Young Guru calls out Timbaland over "dangerous & corny" AI music plans: "This ain't it!"

[KingsOfKings]

Young Guru has called out Timbaland over his “dangerous and corny” plans for AI music.

During an interview with Forbes earlier this week, Timbo revealed plans to launch a startup that would “commercialize artificial intelligence software” with the goal of “revolutionizing how songs are made.”



“It’s going to really be a new way of creating and a new way of generating money with less costs,” he said. “I’m already here. This is what I’m doing. I’m going to lead the way.”

The software was developed by Light Energy Labs, a Miami-based company he co-founded last year with software programmer and producer Zayd “Creatrgod” Portillo


Timbaland believes AI voice filters will “open up an unprecedented world of creativity in music,” and hopes his startup will “usher in the new era.”

He added that aside from helping emerging artists, the software could also benefit established ones, meaning a producer could use the voice of “a music legend who is no longer with us.



But Young Guru doesn’t share Timbaland’s enthusiasm. JAY-Z‘s longtime engineer took to his Instagram Stories on Thursday (May 18) to criticize the producer’s AI plans.

“@Timbaland I love you my brother. You know I do. But this ain’t it!!!” he wrote. “This is dangerous and at a basic level it’s corny!! I will be on the side of the luddites


Young Guru has been highly critical of AI technology. After a fake Kendrick Lamar song surfaced online in February, Guru explained why he was so against it.

“This has dominated my Howard group chat for a couple days. Ok I’m at the point where I can voice my concerns with our current state of AI,” he wrote on Instagram. “I have followed as many versions of what AI could do for some years now.



I remember being at MIT and students showing me a project where they were actively feeding a computer ‘All’ the jazz records that ever existed. So that AI could analyze and create music in any style of any musician.”

He continued: “I didn’t think we would get here this fast with the voice. Of course my mind goes to the ethical and legal aspects of what can be done with programs like Tacotron 2. You add that to the power of ChatGPT and you realize we are in a very groundbreaking but dangerous moment. It’s not the tech, it’s the evil that men do with the tech.”

 

[Piff Perkins]

Salute to Guru for naming names. I have no issue with AI being used as a tool for producers to make better music. Say you're trying to get a rapper to ride the beat a certain way, and you use AI (featuring the rapper's voice) to show him exactly how the flow would sound. That's perfectly fine. But using AI to mimic artists and PROFIT via sales is insane and I'm stunned an artist like Timbo is cosigning this.

Even the thing with artists who passed away...it's very obvious where this is going. If the label owns your music rights after you die, what's to stop them from authorizing the creation of a new album using AI? It was recently announced there is no more unreleased Pop Smoke music to pillage, for instance. Well what if the label just has a company create new shyt? Would audiences give a shyt it's AI or would they just bop their heads to the new shyt.

 

[CrushedGroove]

Timbo full of shyt for this. In a perfect world, AI would be used to perform work related tasks to provide better quality of life for people worldwide. This would provide leisure time for people to fully indulge their creativity and possibly make some of the best music and art we've ever heard of seen.

AI should be outlawed from doing shyt like this.

 

[gho3st]

Young Guru has called out Timbaland over his “dangerous and corny” plans for AI music.

During an interview with Forbes earlier this week, Timbo revealed plans to launch a startup that would “commercialize artificial intelligence software” with the goal of “revolutionizing how songs are made.”



“It’s going to really be a new way of creating and a new way of generating money with less costs,” he said. “I’m already here. This is what I’m doing. I’m going to lead the way.”

The software was developed by Light Energy Labs, a Miami-based company he co-founded last year with software programmer and producer Zayd “Creatrgod” Portillo


Timbaland believes AI voice filters will “open up an unprecedented world of creativity in music,” and hopes his startup will “usher in the new era.”

He added that aside from helping emerging artists, the software could also benefit established ones, meaning a producer could use the voice of “a music legend who is no longer with us.



But Young Guru doesn’t share Timbaland’s enthusiasm. JAY-Z‘s longtime engineer took to his Instagram Stories on Thursday (May 18) to criticize the producer’s AI plans.

“@Timbaland I love you my brother. You know I do. But this ain’t it!!!” he wrote. “This is dangerous and at a basic level it’s corny!! I will be on the side of the luddites


Young Guru has been highly critical of AI technology. After a fake Kendrick Lamar song surfaced online in February, Guru explained why he was so against it.

“This has dominated my Howard group chat for a couple days. Ok I’m at the point where I can voice my concerns with our current state of AI,” he wrote on Instagram. “I have followed as many versions of what AI could do for some years now.



I remember being at MIT and students showing me a project where they were actively feeding a computer ‘All’ the jazz records that ever existed. So that AI could analyze and create music in any style of any musician.”

He continued: “I didn’t think we would get here this fast with the voice. Of course my mind goes to the ethical and legal aspects of what can be done with programs like Tacotron 2. You add that to the power of ChatGPT and you realize we are in a very groundbreaking but dangerous moment. It’s not the tech, it’s the evil that men do with the tech.”

Timberland is an opportunist. His AI Biggie “collab” was always a roll out.

 

[madness]

This will be like the steroid era of baseball. Artist AI voices who win Grammys are getting an asterisk next to their names.

 

[MajesticLion]

Natural progression from the theft of identity already ongoing.

Today's futurology debate: who owns the dead?

 

[Piff Perkins]

If we really wanna get spooky....yall see all of these viral tweets right now where someone asks women to post a pic of them when they were 19, when their boobs looked nice, when their side profile looked nice etc etc etc and then chicks start posting pics? It's really looking like they out here mining pictures for AI databases.

 

[BK The Great]

TImbaland should be ashamed of approving this.

 

[TV]

Whenever technology makes it to mainstream society that usually means it's been around for awhile being used somewhere else. My guess is that AI has been used in music for years.

 

[T-K-G]

Whenever technology makes it to mainstream society that usually means it's been around for awhile being used somewhere else. My guess is that AI has been used in music for years.

literal musicians are reacting to the tech right now at the same time as we are. Labels woulda got artists out the paint ages ago if that was true.

Your priorities are misguided, when it comes to powerful tech, it's ALWAYS going through the military first before it gets converted to do any aesthetic art work breh there's not a device around you right now that didn't get that military pass over before being released

 

[Ricky Fontaine]

Timberland is an opportunist. His AI Biggie “collab” was always a roll out.

You would think people knew this from that Tink fiasco.

 

[J-MIL]

Tim been a weirdo not surprised by this

 

[Will Ross]

If Jay was behind it would he have an issue

 

[TV]

literal musicians are reacting to the tech right now at the same time as we are. Labels woulda got artists out the paint ages ago if that was true.

Your priorities are misguided, when it comes to powerful tech, it's ALWAYS going through the military first before it gets converted to do any aesthetic art work breh there's not a device around you right now that didn't get that military pass over before being released

Musicians also don't know what counts as a stream or really how much they are getting from a stream. Guess what is used to cloud the mystery? AI.

Like I said, new technology is always used first somewhere else to be tested and mastered before it's made available to the masses. You literally repeated what I said.

 

[Mindfield333]

Damn, Timbo trying to go from outsourcing his beat making to Danjahandz to random nikkas on his twitch to artificial intelligence?!?