Has anyone on this forum used chatgpt to help them write lyrics? Does this method work very well?
Music is an expression that is a universal language, Never criticize anybody to harshly. They need time to grow but when they do, they do. Always be kind in what you say and do because the man upstairs is watching.
It's my understanding that the U.S. copyright office has ruled that lyrics generated by AI are not eligible for copyright.
There are a number of committees currently looking at AI as it pertains to intellectual property (I'm on one of them) and at this point it's a moving target. I suspect that some sort of compromise will be reached but personally I'd be cautious about using it at this point in time if you're planning on using your works commercially.
Has anyone on this forum used chatgpt to help them write lyrics? Does this method work very well?
It can help, but it tends (IMHO) to be a bit 'clunky' and generally needs work.
In addition to Roger's comments, as AI has been trained on a great deal of data from many sources, some of which, some are already suggesting has already infringed copyrights, there might also be a risk of being accused of plagiarism by using AI lyrics.
Caveat emptor.
Joanne Cooper who is on these fora has produced an App, "LyricLab" which has had a number of positive responses.
I've done the tiniest bit of exploring with AI lyrics. The English lyrics were better than I'd expected, though still pretty trite. My attempts at Proto-Indo-European lyrics appear to yield a quite high percentage "it's making this up" output. Perhaps that was inevitable
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2025 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
It's my understanding that the U.S. copyright office has ruled that lyrics generated by AI are not eligible for copyright.
It was upheld in the District Court last August and SCOTUS ruled Dec. 20. 2023 that AI cannot hold a patent.
Without that ruling, the WGO (writers') strike probably would still be ongoing. Producers cannot raise money on works that they can't own.
Quote
There are a number of committees currently looking at AI as it pertains to intellectual property (I'm on one of them) and at this point it's a moving target. I suspect that some sort of compromise will be reached but personally I'd be cautious about using it at this point in time if you're planning on using your works commercially.
Don't hold your breath. Congress is trying to figure out how to regulate AI without running afoul of the "major questions doctrine". We're going to hear a lot about that when the decision in the Chevron case comes down which should be very soon.
In any case, AI generated lyrics cannot rise above mediocrity since it "averages" everything. Mediocre would be a vast improvement over the longwinded AI generated blather that everyone is posting online.
There is good news, however. You can use AI to generate song and story ideas and it's great for that—get pointed in directions that you would never consider otherwise. I've used it to shorten the research time on three projects that I've been putting off for decades (fact checking still must be done since AI doesn't know what it gets wrong). Since one has never been able to copyright an idea, this is not only ok but encouraged. I took a great course on this recently and learned quite a lot.
The actual copyrightable Work Product requires that an Author roll up his/her sleeves and get busy.
As mentioned by Gordon (thanks) I have a ai app that will assist with generating lyrics and chords using a few prompts or even a picture. It also integrates with Band-in-a-box. You can also use a free version. Check it out here www.lyriclab.net
Edited to add: I really cannot see how ai assisted songs cannot be copyrighted. Even if you try, you cannot get the ai engine to generate the same song twice. How would the lawyers know what was generated and what was not? What happens if you change one or two words? What if you just use it for inspiration? Personally, I think people who worry about copyright on ai assisted lyrics have not tried it for themselves.
I don't think there is a problem with using AI to generate ideas, which I think is all anyone is really talking about, because I can't think of a single soul who would use any of the AI lyrics that I've seen generated without altering them significantly before trying to use them in any song.
You would just have to be really lame to use AI lyrics as they are.
But as an idea generator it's great.
I once spent a wonderful day with a Nashville Hall of famer and he talked about his songwriting process. He said that every Saturday him and his buddy would go to the record store and just spend the entire day flipping through records and looking at the titles of songs to get ideas that they would jot down in a notebook, and then they would take them back home and get drunk and piece together songs from the various ideas that they had written down from looking at the backs of albums.
It seems to me that using an AI generator tool is the same sort of thing.
You just come up with a bunch of stuff and then you get drunk and see what you can do with it.
🙂
I'm joking about the getting drunk part but you know what I mean.
Another thing is this: I've always noticed that the best song ideas that I've ever had are the ones that just pop into my head when I'm driving down the road and come out of nowhere, and I better have my phone available so I can turn on the tape recorder app and capture it or else those lyrics and the tune as well are gone forever.
I've never had AI do that for me so I'm not worried about AI.
David Snyder Songwriter/Renaissance Man Studio + Fingers
There are a number of points the judge did not choose to explore.
It might help to consider what copyright is. It creates a time-limited "right" to control who can create a copy of something. After some time, the copyright expires and the work falls into the public domain.
That copyright exists for the same reason that patents do - to encourage people to create works by allowing them a time-limited monopoly on that work.
Obviously, copyright or lack of copyright doesn't matter to an AI.
But let's take this a step further, and imagine that the court did rule that the AI had authored an original work. Since the copyright would belong to the creator of the work, what then?
The AI has no other legal rights, and can't enter into legal contracts. That rules out this being a "work for hire".
This means that the AI cannot transfer the copyright.
So if an AI work could be copyrighted, the work would remain uncopyable until it fell into the public domain.
I really cannot see how ai assisted songs cannot be copyrighted. .
No one has said that. The Librarian of Congress has ruled that AI generated songs cannot and the courts have backed her up. David's explanation is pretty good.
I don't think there is a problem with using AI to generate ideas, which I think is all anyone is really talking about, because I can't think of a single soul who would use any of the AI lyrics that I've seen generated without altering them significantly before trying to use them in any song.
You would just have to be really lame to use AI lyrics as they are.
Wow, you are an optimist.
I get dragged to open mics now and then. People are singing that crap.
“The judge in the case ruled that copyright has never been granted to work that was “absent any guiding human hand,” and that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.”
David, the work being referred to in this article is a picture. I can understand how a picture (or a song generated with ai singers using ai generated lyrics) could be more difficult to copyright (I would contest that there was still some human guiding hand in the prompt used to generate the work?)
Ai generated lyrics are just text in a notepad and can easily be slightly modified or completely rewritten before being turned into a song. The human hand is certainly involved in the creation of the melody.
I would wonder why anybody would try to copyright ai generated lyrics.
David, the work being referred to in this article is a picture. I can understand how a picture (or a song generated with ai singers using ai generated lyrics) could be more difficult to copyright (I would contest that there was still some human guiding hand in the prompt used to generate the work?)
That's a question that wasn't addressed, as the scope of the ruling was limited to a finding of law whether or not an AI could hold a copyright.
You're suggesting that the inputs to an AI by a human give the human some ownership of the copyright of the output. But even if a prompt is hyper-specific, I can think of two impediments.
First, the idea expressed in the prompt is unlikely to express an "original" idea. For example, A happy couple walking through a rose garden on a sunny day is enough to generate an image or song, but the idea expressed in the prompt is unlikely to be an expression that's original enough to be considered copyrightable.
Second, the AI can churn out dozens of songs with this prompt, each one different. That would show that although the work was guided by a specific prompt, the part that makes the work "original" comes from the AI, not the human. And the court has ruled that an AI can't be assigned a copyright.
But questions along these lines will no doubt be litigated in the future.
Originally Posted by JoanneCooper
Ai generated lyrics are just text in a notepad and can easily be slightly modified or completely rewritten before being turned into a song. The human hand is certainly involved in the creation of the melody.
I suspect the question turns on how transformative the human's input was.
Originally Posted by JoanneCooper
I would wonder why anybody would try to copyright ai generated lyrics.
I can only think of two motivations:
To monetize the lyric; and
To prevent other people from using the lyric
Last edited by dcuny; 01/26/2410:13 AM. Reason: Fixed typo in closing list tag.
Originally Posted by JoanneCooper “I really cannot see how ai assisted songs cannot be copyrighted” Mike Halloran “No one has said that. The Librarian of Congress has ruled that AI generated songs cannot and the courts have backed her up. David's explanation is pretty good.”
Yes but the OP asked if anybody had tried ChatGPT to generate lyrics and was immediately shut down by the copyright police. The OP wasn't discussing ai generated songs but rather ai generated lyrics. Ai is just a tool. Same as BIAB is a tool. Use it, don’t use it but don’t shoot down those who do.
I find it a bit odd that people who use machines to assist with the generation of music are so against using machines to help generate lyrics.
....................... I find it a bit odd that people who use machines to assist with the generation of music are so against using machines to help generate lyrics.
This is a very good point. I can have BiaB completely generate a song, chords and leads, and I can copyright it as my work, right? But if I have a synth voice sing lyrics completely generated by AI added to the BiaB generated song I can't? If these are true it is quite the paradox.
{edit} Also we must understand that each country has their own copyright laws and they may or may not be identical.
Last edited by MarioD; 01/25/2406:10 AM.
Today I bought a doughnut without the sprinkles. Diets are hard!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
Yes but the OP asked if anybody had tried ChatGPT to generate lyrics and was immediately shut down by the copyright police. The OP wasn't discussing ai generated songs but rather ai generated lyrics. Ai is just a tool. Same as BIAB is a tool. Use it, don’t use it but don’t shoot down those who do.
I find it a bit odd that people who use machines to assist with the generation of music are so against using machines to help generate lyrics.
First of all, thanks for making a free version of your lyrics program.
I spent some time playing around with it. The results were technically impressive. But I found that it wasn't really helpful for me to spark ideas. YMMV.
As for BiaB vs. AI, the issue is the ethics of how the source material was obtained.
All the material used in creating BiaB materials was done with full consent of the people who supplied the music, who knew what it was going to be used for, and they were compensated for it.
That's not the case with programs like ChatGPT, where the AI was trained on material that in many cases was used not only without consent, but was used obtained illegally and without license. As a result, people are suing for illegally using their works.
My favorite BiaB forum thread ever. Really appreciate the many well-formed points of view and the time it takes to post them. Important topic for sure...
DC Ron BiaB Audiophile Presonus Studio One StudioCat DAW dual screen Presonus Faderport 16 Too many guitars (is that a thing?)
Originally Posted by JoanneCooper “I really cannot see how ai assisted songs cannot be copyrighted” Mike Halloran “No one has said that. The Librarian of Congress has ruled that AI generated songs cannot and the courts have backed her up. David's explanation is pretty good.”
Yes but the OP asked if anybody had tried ChatGPT to generate lyrics and was immediately shut down by the copyright police. The OP wasn't discussing ai generated songs but rather ai generated lyrics. Ai is just a tool. Same as BIAB is a tool. Use it, don’t use it but don’t shoot down those who do.
I find it a bit odd that people who use machines to assist with the generation of music are so against using machines to help generate lyrics.
Notwithstanding the strawman about some fictitious "copyright police," how would such non-existent copyright police "shut down" somebody over something that's not copyrightable in the first place?
Another thing you and others are missing is that no one is complaining about people using "machines" to assist in composing music or lyrics. That's another strawman argument. The problem many have is with people using AI tools to do the work for them.
You know as well as anyone else here that using something like BIAB to help you compose a song and getting some AI tool to do it for you are not even close to being the same thing. You know as well as anyone else here that in order to get anything good out of BIAB it takes a lot of work and that the more work you put into it the better the finished product is going to be.
You also seem to have glossed over the whole thrust of this thread which is gone on off on two different forks: one of which is that AI generated work is not copyrightable, and that's pretty much sent in stone at this point. The other is that AI generated content tends to be lackluster at best and that it's real value is as an idea generator but in order to get anything of quality, and actual person has to take that output and shape it into something by the touch of a human hand.
Byron Dickens
BIAB. CbB. Mixbus 32C 8 HP Envy. Intel core i7. 16GB RAM W10. Focusrite Scarlett 18i 20. Various instruments played with varying degrees of proficiency.
@David. Thanks for giving it a try. I do realise it is not for everyone (just as Band-in-box is not for everyone).
@Bryron. Have you tried the tool yet? You may find something useful there. (Or not, and that’s okay).
Almost everyone I know struggles with different aspects of making music. Some struggle with singing, some struggle with playing an instrument, some struggle with theory, some battle with performing live. Some people will give up, others will persevere and others will use tools at their disposal to get through it.
I do not battle with band- in-a-box as I use it in a very simple way. I do struggle with writing good lyrics as well as getting ideas. So, when chat gpt came out I was all over it like a rash.
It is a tool. No more no less. Why do fellow musicians continue to judge people who use different tools (or use them in a different way) or produce different types of music to what we like?
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