Gideon: OK.
Lawrence: It’s pop quiz time.
Gideon: Oh no.
Lauren: So you’re the editor-in-chief here at WIRED, and you’ve talked a lot about AI, so I wanted to see how good you are at distinguishing human-made music from AI-generated music.
Gideon: I mean, sometimes I can hardly tell one person’s music from another. So, uh, you know, you might be disappointed, but I’ll do my best.
Lawrence: Okay, here’s the first number.
[Clip of AI Rihanna singing “Cuff It”]
Lawrence: Let’s hear the second.
[Clip of Beyoncé singing “Cuff It”]
Lawrence: First, I’m curious if you know who the artist is.
Gideon: I have no idea. Not a single one.
Lawrence: Gideon! Not a card-carrying member of the hive, right?
Gideon: so it’s not me.
Lauren: That was Beyoncé.
Gideon: OK.
Lauren: But which one was Actually Beyonce?
Gideon: So one of those was definitely AI and the other was really Beyoncé?
Lauren: Yes.
Gideon: Uh, wow. Eh, I’m going to say the first one was AI just because I liked the second one better.
[Correct Answer bell rings]
Lauren: That’s right.
Gideon: OK. Okay. Taste does play a role here.
Lawrence: You may keep your job as editor-in-chief of WIRED.
Gideon: Thank God, I was so worried.
Lauren: What about the second one you liked more?
Gideon: Here I have to use musical words that I don’t know the meaning of, but I just felt like it was, I don’t know, the sounds were somehow more balanced. More harmonic, more… I’m making nonsense here. Uh, I just like the sounds better. They felt more like there was a thought put into that song.
Lawrence: Yes. Reasonable. Let’s move on to the second pair, which I think will be a bit more challenging. Okay, here’s the first number.
[Clip of “Controlla” by Drake]
Lawrence: OK, here’s the second.
[Clip of AI Arianna Grande singing “Controlla”]
Gideon: I’m going to say the female voice is the AI generated voice just because it sounded a bit more Auto-Tuned to me. But honestly, if you played both songs somewhere and I didn’t know one of them was supposed to be AI generated, I would have just said they were both human.
[Correct Answer bell rings]
Lawrence: You’re right. The female voice is AI generated. The first was real. That was actually Drake.
Gideon: OK. So I may be totally useless in music, but at least I can tell an AI from a human when they sing. That is something.
Lauren: Yes.
Gideon: That’s what the editor of WIRED should be able to do. Right?
