will be able to expand beyond linguistic limitations," BigHit Music CEO Shin Young-jae said.

"The six languages — Korean, English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese — are spoken by half of the world's eight billion people."

"HYBE is also considering applying AI audio technology to artists of other agencies," Shin said.

"If you have a voice sample, you can easily recreate any song with that particular voice," Lee Kyo-gu, CEO of Supertone, said at a conference on AI and the K-pop industry last month.

"If we wanted to, we could take a singer's voice and create songs that just sing tens of thousands of fans' names in the singer's voice," Lee added.

AI has also been affecting the K-pop industry more directly by helping create virtual celebrities.

In the fictional storyline of girl group aespa, there is a persona called Naevis (nævis), the group's assistant in their virtual world, that is AI-generated with a unique visual and voice.

Expanding the range of Naevis' abilities as a character, Naevis was featured in the intro and chorus of the song "Welcome to MY World" from aespa's third EP, released on May 8. Naevis' voice was created by combining and modifying the voices of several voice actors.

An image of naevis, SM Entertainment's virtual singer presented earlier this year [SM ENTERTAINMENT]

Naevis's agency, SM Entertainment, is currently preparing her solo debut.

AI is being utilized in songwriting and composing as well.

Genie Music, a Korean music streaming service, re-constructed singer Tei's hit song "Same Pillow" (2022) into a song for the drama "Hyunamdong Bookstore" using technology from an AI startup, Juice.

Juice's AI listens to the original song, identifies the length of each note and melody and then translates it into a digital score, producing an entirely different song.

Similarly, Pozalabs, a company specializing in AI musical composition, plans to provide a service this year that allows users to input a song of their taste and receive a similar AI-generated song within five to 10 minutes. However, AI music created by non-professionals is also gaining attention. Cover songs make the most prominent example, as they can be easily produced with AIs that learn singers' voices to create a cover of other songs.

A video of a cover of NewJeans' "Hype Boy" (2022), sung in American singer Bruno Mars' voice, went viral on YouTube with more than a million views in May. However, the cover was produced by an AI, not the singer himself.

Various cover videos followed, such as Fifty Fifty's "Cupid" sung in The Weekend's voice and Zion T's "Yanghwa Bridge" sung in Freddie Mercury's voice. These AI-generated covers are still being produced and spread online.
Some say they have concerns about AI-generated music.

Drake and The Weeknd's much-talked-about new song, "Heart on My Sleeve," turned out to be a song created by a TikTok user using an AI and was later taken down.

"There are obvious advantages of AI music in terms of widespread enjoyment of music, but it's scary when listeners are unaware that it's AI-generated," pop music critic Park Joon-woo said.

Using Drake and The Weeknd's situation as a precedent, concerns about AI music have risen. There will likely be instances where copyright issues emerge, the listener mistakes AI music for music produced by real artists, or singers' distinctive voices become overused and undistinguished, experts say.

AI Artificial Intelligence words are seen in this illustration taken, May 4. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

"With an explosive amount of content on YouTube and other social media platforms, there are limitations to protecting the rights of artists and copyright holders, especially if we were to look through every single one manually," said Choi Bo-na, general manager of Soundmouse Korea — a company that provides music monitoring services.

"We first incorporated AI into music five or six years ago to provide information to artists on where and how much their soundtracks have been used," Choi said. "It is difficult to resolve copyright issues by simply advancing AI technology even more. Policy and awareness must go hand in hand. As legal measures are being taken, awareness of the issue within the industry must be raised simultaneously — which will take time," Choi added.

BY EO HWAN-HEE [kjdculture@joongang.co.kr]