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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1283 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 26, 2025

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Suno, the AI song generator, just released version 5. And now I think we are 100% past the uncanny audio valley. Version 4/4.5 was at the level of "Convincing, occasionally incredible, but still flawed enough to notice." Version 5 is 'tricking' my ear 9 times out of 10. Studio quality. We have a fully functional infinite music machine available for the monthly cost of a cheeseburger.

A few examples:

https://suno.com/s/N86w28eQjBWbI6fA

https://suno.com/s/BsKe5OnQpUhPj2Zx

https://suno.com/s/voPPxtsXxRjFRF93

https://suno.com/s/Yqe3pzUQHIPAQ4g4

I think people get too focused on the apparent 'slowing' of progress in the LLM space and think its proof that Machine Learning itself is not living up to the hype.

Meanwhile stuff like Video generation, Music, and Protein Folding/Drug Discovery are still improving rapidly.

Arguably LLMs are just the interface by which we can access these other powerful Djinns to provide us with the particular services we want, as we await the "one true superintelligence" that can do anything to arise.

There's probably a small window right now to write a Sci-Fi novel that features humanity invoking individual AI patrons that specialize in particular aspects of the world, in the same vein as 'old gods' (Stockfish God of Chess, Suno God of Music, Midjourney God of Aesthetics).

Anyway, if there was ONE arena you would want AI to reach superhuman capability, one particular application that would improve your life even if AI progress stalled out otherwise, what would that be?

For our purposes, lets just grant "customized pornography" as the killer app.

Me, I think I want the ability to produce bespoke episodes of older TV shows that I enjoyed but were cancelled or went off the rails and/or had horrible conclusions. GoT and Firefly are obvious examples there. But I have several others in mind.

It'd be cool to live in a world where the "Canon" of a given series was not defined by any particular "official" source, but instead you had a whole library of 'forks' in the plot and character development that fans can choose from, or generate their own as they like, with maybe some curation done by the rights holder to identify the entries they deem 'high quality' and consistent with the original vision.

Suno, the AI song generator, just released version 5. And now I think we are 100% past the uncanny audio valley.

At least to the extent that the examples trigger my ctrl-w reflex in exactly the same way and for the same reasons as modern human created music does. I suppose that could be considered "progress".

I feel this. My immediate thought on listening to one of those Suno tracks: “We’re going to get a thousand Sabrina Carpenters now”

It can emulate just about any time period, and REALLY traditional stuff too.

I'm not even trying to argue that its not AI slop at the end of the day, just like I think most pop music is human-made slop, but its a leap in capabilities.

Can it do The 80s?

Not just completely forgettable fourth rate slop or faux-80s but actually good stuff that resembles songs like this, this or this, without forgetting this absolute classic.

My working theory: All those are great songs, but what makes them great is not JUST the notes and lyrics and performance. These things didn’t exist in a vacuum. What made them great was how people experienced them together in time and/or space, and responded to them together in time and/or space. This is why I’m hopeful that human art still has a bright future, but that bright future must take place offline more and more. (I appreciate this sounds ludicrous to anyone who’s lived their entire life with and on the internet.)

The Song of Roland example is not very good and sticks out instantly for anyone who actually understands that era of music. It sounds like the modern 21st century musician's idea of Medieval music and has very little to do with actual Medieval music.

I HAVE TO IMAGINE that there aren't many recordings of actual Medieval music around to train the AI on.

Well, that's a problem, because there are some, but they are utterly drowned out by so-called "bardcore" or "neo-medieval" music that has very little to do with what actual medieval music sounded like other than that is has a thin veneer of what modern audiences think it sounded like. The funniest part is that, in addition to medieval, it's tagged as modal and Gregorian Chant, when it's neither of those things. We have a pretty good idea of what actual medieval music sounded like by virtue of it having been written down, and we know what the theory behind it was and what the performance practices were. Almost everything in that example is anachronistic. Actual medieval folk music would have been monophonic in texture (every voice and instrument is playing the same melody line; modern concepts of accompaniment didn't exist yet) and modal in harmony (tonality i.e. chords had yet to be invented). The prodromes of modern harmony were present beginning with organum around 1200 (where the vocal lines would occasionally sing different complementary notes), but that would have been Latin church music, not any king and queen larping. You'd get polyphony in the 14th century but again, it would take folk music a long time to catch up to what composers were writing for the church. It wasn't until the 16th century that what we would call modern harmony and performance practice was fully developed and widespread in Europe. Before then, music would have sounded more like this, especially in England, which was far away from the locus of culture at the time.

The fact that authentic music is all but drowned out by bastardized modern versions is only further proof of the limitations of AI training—garbage in; garbage out. What you posted has more in common with a Taylor Swift song than with actual medieval music.

I can't really put my finger on what's wrong with it but I wouldn't want to listen to any of this again despite liking some of the genres it's aping.

I guess I agree that it's succeeded in producing replacement-level slop and to the extent that people thought this was impossible they should probably eat crow. But I see no indications of SOVL.

but I wouldn't want to listen to any of this again despite liking some of the genres it's aping.

The question of the hour: Is that really different than most songs produced by human artists?

I admit that I keep falling back to the same ~1000 songs that I enjoy listening to, very few of which are less than 5 years old, many of which are older than I am. And most 'new' songs I'll play like a dozen times and then they sit in an unused playlist for months or years.

I don't think I've heard a SINGLE pop song in the last year that I consider 'memorable' (not entirely true: Chappel Roan's "HOT TO GO!" sometimes pops into my brain unbidden).

I truly do enjoy Kendrick Lamar's music, but after listening to GNX on repeat for a couple weeks I've not felt any desire to add it to my main playlist. Humble is on there though.

And I lamented before that there's really no such thing as a new 'genre' anymore. So the AI does have the advantage of letting me play around with combining genres to see if anything neat falls out or is worth pursuing.

I am going to agree there's no actual replacement for having a talented live performer in front of you.

I don't think I've heard a SINGLE pop song in the last year that I consider 'memorable' (not entirely true: Chappel Roan's "HOT TO GO!" sometimes pops into my brain unbidden).

Similar vibe (sassy red-haired female with socio-culturally relevant songs), you should look up CMAT.

The question of the hour: Is that really different than most songs produced by human artists?

Does it even matter? The world is already full of slop and having one more way to produce slop isn't helpful for anyone except some SEO spammers.

The question of the hour: Is that really different than most songs produced by human artists?

Possible, hence why I called it replacement level slop.

I do find Spotify's algorithm shows me recent songs that I like with some regularity (and no, these aren't from the Spotify ghost artists/ais), so I'm not as negative as you about today's music.

Music is perhaps not the point of pop music, it's the admiration and parasocial relationship with the artist. It's not clear to me if people will be willing to do this with an AI, but perhaps.

Music is perhaps not the point of pop music

Certainly not today, but it used to be, at least for the better tier pop. Just take the Beatles. Are they pop? Inarguably. Were they musically good? Without even the tiniest shadow of a doubt.

There are gobs of excellent pop music all the way up to the 90s. Then it went to shit for reasons I haven't been able to fully articulate yet but involves the concentration of labels, rise of solo artist & built groups and of course modern production methods (and a bunch of other things).

Edit: The music being a major point of pop music goes back centuries: For example Mozart and Beethoven were "pop" artist in their time.

Then it went to shit for reasons I haven't been able to fully articulate yet but involves the concentration of labels, rise of solo artist & built groups and of course modern production methods (and a bunch of other things).

To add: it went to shit also because pop music industry’s big data data-sciencing and machine-learning was able to identify what the masses wanted, and gave it to them. Manufacturing of, e.g. Sabrina Carpenter and Sabrina Carpenter types and the disappearance of auteurs and any sense of authorship to the margins.

The music being a major point of pop music goes back centuries: For example Mozart and Beethoven were "pop" artist in their time.

The top answer suggests that a much larger fraction of the population has heard e.g. Michael Jackson than Beethoven or Mozart in their time. Beethoven and Mozart were "pop" for the upper crust of society. Has music popular with the 1% gotten worse? I don't know, but certainly mass media has transformed who you have to appeal to in order to have mass success.

Beethoven and Mozart were "pop" for the upper crust of society.

Sure, but that was an economic divide, not a divide based on artistic qualities. It doesn't change the fact that 1) they were widely popular and 2) they have inarguable artistic merit. If anything, they were more pop music than what general folk listened to as folk music was anonymous and lacked any of modern pop music's parasocial relationship that Mozart and Beethoven had among parts of their audience.

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it's the admiration and parasocial relationship with the artist.

I do think there's an issue where with AI you can't really make the AI itself the 'object' of your obsessions because there's nothing 'there.' And making the person prompting the AI the object seems extremely odd.

But I feel pretty similar about people who seem obsessed with certain DJs, when there is certainly an argument that all they're doing is pressing "Play" on the computer and then fiddling with some knobs. They still have 'fans.'

But, uh, we see that (some) people are readily accepting AI boyfriends and girlfriends.

And Hatsune Miku has a large following, even does concerts. Granted, the Japanese can anthropomorphize ANYTHING.

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