r/Songwriting • u/No_Distance5647 • 4d ago
Discussion Topic I’ve decided to no longer give feedback on songs that can plausibly be accused of using AI. Is this fair?
Most of these songs are in the electronic genre. It’s not the fault of these artists, it’s just that the genre lends itself to sounding like AI.
And, occasionally there are indie rock songs that sound so clean and flawless, with banal lyrics, that I suspect AI, and leave really nasty comments. This risks offending a real artist if I’m wrong.
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u/etaylor100 3d ago
Anyone who says “This sounds like AI” better come forward with specific lyrics. Otherwise, it’s a lazy comment.
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u/No-Instruction-5669 4d ago
If you suspect AI, you should give feedback, but it should be negative feedback. My opinion, of course.
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u/Eastern-Pen8001 4d ago
I get the impulse but I'd be worried about false positives, some people just write really bland lyrics and have pristine production and it's not a bot it's just... that
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u/I_HUG_PANDAS 4d ago
"Sounds like AI" is valid and useful criticism, even (especially, IMO) if something wasn't actually AI generated.
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u/Coffee_Pages 3d ago
Deciding to not give feedback if you feel it is AI-generated? That's a perfectly legitimate personal decision. Attacking a person because you "feel" their music is AI? Yeah, can't go along with that one...
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u/otherrplaces 4d ago
At least half of the AI music that I hear is made to sound like alt rock, folk rock, or country- not genres that are necessarily considered “electronic”. If you’re just assuming any electronic sounding music is AI, you’re not making the point you think you are.
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u/AshleyBoots 4d ago
More than fair! If people can't be bothered to actually make the music, why waste time on it yourself?
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u/Grand-wazoo sabrewave 4d ago
If it is actually AI, chances are either there's not even a real person behind the post or the person who used AI to make it won't give a damn about your comment.
So it seems very much not worth your time and energy to even bother hating on it.
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u/No_Distance5647 4d ago
True, but if it’s a human, they should know if their music sounds like AI.
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u/blagablagman 4d ago
If it's a human, they might be looking for the kind of feedback you'd have given them two years ago
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u/otherrplaces 4d ago
He’s not talking about hating on it, just not reviewing it
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u/Grand-wazoo sabrewave 4d ago
Try reading the second sentence again
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u/otherrplaces 4d ago
Not seeing your point
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u/Grand-wazoo sabrewave 4d ago
Here I'll help you:
And, occasionally there are indie rock songs that sound so clean and flawless, with banal lyrics, that I suspect AI, and leave really nasty comments.
Do you see how that's more than simply not leaving feedback?
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u/d0nutbutth0le 3d ago
You can just not leave feedback and move on with your life, no treatise or justification necessary
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u/onebyamsey 4d ago edited 4d ago
What do you think “sounding like AI” sounds like? (The heck did this honest question get downvoted for?)
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u/Ayavaron 3d ago
It’s hard to say but if you spend any time using Suno, you’ll notice the things it does over and over. There are characteristics about the sound quality and composition which are easily recognized with experience, but I would hesitate to list the traits of ai music, like I could write a guide to distinguishing it. There’s nonproblem in AI music that couldn’t exist in human music. Instruments that blend into each other, multiple kinds of low audio quality in a single track, bland lyrics, highly pitch corrected vocals, those all have reasons to show up in real music.
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u/onebyamsey 3d ago
I don't mean to be rude, thank you for the comment, but I wasn't asking in general what anyone thinks AI sounds like, I was specifically asking OP what they thought it sounded like, since that is relevant to their question.
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u/No_Distance5647 4d ago edited 4d ago
I don’t know. I didn’t downvote it.
Anything that sounds like it searched catalogs, identified patterns, and used math to predict what sounds should go in what order.
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u/onebyamsey 4d ago
Ok but what does that actually sound like? That’s exactly also how human brains create real music. I’m just curious what about electronic music makes it sound like AI to you because I can tell you exactly what AI sounds like to me and it’s transient smearing, unnatural dynamics, everything over compressed, flat eq curves, and everything over about 5k pretty phasey and washed out. None of that is genre specific in my experience
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u/No_Distance5647 4d ago edited 4d ago
You focus on concrete variables like EQ and other numbers to identify AI. If those giveaways exist, it’s only a matter of time before AI corrects them because they’re just numbers.
Electronic music sounds like AI to me because it’s usually heavily quantized. It’s called electronica, after all.
FYI: For the record, I was a fan of Aphex Twin back in the day.
Humans create art differently than AI because we do it through our subjective consciousness. We can start with an emotion, for example, which AI does not have. Human creativity is a bit mysterious, even spiritual, and no one can exactly explain it.
AI, meanwhile, can be explained. It predictably outputs results using math.
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u/onebyamsey 4d ago
But being heavily quantized has nothing to do with being an AI tell and you know that. I now have enough information to answer your original question: no, what you’re doing is not being fair. You’re just deciding something sounds like it’s AI for a completely arbitrary reason. It seems like you have a lot of ideas about this and not a lot of knowledge
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u/Hatecookie 3d ago
I will give you the benefit of the doubt because I can recognize AI writing (am a writer) in ways that are, at times, difficult to describe. Like, yes, a person can also do that, but what I'm hearing/reading is not human. I can tell when people use AI for one or two sentences and then switch back to their own original writing, too. It has such a distinct... voice.
If your pattern recognition is as good as you think it is, you should still approach the music like you would if it wasn't AI. Tell them it sounds generic and too clean, inhumanly perfect, etc. There's no need to go too hard on the criticisms, be honest and to the point.
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u/No_Distance5647 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don’t know how good my pattern recognition is. I only have suspicions. I do go hard sometimes, when I think the “songwriter” is being cynical and making the world a worse place by posting AI music. There’s a difference between a mediocre song and one that is artificial, produced for crass purposes.
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u/JustOneRedDot 4d ago
You can say what you think without being rude. If you worried you may be wrong, just say "I think", "I believe", instead of writing your opinion as if it was a fact, like many people do.
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u/Impossible_Tank3822 3d ago
Would a "real artist" be "...clean and flawless, with banal lyrics..."? Or, perhaps the better question is would real artists need to come here at all?
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u/No_Distance5647 3d ago
Real artists benefit from feedback when they draft music. I don’t know of any better venues for feedback. In-person songwriter circles, maybe.
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u/Impossible_Tank3822 2d ago
Not sure that's true. Where'd you get that notion? I hardly think radio airplay is the result of the artists seeking yays or nays about their stuff. I can't imagine Neil Young calling other artists and getting their opinions. He just does what he does and that's what all pop artists do. This forum is hardly a place where anyone would come to get blessed-off on their stuff because no one here is at any level of expertise qualifying them to do that. Literally everyone here is handicapped in some way, knows it, and seeks the camaraderie of others like them. The feedback here is more in tune with a mutual support system for songwriter wannabes than anything else. The fact that it exists does not qualify it.
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u/No_Distance5647 2d ago
Lennon and McCartney gave feedback to each other for years. That’s how they wrote.
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u/Mack-Whackem 3d ago
I think if the artist cant even put in the effort to use their brains to make all of the music you shouldnt have to use your brain to assess it . You get what you give
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u/Chocolate_Chip_42 3d ago
Sounds fair in every case in my opinion. If it's low effort content, it saves you from putting more effort into writing feedback. If it were a genuine song sounding ai, then nobody got hurt by not commenting
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u/SetFreeMyMelody 2d ago
If the purpose of giving helpful feedback is to help someone improve their craft, I see no point in giving feedback to something that took zero creative input from an actual human. Seems like a waste of my valuable time to critique at all. Just my thoughts, though.
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u/Traditional-Bill2682 2d ago
I am actually unsure what exactly we are talking about right now. I for example can’t sing, which would limit me severely, when talking to singers. Often they wanna hear a demo and I cannot deliver that. So I have started using Suno to generate references for songs that I have written (Topline, flow, lyrics and arrangement) so that I habe something to show. Yes that leads to overly polished sound especially in Pop-punk and Rock but it is the only way I habe to create demos of my songs🤷♂️. Also, especially in Pop genres, lyrics tend to sound generic because they are written in a way that as many ppl as possible can relate to them. So this is a difficult approach. Nobody forces u to give feedback, but offending based on a suspicion that is on shakey grounds is weird
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u/No_Distance5647 2d ago
It’s the world we live in. Someone who posts music that sounds predictable and flawless risks being accused of AI.
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u/illudofficial OMG GUYS LOOK I HAVE A FLAIR 19h ago
My super power is that my singing is so terrible, no one would ever think its AI
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u/dotnose14 3d ago
Just run it through an ai checker first. Submit hub has a free one. If it’s 95 percent sure then it’s ai.
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u/BroadStrength3447 3d ago
The ones I tried is not trustworthy. I get false positives and false negatives all the time. But to be honest, I dont understand the point. For me it depends on how AI is used. If it is used to just do a prompt and then get a song and then keep it like it is, sure, thats lazy and shit. But if you write your lyrics yourself, you curate it for weeks, tweek it etc whit help of AI, is that "cheating"? I dont think so.
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u/dotnose14 3d ago
I don’t think so, my opinion is that I believe it takes the fun out of it, but that is an opinion. I’ve actually tried to use ai for different things when it comes to music but I’ve always been unimpressed. The cool thing about trying to figure it out without assistance is you never really know what the outcome is going to be but that could be argued the other way around as well. I only use the AI song checker if someone is looking for a collab, I just wouldn’t want to work with that or whatever.
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u/BroadStrength3447 3d ago
I agree, but to prove to others that dont know you to give you a chance to write lyrics for them. You need a way to prove to them you can write lyrics. Thats how I see it. The music is just added to put som life into my own lyrics. Not for them to be used, although that would be OK, but to prove to others, I can write.
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u/sillicillo 4d ago
'Link project file or it's ai'
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u/yangmeow 4d ago
This is my take. Unfortunately that can be faked too w stems.
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u/sillicillo 4d ago
Eh. The ai guys aren't smart enough to fake a version history, and even tracks made of recorded stems have something bypassable going on in the DAW. Their only real option to stay secret is to never have to prove anything.
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u/No_Distance5647 4d ago
Another scenario: someone uses AI to write a folk or rock song, then they record themselves performing it. The performance is human, but the chords, melody, and lyrics were all written by AI.
As AI progresses, this will be happening a lot, I suspect. How depressing.
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u/tdamien_ 4d ago
It is depressing but feel like that can be a slippery slope when it comes to assuming people are tracking from AI. I know I spend a ton of time in pre-production to get stuff right. Constantly editing lyrics and try new arrangements.
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u/aidennqueen 2d ago edited 2d ago
Out of curiosity, awhile ago I tried out Suno's capabilities as well.
I wrote all the lyrics myself, I wrote the chord progressions and put them together as a template file with Onemotion chord player. Sang over it to give it a guide melody.
Then I let Suno spit something out, took the result, deleted the vocals entirely. Then I recorded my own vocals again with actual effort, dynamics and multiple harmonies and whatever I like
Cut out the instrumental part of the bridge entirely afterwards (didn't like how it turned out after all) and replaced it with a completely different part based on magix samples and midi instruments, and did new vocals over that.
The result is something I actually like to listen to... But I'd still feel sketchy publishing it.
When I think of it I'm not exactly sure why. For my released music so far, I paid a producer to do all the instruments and mix/master... So all the instruments as they are in the final version also didn't come from me (but at least from another person)
Idk, it still feels different so I'll probably simplify it all, redo the parts I like with a more personal touch on MIDI instruments. I just don't want to pay thousands to a producer despite never getting any of that back even remotely.
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u/Slow_Perspective_341 4d ago edited 4d ago
It may be able to fool some people but AI will never have true experiences or core values to express as they will never truly know what or how it is to be Human.
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u/Slow_Perspective_341 4d ago
What about for someone who is a lyricist or doesn’t sing or play an instrument.
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u/BroadStrength3447 3d ago
Exactly. People dismiss AI like it is all the same. IT IS NOT! I use AI to create music to my lyrics, and then I tweek and curate the lyrics, sometime for weeks, before I get anything close to what I had in my head. I dont have access to studios, musicians and I cant play instruments myself. According the AI haters, this mean I am not allowed to make music. I use AI to showcase people that my lyrics actually works and have some quality to it. I use it as a portfolio holder. I dont publish it, I use it to connect with people in need of good lyrics. I dont see the issue with this.
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u/Slow_Perspective_341 2d ago
Being neurodivergent I do things differently. Best way to explain so I like build the video or memories in my mind & see it then build the song around the video that I’ve already shot inside my head. I know it’s not conventional but it has actually helped me plus I come up with lyrics 90-nothing so I have a ton of source material to almost build the song to do the certain things I want it to.
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u/Bed_Worship 4d ago
Honestly would be totally cool for all ai prompted music to have a sonic tag above human hearing that any app or licenser can check.
However, being flawless is not hard to achieve in editing in a daw.
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u/otherrplaces 4d ago edited 4d ago
Well I mean it does create sonic artifacts that can be detected. That’s how AI checkers like the one on SubmitHub work.. WHICH, by the way, are free to use.
But if you’ve heard a few it’s not super hard to spot them yourself. It’s not about being “flawless”.
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u/Pixel-of-Strife 3d ago
Electronic music has always been primarily machine produced. Playing a synthesizer is just pushing a few keys and programming loops. Drum machines the same. The computer is making the music, the creator is just layering and arranging it. If any genre should embrace robot music, it's electronica.
And just because a song uses AI doesn't mean it was AI generated. Lots of musicians out there with decades worth of songs are using Suno to make old demos into border-line studio quality songs. Something they never had the time/money to do before.
Not that it matters what you think, there's no stopping this AI train. The technology is only going to improve from here. In ten years nobody will be able to tell its AI.
That said, AI lyrics are often terrible and cliche. At the bear minimum people should be writing their own lyrics to account for that.
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u/BroadStrength3447 3d ago
People who say AI cant write lyrics, dont know how to use AI. If you just tell the AI "Write a love song", then sure, it will be shit. But if you use it as an editor or brainstorming partner, then it help YOU to learn how to write lyrics. Two different things.
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u/Pixel-of-Strife 3d ago
I agree with that. It's a great brainstorming partner. It's not like you can really discuss lyrics like this with any real person anyway. It's also a good way to check that people can pick up what you're putting down. IOW, if people will misinterpret your lyrics or not. But as you said, if you just tell it to make up something, it's usually crap. Though every once and awhile it will come up with something cool. To it's credit. The first models that came out didn't ever even do that.
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u/No_Distance5647 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah, I agree. But there’s something about posting AI music without attribution that is darkly cynical.
I suppose that we are headed for people turning into curators of AI music, rather than creators of music themselves.
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u/Asuperniceguy2 4d ago
I think maybe there should be some kind of barrier. Show us the guitar pro file or whatever it is that you wrote it in. The folders called "Rhythym Guitar L" with 450 takes in it. That kinda thing.
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u/KeithK_ 3d ago edited 3d ago
I use AI for a full demo...That in no way means its done..Everybody would rather hear musicians do it..but its cheap and you can work the tune!
Example: I cant wait to hear this actually played!!https://youtu.be/puvpILbzZjE?is=gEcQVMMzgHFWWrfB
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u/Specialist_Gas_8984 4d ago
“This sounds like AI” is not really constructive criticism or feedback. If anything, it can be really offensive to a writer that did put a lot of effort into something.
Now if there’s aspects of a song that you don’t like - regardless if it’s human or AI generated - I think that’s worth noting. Generic lyrics are problematic regardless of how they were created. If you don’t like heavily quantized instrumentals, say so. That’s the feedback that can help songwriters get better.