Why haven't the big music companies like UA, Eventide, Softube, waves.... created AI software and plugins yet? and in the same time some new and small companies they did?

 

Hello @AgA, the company " Waves " already uses AI:

Waves introduces the new Curves Spectral Series, three AI-based EQ plugins to simplify mixing work in the studio.

AIformusic: 50 tech companies sign new guidelines for AI in music

How important is artificial intelligence's role in modern production workflows?
www.gearnews.com/aiformusic-50-tech-companies/

 

Last edited: Nov 29, 2024

Waves has a range (~8-10) of plugins claiming to use AI in some form. But since there's no mandatory minimum definition for what constitutes AI, anyone is free to slap "AI" on their product's name - irrespective of what the plugin actually does, including: nothing AI at all. And that's pretty much what bad-faith plugin developers have been doing heavily for the past two years - "Super AI Ultra Compressor AI v2... with AI".

Bigger companies are by definition slower to react to changing environments than tiny one-man shops with a passion for tech. I'm sure there's at least one guy at every big company scanning for popular hobbyist projects on github at least once every other month to see if there's anything AI-related worth lifting and staking their brand name on.

That being said, we already have many "AI-informed" plugins, that perform no AI by themselves, but where AI was trained on material and gave informed development directions based on that.

With current hardware, larger AI models are simply too demanding to run in real time, so the domain has to be tiny to train a tiny model that works at acceptable speeds. (Like WaveNet and RTNeural as used by NAM, ToneX, AIDA-X and dozens others to mimic distortion hardware)

 

It's an interesting question why larger companies like UA, Eventide, Softube, and Waves haven't jumped into AI-based music and vocal software yet. One possible reason is that larger companies often have longer product development cycles and may be cautious about adopting emerging technologies until they're proven to have sustainable demand. Smaller, newer companies tend to be more agile and willing to innovate in niche areas to carve out their space in the market.

If you're curious to explore what's out there, you should check out *spam*. They specialize in AI music and vocal software, offering plugins and tools that are cutting-edge and perfect for modern music production. It could give you a taste of what the future might look like if bigger players eventually step into the space!

What do you think—would you prefer innovation from the big names or fresh approaches from smaller developers?

 

The term "AI" now is like "turbo" in the 80s, just a buzzword. "Hey, look at my new turbo sunglasses!"
Or "hacking" in the 90s. "Look at this hack to make avocado stay green longer!"

 

We already have high-end products for music production today. You can't reinvent the wheel twice. AI, or artificial stupidity (AS), won't make your mixes any better. It's better to invest in a textbook and learn from it.

To answer your question, we are in the middle of it and AI will most likely influence all areas of human life. Just wait a few months or years. Everything that can be done technically will be done - progress cannot be stopped.

 

The simplest possible answer is that 1) musicians will be flooding manufacturers with complaints, and 2) plug-in manufacturers will no longer be profitable.

This is also happening in the AI image generation industry, but the fact that people with no musical education can write songs is a crisis for the industry, and it will lead to saturation of musicians. (It is already saturated now.)

And if you have a plug-in that runs on AI, you won't buy more than you need. The platform it runs on is the same, and I don't think you can make a lot of diverse AI plug-ins. Then manufacturers will stop making as many as they want because they won't sell even if they make a lot of them. In other words, it's a problem for companies.

 

haha I agree with this. they have been using machine learning in a lot of plugins for years. Doing Cabinet clones, etc. just not naming it AI.