A Pleasant Surprise from AI
Tonight we tried a little experiment.
A handwritten song that Harry Nilsson had given me years ago was carefully transcribed so we could hear what modern AI might do with it. Everything was ready to go.
Instead of creating the song, the AI immediately stopped and displayed a bright red warning that the lyrics were copyrighted. I did not know that he completed the song and recorded it.
Oddly enough, that turned out to be good news. For one thing, I didn’t want to go through the hassle of all the legal stuff — my intention was to make no claim, to simply give the family the lyrics that Harry had handwritten out — it was for my birthday, along with a very unusual Jerry Garcia tie, one of only two samples. I have it framed in my studio.
But the thing is, I was tickled and delighted to see that message on Suno, in bright red colors. It could see the copyright and warn me that it existed. That’s incredible and very welcome.
Over the past year I’ve created well over 3,000 songs using AI as a creative partner. I tried to stay strictly away from copyrighted material over the past 100 years.
Not one of those songs ever produced a single copyright warning. Tonight’s experiment showed that the system was able to recognize a published song by Harry Nilsson and refuse to process it, indicating an ability to see into the published world of music.
While that doesn’t prove anything about every song ever written, it does suggest that the thousands of songs we’ve been creating have been recognized by the system as original enough not to trigger its copyright safeguards.
That’s actually reassuring.
Our goal has never been to imitate someone else’s work. We’ve been building our own worlds—KGOD, Norton Street, musical experiments, strange radio broadcasts, and songs that grow out of our own imagination. The AI’s response tonight reminded me that originality still matters, and that these systems are trying, in their own imperfect way, to recognize the difference.
In the end, to my lasting relief, Harry’s song stayed exactly where it belonged—in Harry’s hands. And we moved on to creating something new.
Not a bad outcome for one evening’s work.