Google DeepMind and YouTube launch Music AI Sandbox

Google says the music production toolkit is “designed to open a new playground for creativity” and integrates AI into the creation process, facilitating new instrumental sections from scratch, transfer styles between tracks, and more.

The company added that the collaborations inform “the development of our generative music technologies, including Lyria, our most advanced model for AI music generation.”

Google said Music AI Sandbox had been endorsed by renowned artists like rapper and producer Wyclef Jean, songwriter Justin Tranter and electronic musician Marc Rebillet, “who are sharing demo recordings on their YouTube channels created with the help of our AI tools.”

In a promotional video, Wyclef Jean highlights the tools’ ability to accelerate the creative process, adding that the possibilities are endless with Music AI Sandbox. “Right now, we’re digging in the infinite crate,” he said, while Rebillet likened the experience to having a quirky friend who suggests trying out different things.

“Someone like me, who is not a new-school producer, to be able to hear the things I hear in my head and actually be able to achieve it because AI tools will let me speak the language that I speak as a songwriter, that is very exciting to me,” Tranter said. 

Music AI Sandbox is one of Google’s latest AI initiatives highlighted this week at its I/O conference. Others include Veo, a text-to-video AI producing 1080p resolution videos, and Imagen 3, the company’s highest quality text-to-image model.

Last year, YouTube and Universal Music Group (UMG) announced an alliance aimed at developing AI tools that provide safe, responsible and profitable opportunities for music rightsholders. It included the launch of a Music AI Incubator at YouTube, where new tools and innovations will be developed in collaboration with artists and industry professionals, with initial feedback from UMG-signed talent.

YouTube also pledged to adhere to three principles for developing music-based generative AI tools, prioritising responsible innovation, protection of creative work, and ensuring trust and safety within the platform.

“Working together, we will better understand how these technologies can be most valuable for artists and fans, how they can enhance creativity and where we can seek to solve critical issues for the future,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said at the time.

“Our partnership [with YouTube] is building on a shared commitment to lead responsibly, as outlined in YouTube’s AI principles, where AI is built to empower human creativity and not the other way around,” UMG CEO Sir Lucian Grainge said. “AI will never replace human creativity because it will always lack the essential spark that drives the most talented artists to do their best work, which is intention.