Confession time: I've fallen in love with AI music generators.
Google recently made a version of its AI music generator tool Lyria 3 available through Gemini. This is one of many AI generators available that can create real-sounding, if not particularly artistic, music in various styles in a few moments based upon short prompts.
These AI-generated clips offer some fun, if gimmicky, applications that I’ve started to consider using in my class. First though, a few caveats.
Article continues belowAI music, as impressive as it may be, is still a lifeless, soulless product that tends toward the corny and, at its best, sounds like uninspired pop. It therefore cannot replace music created by actual musicians who put their hearts and souls into their musical creations.
Even if AI music tools were better, it would still be morally questionable to use any commercially. Like other forms of AI “art,” these generators mimic and plagiarize the work of human artists without providing proper credit or royalties. But as a pastime and as a sonic sandbox, AI music generators are some of the most fun generative AI tools I’ve come across.
I believe these also offer some teaching opportunities, albeit in a gimmicky, "pass a few minutes of class time" type of way.
Ways To Incorporate Music AI Generators
I’ve been using AI music generators to create short songs inspired by the personality traits of people I know. For example, I had AI write a song about my sister's propensity to always request menu substitutions when she orders at a restaurant, plus some goofy songs for my kids.
These are admittedly not laugh-out-loud use cases, but I enjoy them and have started doing similar things with students.
Here’s a song I created to remind my writing students to start working on their papers earlier. Will this annoying, but somehow catchy, song help students actually start working on their papers sooner? Probably not, as starting to work on a paper early is a piece of pretty standard advice that most students already know. However, it’s maybe a more fun way of reminding them to do that.
I can also see creating songs based upon student research and various topics covered: young students, in particular, might have fun with this type of thing.
But as with most things AI-related, you can take all this too far. Using AI-generating tools, I started thinking about the potential power of an annoying jingle for memorization. I tried a few different ways to get Gemini to create a song reminding students of the basics of thesis writing. This is the best it did after I told it to do this in a traditional Celtic manner. I’m not sure if this song really has traditional Celtic vibes, and even I’d be too embarrassed to share this song with students.
Are All AI Music Generators More Or Less The Same?
No. After experimenting with a few various free ones, I found a wide range of quality with the same prompts.
Gemini is the only one I’d currently recommend. It’s user-friendly but limited and only creates 30-second clips. Other music generators could potentially outperform Gemini with prompt adjustments. The ones I tried did better with the instrumentals but struggled more with the lyrics, and that kind of defeated the purpose of the tool for me.
What About The Bigger Picture
When teaching with AI in general, it’s important to discuss the implications of this technology with students. Much as I’ve been enjoying using AI to “create” music, this technology unsettles me a bit. I have multiple family members who went to music school and work as professional musicians. I don’t think their jobs performing live music are currently imperiled by this technology or will be in the foreseeable future. However, down the road, I could see it making the already difficult profession of being a musician more difficult.
As I keep only half-jokingly saying, AI music generators and other similar generative AI tools may ultimately destroy art and therefore what makes us human on a fundamental level. But on the bright side, I do like using AI to create annoying musical jingles.
On a more serious note, AI music generators are a fun-to-use generative AI tool that, like other forms of AI, have some associated thorny ethical questions. Those aside, there are some potential classroom uses, and AI-savvy teachers will want to start exploring this aspect of AI in addition to others. They'll also want to start delving into some of those thorny questions with their students as we navigate the ever-changing realities of AI's impact on the world.
