Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbot, can now write songs owing to a partnership with Suno, a next-generation AI music app.
Users may input suggestions into Copilot, such as “Create a pop song about adventures with your family,” and have Suno bring their musical ideas to life via a plugin. Suno can create whole songs from a single line, including lyrics, instrumentals, and singing voices.
Users of Copilot may get access to the Suno integration by opening Microsoft Edge, going to Copilot.Microsoft.com, checking in with their Microsoft account, and activating the Suno plugin, or by clicking on the Suno logo that reads “Make music with Suno.”
“We believe that this partnership will open new horizons for creativity and fun, making music creation accessible to everyone,” says a post published this morning on the Microsoft Bing site. “This experience will begin rolling out to users starting today, ramping up in the coming weeks.”
Both IT titans and startups are rapidly investing in next-generation AI-driven music production technology. DeepMind, a Google AI division, and YouTube collaborated in November to unveil Lyria, a next-generation AI model for music, and Dream Track, a limited-access tool for creating AI compositions in YouTube shorts. Meta has made numerous of its AI music-generating initiatives public. Stability AI and Riffusion, on the other hand, have established platforms and applications for producing music and effects from prompts.
However, many of the ethical and legal concerns surrounding AI-generated music have yet to be resolved.
AI algorithms “learn” from existing music to generate similar effects, something not all artists—or Gen AI users—are happy with, particularly when artists did not agree to having an AI algorithm train on their music and were not compensated for it. Stability AI’s own gen AI audio head resigned after claiming that gen AI “exploits creators,” and the Grammys have prohibited totally AI-generated songs from being considered for prizes.
Many new AI firms believe that fair usage exempts them from having to pay artists whose works are publicly available, even if they are copyrighted. However, it is an unexplored legal area.
Suno, for its part, does not divulge the source of its AI training data on its website, nor does it prohibit users from adding suggestions such as “in the style of [artist],” as some other generation AI music programs do.
Homemade tunes that employ gen AI to create recognizable sounds that can be passed off as legitimate—or at least close enough—have gone popular while the use rights issues are worked out in court. Music companies were eager to flag them to streaming partners, claiming intellectual property issues, and they were mostly successful. However, the designers of next-generation AI tools have simply relocated underground.
Clarity on the legal status of Gen AI music might come soon, if not via judicial rulings. A recently filed Senate measure would provide artists, including musicians, with redress when their digital likenesses, including musical genres, are utilized without their consent.
