Tool: Voicify
I recently delivered my first full lecture on AI in Music Education for my graduate students at Teachers College, Columbia University. I tend to do a tremendous amount of research on a topic before presenting it to students, and with a topic as fascinating as artificial intelligence and its potential impact on education, I spent WAY too much time digging in to various AI tools and applications. I stumbled upon a very cool site called Voicify.ai and I think that sites like this perfectly illustrate both the exciting positive uses of AI, as well as uses that are problematic on a number of levels. In a nutshell, Voicify.ai allows users to choose from a collection of famous voices to sing AI covers of either existing music tracks (think of having the Beatles sing the latest Beyonce song) or user-generated content. If you write an original song and want an artist like Ariana Grande to sing it, Voicify.ai is the tool for you!
First off, Voicify.ai does NOT have a free trial for you to experiment with - which is definitely a bummer. From the many examples that I have seen posted online, it is pretty impressive. All you need to do is choose from one of the 7,738 existing voice models, upload an audio file or YouTube video, and within 2-3 minutes, you’ll receive an audio file with that artist singing the song. Spooky.
Now, is it REALLY Michael Jackson singing your song? Of course not. MJ fans will easily be able to tell that it isn’t him singing - but it’s close. The Voicify AI algorithm mimics the artist. It’s almost as if a very good impressionist is hiding somewhere in a room and records whatever users want them to. I have listened to quite a few examples and it is impressive. You don’t have to choose a musical artist either. You can choose from famous celebrities - from Donald Trump to Emmanuel Macron. Or you can have fun with models like Sponge Bob and Homer Simpson.
One of the coolest features of Voicify.ai is the ability to make a model of your own voice. Uploading a recording of your own voice (or your students voices) will allow you to sing any song that you upload as well. I love this feature because it really gives you the chance to be a part of the AI world. While your voice won’t be available for other users, it is pretty cool.
As far as educational uses of this, aside from teachers generating their own content (recordings of concert songs and fun covers of music that the students love) I’m not quite sure where this fits into a middle school general music class, or a high school marching band. It would be a lot of fun to record your building administrator or principal and have them sing a song that all of the students know, but aside from that, I’m not coming up with many other uses - at least for now. One major drawback for teachers is the cost. The best account level is called Creator and that will set you back $24.99/month. The basic plan gets you 25 credits a month (each credit gets you one AI cover) and costs $7.99/month. It might be fun to pay for a month, get all the tracks you want, and let your subscription expire.
What do you think of Voicify.ai? How would you use it? What ideas do you have for integration into music education at large? I’d love to hear from you. Until then, I’ll be busy researching more cool AI music making tools, and watching funny and unlikely AI generated song covers like this one…