Grammy Award-winning producer Timbaland is going to make us listen to his AI music if it’s the last thing he does. Today it was announced that he will be launching a new AI entertainment company, Stage Zero, and introducing the world to his first AI-generated artist known as TaTa.
In a new report from Rolling Stone, Stage Zero co-founder and film producer Rocky Mudaliar describes TaTa as one of the first steps in Timbaland’s attempt at ushering in a new genre known as “A-pop, artificial pop.” Timbaland says he’s been angling toward AI-generated music since last year when he started using generative AI music creation program Suno, made by a company where he now serves as creative director. He says he fell in love with the voice that Suno would generate when he uploaded unfinished demos of his songs onto the platform. “It came to a point where I’m like, ‘Yo, this voice, it’s amazing.’”
There’s no word on when TaTa’s first single will be released, but the Stage Zero team plans to make her seem as real as possible. The AI artist will have a social media presence, and the company has already has released a photo of a young, pink-haired female artist meant to be TaTa.
AI is a divisive subject, especially in a music industry still figuring out how to regulate a technology that challenges copyright laws. Suno has already been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for illegally using millions of songs to train its AI models. So you can imagine that the general reception to Timbaland siding with the machines has been less than favorable:
Mudaliar believes the public opposition to AI-generated music will subside eventually because “[AI is] not going anywhere,” comparing what he sees as the inevitability of its eventual acceptance to the way that influencers went from laughable to standard. Even though human creators will be involved in the process of creating music for TaTa and other AI artists, it’s hard not to look at this new endeavor as a way to minimize human involvement in music. Timbaland has a track record of making generation-defining music, but this move just sounds off.