A five song Chanukah album of computer-generated music that I created today in wildly disparate styles ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, December 23, 2024

A five song Chanukah album of computer-generated music that I created today in wildly disparate styles

Every year I present one or two new Chanukah music videos for each night of the holiday. I thought to try out the online resources for creating music from scratch.

The results are pretty much just as good as the original Chanukah songs (not song parodies) I've been listening to.

Not that they are excellent, but the lyrics are appropriate and the speed of creating these songs is amazing.

Here are five songs in various styles I asked AI to create. I did not change any lyrics. (I quickly turned them into videos with one picture each but I haven't looked at AI generated video yet.)

A Chanukah song in the style of 1940s and 1950s singers like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby:

Dreidel song, contemporary pop, female vocalist.

1970s rock song about latkes.

Rap about the Maccabees.

Broadway musical about dreidel gambling.

This is a little frightening but also an opportunity.

The songs are generic, because I didn't ask for anything specific outside the topic. But I could ask for a song to fit a storyline plot, and presumably I can change parts of a song in various ways (probably with the paid versions.) Meaning, instead of looking at AI as a threat, look at it as a creative partner that saves a lot of time.

For the near future, creating prompts is a science in itself, much like crafting a good Google search is a skill. The AIs mess up plenty (I asked a different one to create a children's song about a snow-golem that protects Jewish children from antisemites but it got everything terribly wrong.)

And also AI should up the game of creative professionals. When computer chess started getting as good as top grandmasters, the humans started learning new chess techniques from the machines and it made them better themselves. When everyone can create their own songs, then the songwriters must create songs the AIs cannot - at least not yet.

I use chat AI as a collaborator on the blog - asking it questions about finer points of international law, for example, and learning from it as if I have a (flawed) expert always around that I can argue and discuss things with.

Ai is here, and it is getting better very quickly. It brings great challenges, but also great opportunities. Hopefully next year's Chanukah music videos will become much better, by working with AI.