Renowned Grammy-winning composer and singer Shankar Mahadevan said that using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to make music is like having a buddy or an assistant who helps artists enhance their creativity.
"It's like having a friend that guides you, that prods you, takes you in a particular direction and helps you...AI is here to stay" Mahadevan said in a fireside chat with Paul Smith, Managing Director, APAC Managing Director, YouTube Music, at the World Audio Video Entertainment Summit 2025 (WAVES 2025) on May 2.
"If you use it properly, it opens new creative chambers in your brain. It's just going to get better and better. Use it to enhance your thought process and creativity. But the first word and the last word should be you, and not artificial intelligence" Mahadevan said.
Mahadevan said that AI helps artists draft a rough sketch of their creative ideas.
"Every musician, artist, dancer, actor, or director needs a basic sketch of anything that you're going to come up with eventually. AI really helps you sketch. It's like having a buddy that is giving you suggestions. You improvise on the suggestion, then it gives you another suggestion and you put in your suggestions" he said.
Mahadevan recently partnered with Google to experiment with Music AI Sandbox, a suite of experimental tools developed by Google DeepMind in collaboration with YouTube and informed by insights from music industry professionals. Unveiled in May 2024, these tools help musicians reimagine their existing music, create new instrumental or vocal parts and explore new directions for their work.
As part of this collaboration, several Google executives recently visited Shankar Mahadevan's Mumbai studio, spending more than 30 hours with him, his producer, lyricist, and sound engineer to explore how Music AI Sandbox could help create film soundtracks.
Mahadevan used text prompts in Music AI Sandbox to create musical samples that incorporated various Indian instruments such as the dholak and tabla. He then looped those samples in his digital audio workstation, riffing on vocal melodies, and went back to Music AI Sandbox to generate additional instrumental elements.
TextFX, a Google Labs experiment, was used for lyrical inspiration. This collaboration led to the creation of a song called Rubaroo.
"There is excitement when AI is involved, but there is also a little bit of apprehension on whether this going to come and take over my creativity...Being a musician of a particular type, I always get excited by things that are not part of the present and it's going to soon arrive in the future," Mahadevan said.
However, he noted that the use of AI in music creation is still an "evolving process."
"The creators, the musicians and artists who use platforms like this (Music AI Sandbox). It will be a lovely give-and-take relationship. We'll come up with things, and we'll evolve products like this that we'll use," he said.
"It's like an architect having the latest technology to depict a 3D image of a room. But at the end of the day, it's the architect's creative brain that decides: This is what I want. This is what I don't want," Mahadevan said.
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