Microsoft's AI chat Copilot can now create songs from text prompts by integrating with generative music

Microsoft's AI-powered chat Copilot has partnered with Sun, a generative AI music app that lets Copilot users  compose songs with a simple text prompt.   Users can now enter prompts like "Make a pop song about your adventures with your family," and Sun uses a plug-in to turn those ideas into full songs.

The  songs created include lyrics, instrumentals and even vocals, Microsoft announced in a blog post on Tuesday (Dec. 19).  Copilot users can access the Suno integration at Copilot.Microsoft.com, sign in with their Microsoft account and enable the Suno plugin. Alternatively, they can click on the Sun logo "Make music with Sun".  

Users can  share AI generated songs on their social media. "Through this partnership, people  of all musical backgrounds can create fun, clever and unique songs with a simple gesture," Microsoft said.  "This partnership allows people  of all musical backgrounds to create fun, clever and individual songs with a simple gesture."  

Microsoft   "We believe  this partnership will open new horizons for creativity and fun, making music  accessible to everyone."  

Suno does not allow free users to monetize Suno-created music on platforms such as YouTube or Spotify, and retains the rights to all songs created by free users. But it gives paid subscribers commercial rights, The Verge reported.  Microsoft is leading a major research project dedicated to artificial intelligence music, known as Muzic.

Launched in 2019, this project is part of the  Deep and Reinforcement Learning Group at Microsoft Research Asia (MSR Asia) in China, a research laboratory with offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Founded in 1998, MSR Asia is a "world-class research laboratory" and focuses on basic and applied research that aligns with Microsoft's long-term strategy and vision for the future of computing.  Muzic's main goal is to explore the advances made by artificial intelligence in various areas of music, including text to music, word generation, lyrics to melody and songwriting. Microsoft describes Muzic as "an AI music project that uses deep learning and artificial intelligence to understand and create music."   Muzic's notable achievements include the development of DeepRapper, an AI-powered "rap generator". The team  also undertook voice synthesis, using artificial intelligence to imitate human voices. Another notable creation is MuseCoCo, short for "Music Composition Copilot," an AI-powered text-to-symbol music generator. MuseCoCo creates "symbolic music" (like MIDI format, not audio) based on text prompts.  

The collaboration between Copilot and Suno reflects the growing trend of tech giants and startups investing in GenAI-based music creation technology. Separately, DeepMind and Google's YouTube presented Lyria, a GenAI model for music, and Dream Track, a limited access tool for AI tracks.  

Meta has also demonstrated experiments with AI music generation and released its  text-to-music AI generator called MusicGen, which the Facebook parent says was trained on 20,000 hours of licensed music.   Despite the enthusiasm for AI-synthesized music, ethical and legal challenges remain. Some artists express discomfort with AI algorithms learning from existing music, especially in the absence of consent and compensation. 

Unlike some GenAI music tools, Sun does not disclose the data sources for its AI training  on its website. While it claims to block certain prompts, it doesn't prevent users from making requests like "[artistic] style," TechCrunch says.  However, Sun claims that it tries to block certain incentives and that its designs do not recognize the names of artists. The platform also claims to prevent users from uploading  lyrics to existing songs to create covers.

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