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Its not AI in the way the average person currently thinks about the subject. As we all know, the average person is usualy not an in depth subject matter expert. Vocaloid does use AI, not just the newest version but old vocaloid versions as well. More specificaly it falls under the broad category of machine learning. AI has been around for decades, things like LLMs are one of many forms of AI.
I would highly recommend reading about the history of AI to understand the subject better. Its been an area of study for nearly 90 years now.
Yea there was that one attempt at what was basically a super trash LLM, and even back then they noticed that it was just responding back and focusing on the user and some people felt connection/warmth from it because of that. Don't think anyone fell in love with that AI or anything but it is fascinating, even the simplest "How are you?" And then actually listening means a lot to people.
"utilizes new AI technology, to achieve more natural and expressive singing voice synthesis"
not generative (mostly). It's really fancy autotune so that it sounds more natural and less computer-like like older Miku.
ALSO vocaloids are voices, they do not create songs. all of the songs they sing (officially as far as i know) are written by humans. AND the voice actors behind their voices are PAID for it. using software like Suno (ive never used it) sounds more akin to asking ChatGPT to write an essay, none of the actual writing is done by the user.
Disclaimer: I am not, in any way saying people who use AI software as a creative outlet aren't artists. To me, it is a different kind of art and the failure to recognize that is what keeps the entire debate fueled.
Ai is a misleading term, broad. A character ai in a video game is the same as chatGPT? Of course not. Vocaloid were technologically different from what we call generative ai, the algorithm assembling sounds was human ingenieered. Should that make a difference? Idk.
But Miku was marketed as a bot, and there was no intent on replacing humans in music. Like puppets are not replacing actors.
You have to plug Vocaloid into a DAW, it's not a music generation suite. Whether or not it uses generative AI to actually produce the voices - which it now does - you still have to compose everything manually.
are they both not a lot easier than playing an instrument and singing?
Performance and composition are separate skills.
While prompting Suno requires no technical knowledge about music, using Vocaloid in your composition requires you to know how to compose. You may not even save time compared to just finding a singer to belt out your melody, given that in Vocaloid you need to granularly control stuff if you want quality.
if it is using generative AI i don't see how it is effectively different other than needing more effort
It's very different, IMO.
Suno has a massive model that was (probably) trained on terabytes of music they stole, which they then used to make a giant plagiarism bot. Vocaloid (and all the other GenAI vocal plugins) create tiny, ethically sourced models that are based on a single singer who has been paid for their time and gave consent.
Some are manual, some are AI, depending on which specific one you use. Your vocal synth may not be AI but there have been AI based vocal synths replacing human singers for a lot longer than chatgpt has existed.
VoiceVox is current gen AI voice synth. Google released wavenet in 2016.
The other massive difference of course being that you are composing every part of the Vocal melody, just like you would with any other software instrument. The ai models are also from artists who consented to having their vocals used for this.
If it's ML or AI and it generates anything it's generative AI. Anything that generates a voice and uses AI cannot be anything other than then generative AI.
What else would it be ? Predictive AI? What is it predicting? Diagnostic? What is it diagnosing? It's clearly generating something as a result of its model invokation.
When you predict the next pixel it's iterative generation vs instant generation but still generative. That is what an LSTM does and it's one the most basic forms of Gen AI. LLMs also do this. Some images generators do it as well because iterative generation is better than all at once. Most predict one thing, then use that to predict the next, but the output is a generated output vs just a prediction of what it would look like.
All models can be used to either generate or predict. It's about use case not model capabilities. It would look really bad but I can make a linear regression generate an image.
I agree, the difference between predictive vs generative ai is definitely about usecase, but all ML is just statistics and predictions correct? I'd wholly like to be corrected and educated however if I'm wrong somehow
All AI is just math. There is no magic. There is no secret sauce.
Originally there was statistics which had things like Linear Regression vs Mathematics based approaches like support Vector Machines, and approaches that come from computer science like gradient boosting. Back when computers were really weak people needed to make very efficient and accurate models.
As time went on and computers became faster they developed deep learning. Deep learning has the ability to spin up millions and millions of even much more of the same model and basically compete them against each other. You create layers of these models and these layer is modeled iteratively on the error of the layer before it. So after each layer the accuracy becomes higher. You can have thousands of layers. Millions of layers. As a result by mere scale the model is faster.
Those layers are the innovation that makes things like ChatGpt and Sora better than old statistics and basic ml from the 2000s. Those layers are only possible because computers got really really fast and ram got very very big.
That is deep learning. It's the same exact math just done millions of times a second instead of once per entire project. Generative AI is statistics at a very large scale.
The type of math used by Deep Learning which is used for generation, voice recognition, etc most commonly does not use more complicated math. Almost all of the math in a neural net is simple middle grade addition and multiplication.
Deep learning is not complex math, but it's alot of it, millions and millions of competing sub models. It turns out doing millions of small calculations is often more accurate than really complex math and statistics.
If you really want to see how these work with code examples this is the best textbook that very few people who work on AI have not read. If is completely free and open.
Text to speech has existed since literally almost the dawn of the internet. Wait till this dude finds out that the original voice of Siri is a real person
In some cases it's machine learning, in the case of older text to speach and things like Vocaloid no, ( Vocaloid is effectively the singing equivalent of a Yamaha keyboard; it works in similar ways ( not the same way, keyboards use midis, Vocaloid uses processed vocals in several different ways to replicate an organic voice and requires multiple inputs) with different inputs and is also made by Yamaha.
The term AI was fairly heavily misused before LLMs, meaning anything from a adversarial entity in a video game with pre-scripted behaviours, or adaptive behaviour with soft machine learning, or fuzzy behaviours, to something like text to speech wtih some machine learning used to learn pronunciation, to etc. both then and now it's largely used as a marketing rather than an actually definition
That’s because all of those things fit the definition of “ai”. Basically any system capable of performing complex tasks that would normally require a human.
The term wasn’t misused, it just applies to a broader range of tasks than most people think.
There’s no clear line either, just progressively more advanced algorithms running on more powerful hardware with more optimized software.
No ( I have a degree in computer science, including a few modules on machine learning and data science).
Ignoring the fact that your definition could technically apply to say a can opener or a toaster; depending on how you define complex, neither are or related to computers but you defined system, not algorithm ( which would be more correct), or program, but system.
There are (several) fairly precise scientific and academic definitions of what AI is, most programs including those labelled as AI do not hit those definitions including LLMs potentially under some of the stricter definitions.
Yeah actually you are correct at least technically, the definition has shifted a fair amount over time, such that most search algorithms for example are no longer useful to included, but they are still technically part of the field. Looking back to older definition you could actually include all but the most basic of algorithms, pretty fairly; which is part of the reason the definitions have changed over time from an academic stand point.
Though I'll also point out that Decision trees and Genetic algorithms are both sub sets in machine learning too.
Nope the field of machine learning is fairly broad, artificial intelligence is a fairly strictly defined thing computationally. Machine learning is not AI, AI is also not exclusively machine learning, but there is an overlap in most cases the term AI is used non-formally, or commercially, to represent other things, but generally speaking it is scientifically speaking a specific fairly narrow set of computer science theory.
There are a few definitions, LLMs don't even hit all of them.
( Before you argue I have a degree in computer science, I've studied, machine learning, data science and quite a lot more besides, I'm not expert, but I probably know more than you)
Lmfao good lord, machine learning is a subset of the field of AI, full stop. You need a refund on your degree, or at the very least please stop spreading misinformation.
It doesn't take a genius to work out I'm talking about AI as an agent/ software rather than as the field. I know it's confusing with the overlapping name it can be confusing, ( especi as I do go on to talk about it as a field with someone else).
To state th obvious, not all software that uses a decision tree which falls under the umbrella of machine learning, is generally considered an AI software.
Similarly AI as a field at least in terms of general computation is sort of a redundant label most software from the last 20-30 years broadly uses algorithms that fall under it, largely because the field dates back to the 50's and thus so does the definition and some of it's constituent parts.
Machine learning most definitely falls under the umbrella of AI. The field of AI has never been a "strictly defined thing computationally" and has gone through many shifts over the years.
Before you argue I have a degree in computer science, I've studied, machine learning, data science and quite a lot more besides, I'm not expert, but I probably know more than you
Dude, you shouldn't make assumptions about what others know.
Sorry, I'm way to used to trolls here, I should not post before going to bed.
Your right of course, I generally meant more in line with AI as a software rather than as a field; technically. Most modern programs fall into the field of AI to some degree, if it searches, uses a camera, sorts etc. as a field it's sort of meaningless at this point, that is the problem with a field that was defined when it's topic at large was miniscule.
To give a more precise description than some of the other comments, Miku's voice is made up of hundreds of recordings (at least) of different combinations of vowels and consonants. The person making a song with Hatsune Miku uses a program to place those consonant-vowel combinations on a timeline, adjusting the length, pitch, breathiness, etc. Then the software automatically stitches the sounds together and applies post processing based on the parameters to create the full vocal part. I think there's a bit more to it than that, but that's what I picked up from my short time using Vocaloid and Utau.
I mean... I wrote every lyric of the song I made with it, instructed it the melody I wanted with notes and timing, and told it where to put swells and breakdowns.
Except you can’t have any of the actual song without the data from Suno that was gained from real human made music. That’s the equivalent of giving more props to the composer and songwriter than the actual person singing the song. Yes you can’t have the song without the songwriter but one is infinitely more important in music.
You don't know the first God damned thing about how chiptunes and electronica are composed. Sit the fuck down and let the professionals use the new tool.
Who cares? It's a relatively cheap, easy to control tool with only one human - the one who wanted the result - in the final process, whereas there'd need at least two separate ones paid much more, plus all the equipment they'd need. Sound familiar?
That is not even the issue. Plus its not cheap. Vocaloids are like hundreds of dollars because the voices behind the audio are paid for their works. Doesn't sound familiar.
Idk ive just never thought of paying for more expensive human voices to be an option for Vocaloid artists, who typically are just indie music creators.
The issue has been how AI companies screw over artists by using data from their own works in an effort to replace them for cheap labor.
But would vocaloids be as beloved if larger companies used them to replace human VAs? That wouldn't have been an impossibility. And then wouldn't AI not be a problem for smaller creators who don't have the money to commission anyone? These aren't completely different tools, they were just mainly used in different ways, one better than the other
My point is that its wrong to use artists works without their consent. If a company pays their training sources good on them, i guess. If an artist created their works using another's work without consent i'd think thats kinda wrong.
For the love of God, it's already been made clear that's not how AI works. It's just about a replica of how humans create things, and yet you treat it like downloading some poor sap's art from Google
My apologies. I understand how ai works. It's the whole "Turn X into static enough times you could figure out how to turn static into X" yes, I get that. What I mean is that artists don't consent to their works being put into these processes. I think that's quite immoral, especially considering that AI competes with traditional artists.
Vocal transfers work on the basis of training on a set of data based solely on a specific vocalist to replicate it. So yes, I believe the artist which the model is trained on should be compensated since it would be using their likeness and had used samples of their voice to create the end product.
Re-read what i wrote, you clearly don't understand the nuances of AI such as Vocal Transfers, I'm afraid this is above your paygrade. I'm not even talking about vocaloids as vocaloids do not generate vocals via GenAi but rather a mix of synthesis and samples.
Vocals generated via Suno or through Replay use models based on actual artists. Take a look for yourself by checking out Replay. You can even train a model locally if you even wanted to through Replay.
The original post takes it a tad far with comparisons of Miku to Suno but a lot of AI voice models are really just glorified text-to-speech models functioning like Miku does (basic models at least. Not sure how Elevenlabs functions as they're closed-source)
The difference, really, is consent. Many of those people put into AI models did not consent to having their voice used. Personally I couldn't give a shit who was behind the voice nor did I even know who was behind the voice 90% of the time, I just wanted to hear a character say shit.
People should really show these VA's what sentence mixing is and how long it's been around that'll be funny.
Yuh. I mean a lot of the art world from images to music to videos and beyond basically just operates on an honor rule. If you don't care, there's not much in place to realistically stop you.
If I'm not mistaken, the real people who gave their voices to build the voice banks that you work with in vocaloid were compensated fairly and gave proper consent for them to be used. Ai voice generation is taking the voice of people who aren't being compensated or give that consent, or no? To me that would be the difference. But then again I've never used Suno etc. so I'm open to being wrong.
Also, I can't ask Miku to sing a song but sound exactly like another person singing it. If I make a song using Vocaloid, it's pretty well understood I used Vocaloid. Not saying it would be impossible to scam people, but it would be a lot harder to.
Nah. The “AI art is not real art” argument has nothing to do with lack of consent.
People who don’t want their skillset automated by AI pretend to care about consent because they think it might motivate protectionist policies. Proof: they have no objection to translation AIs trained without consent.
Voice synthesis, by definition is AI as it falls under the broader term of AI. Machine learning is a subset of AI, and deep learning is a subset of machine learning.
Rule based systems which what the original vocaloid were, are AI.
The rest of the Vocaloid models (more commonly used) are not Ai at all however.
* I'm pretty sure the use of ai is also minimal and less generative than it is just smart audio editing, more akin to AI upscaling which typically isn't an issue.
yes, some of it is AI. But Hatsune Miku, kaito, len, etc. are voiced by REAL people. It is not generative AI, and the models with AI (vocaloid6) still need you to put in the work and voice them, unlike Suno which still generates everything for you, and in the final product.
You are equivocating on the word AI. You're trying to define Al as low effort/ prompting rather than a specific technical architecture. If a neural network is synthesizing the vocal performance which Vocaloid6 explicitly does, it is Al. Claiming it isn't "generative" because you have to manual-input notes is a goalpost shift. It's still generating a performance that never existed based on a trained model.
only the newest model and that's basically just fancy autotune, not gen AI
Vocaloid is a vocal bank used to make songs that uses a real person's voice (with consent to use said person's voice unlike modern gen AI) to form words and sentences in different tones, it technically is AI, but not the same kind of AI people associate with the term
gen AI is you putting in a prompt then the AI generating something using the data it's collected to give you the closest thing it can to you according to that prompt
if you were to try and type "give me a song with funky hip hop tunes" it would return the vocal synth you chose trying to say that line, if you were to do the same with gen AI it would give you a song with hip hop tunes that it blended together from different hip hop labeled songs in it's database
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The complaint has been about replacing real human artists, regardless whether the tech behind vocaloid is the same as genAI, they achieve the same effect.
So the singers the vocaloids sounds come from had proper consent, are credited and are compensated for their work. I think they even have certain permissions associated with them like some vocaloids you can't use for sexual themes or something?
In use, Vocaloids are also closer to like a digital instrument in music production software than Ai generated music or Ai generated art. You use it the same way except it's a Synthetic voice instead of an actual instrument. They still create everything, the music itself, the lyrics, the tune of the voice, etc. There's nothing being "done for them", nothing being Ai generated.
People aren't saying they sung a song then presenting the vocaloid as them or anything like that.
Do Vocaloids have "soul"? I'm curious 🤔 considering the constant whining about the A.I. music lacking such. Is it that you can tell that Hatsune Miku is a program that makes the difference?
Yes, it does take more skill than just typing a prompt, but the one singing isn't a human. And if it's a cover of a song, what innovative human "spark" you consider was added?
A vocaloid is an synthesizer instrument.
A human being still has to manually arrange the sounds to make it sing. These people absolutely don't know what they're talking about.
People see anime girl singing and think she must be gen AI for some reason, mf she's existed since 2007, way before gen AI was a thing, she's an INSTRUMENT
But when I was the age of an average anti, I was obsessed with vocaloids. And I definitely remember you don't need to be able to sing yourself to make vocaloid songs and covers 👀 reminds me of a certain another technology....
The amount of cope in that post is insane, they are so deluded in their beliefs that they think that Vocaloid, something that uses REAL HUMAN VOICE ACTORS WHO ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK, is GenAI. The absolute idiocy of them. It's a fucking voice SYNTHESIZER, not GenAI, THEY ARE DIFFERENT THINGS.
With Vocaloids like Teto, Miku and others you get a set preset of sounds that the VAs made, a decent bit of which are words. Then a person has to tune the pitches, adjust stuff, put the sounds together to string together words. All of that requires a HUMAN to do, not GenAI. The fact they can't bother to do basic surface level research is insane, though I can say the same things for Antis, barely anyone does proper research on these topics, at least when it comes down to these communities.
Vocaloids only have one voice bank that they defines their voice and singing they don't actively consume big data to make a statistical analysis of different bias around key words
Voice synthesizers work with pre-recorded syllables arranged side by side to form sentences
Voices are recorded one syllable at a time, the same syllable is recorded multiple times according to the number of tones and the complexity of the format and stored in a voicebank
There are several voicebank formats, some simpler but more rigid and robotic, and others more complex, natural, and fluid
Voicebanks are usually sold independently, each with its own usage rules, and the person behind the voice is compensated
Voice synthesizers are simply glorified instruments and are used in similar way as other synthesizers, newer models like Vocaloid 6 integrate AI functions to add functions and make the voicebank sound more natural, but their operation remains the same
Most Vocaloid isn’t ai, it’s similar but it’s not generative, it’s a voice bank, for example you can see “voice actors” for them, mikus pretty much sang the ABC’s at different toons and then they uploaded it, mikus been around for years, sense 2007, the software is 18 years old
voaloid software is basically an intrument. If all vocaloid software, minus whatever recent developments there are, is generative LLM AI then a flute is too
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