By Amrita Khalid, one of the authors of audio industry newsletter Hot Pod. Khalid has covered tech, surveillance policy, consumer gadgets, and online communities for more than a decade.
Microsoft’s AI chatbot Copilot will now be able to churn out AI songs on demand — thanks to a new plug-in with Suno. The Cambridge-based AI music startup offers a tool on Discord that can compose an original song — complete with lyrics — based on a text prompt. Now, Copilot users will be able to access Suno using the Microsoft chatbot.
In order to start making music, Copilot users only need to sign on to their accounts and enable the Suno plug-in — or click on the logo that says, “Make music with Suno.” Users then need to think of a simple one- or two-line text prompt that describes their desired song, such as “create a folk song about Alaska summers” or “write a song about cats in the style of Cat Power” (both prompts I tried personally on Suno via Discord) and type it into Copilot.
Suno will then generate an original song — normally a minute or two in length — complete with a transcript of the lyrics.
One key difference between the plug-in and Suno’s Discord: The Suno plug-in can only generate one song per search result, while the AI on Suno’s own site will get you two songs per prompt, says Microsoft senior communications manager Donny Turnbaugh.
Other Big Tech companies are also testing generative AI music tools, like Meta’s open-source AudioCraft, which also generates songs based on text prompts, and Google’s YouTube tool, which spits out original music tracks based on a hummed song or a text prompt. In addition to Suno, a number of AI music startups promising similar tools have entered the scene, like Soundful, Magenta, Beatbox (which can generate beats and instrumental tracks), Soundraw, Loudly, Boomy, Beatoven.ai, and many others.
Suno forbids its free users from, say, monetizing generated AI songs on YouTube or Spotify, but it gives paid users commercial rights to their songs. However, aspiring ghostwriters should keep in mind that Suno owns the rights to any songs generated by free users — though sharing on social platforms or other non-commercial uses is allowed.
Update, December 20th, 11:03 AM PT: This story has been updated to include further information about the Suno plug-in on Copilot from Microsoft.
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