How to Identify AI Music

AI is a moving target, and the tricks that help us identify it can quickly become outdated. When Suno launched their music generating platform late in 2023, one obvious tell was what you could call the Forgetful Bassist, who seemed to never remember what had been played before, and chose a different groove every time the bass returned. Now, that tic has largely disappeared. But while the artifacts of AI have become more subtle, they aren’t too hard to find (obligatory: yet). These days one of the best places to start is guitar, while drums help corroborate the evidence. AI Tells in Guitars and Drums A guitar string might squeak as the plastic pick strikes the steel alloy, and all of those noises arrive at slightly different times than the sustained note held by the vibrating string. A snare hit comes with a cascade of different frequencies that tell our ears more than just how the drum heads are tuned, like how big the recording studio might have been, and how hard the snare was struck. AI can struggle with all of this extra texture; including it when the instrument stands out, forgetting it in a crowd. The generators also tend to focus on the “main” range of frequencies, to just “...