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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.
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".
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.
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.
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