“A fun, unique way to express yourself”: Google adds AI music creation app Lyria 3 to its Gemini assistant

Google has launched Lyria 3, which is the latest version of their entrant into the AI music market.

Lyria has been added to the company’s AI assistant Gemini. According to Google, “it’s the most advanced music-generation model yet”, one that allows you to “express, explore, and experiment with high-fidelity music, using prompts to create tracks with natural flow from note to note”.

They add that: “We’ve developed it with input from producers and musicians so it understands musicality – from rhythm to arrangement.”

However, questions remain regarding the legality of all this. Asked by a Billboard journalist about Lyria’s training, a Google representative said that it was “mindful of copyright and partner agreements”. When pushed, they said that it has only been trained on music that YouTube and Google have “a right to use under our terms of service, partner agreements, and applicable law”.

One commenter on Twitter/X was less than impressed, saying the tech giant's explanation: “sounds worryingly like intentional misdirection”, before adding: “You should assume it’s trained on copyrighted work without a licence unless they come out and say it’s not.”

Anyway, according to Google, Lyria works with you “describing” the track you want, before you “dial in the details.” The program then “handles the complexity, putting new musical possibilities at your fingertips.” This is a significant upgrade on previous iterations of Lyria, where you had to write your lyrics, and had less creative control over elements like style, vocals and tempo.

Lyria is then able to compose “cohesive” songs, “explore global languages and genres”, and compose music by images by uploading photos, all in “professional-grade audio”.

All tracks generated in the Gemini app are “embedded with SynthID, our imperceptible watermark for identifying Google AI-generated content”, which means it should be fairly easy for Spotify and other platforms to flag up any tracks made using the program.

Interestingly, the Google press release announcing Lyria 3 couches it in almost frivolous terms, saying its goal “isn’t to create a musical masterpiece, but rather to give you a fun, unique way to express yourself.” Make of that what you will...