YouTube has added a new feature to its Dream Track toolset, which lets select U.S. creators use AI to generate songs using the vocals of artists including John Legend, Demi Lovato, Charli XCX, Charlie Puth and others. Now users can remix Dream Track songs using natural language to describe the changes they would like, stylistic and otherwise. Selecting the “restyle a track” option will steer users to creating a 30-second generative snippet for use in YouTube Shorts. The remixed snippets will credit the original song with “clear attribution” through the Short itself and the Shorts audio pivot page. It will also clearly indicate that the track was restyled with AI, according to Google.

“If you want to give a song a different genre or mood, you simply enter your vision into the ‘Restyle a track’ prompt and you’ll soon have a customized soundtrack that reimagines the music while maintaining the essence of the original song’s vocals and lyrics,” YouTube explains in a support update thread.

The option “could open up new doors for artists, by putting a different spin on their tracks, while still providing attribution back to the original,” Social Media Today writes, opining that “an infinite number of remixes will definitely get more people listening” to participating artists.

Powered by Google DeepMind’s Lyria music model, Dream Track debuted in November 2023. “At the time, the platform also released a tool that lets users create a track by just humming a tune,” notes TechCrunch.

In a preemptive move designed “to save itself from the music industry’s ire,” YouTube said it would “compensate artists and rights holders for using their work in its AI features,” TechCrunch reports, citing the Google’s “partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG) to develop a structure to pay rights holders.”

While the new Dream Track natural language prompt feature is “only available to ‘a small group of creators’ at present, Dream Track itself was made available to all U.S. creators last month,” notes Social Media Today.

A new app called Hook is also angling for a slice of the AI music remix business, TechCrunch points out, explaining that Hook is being developed by former JioSaavn exec Gaurav Sharma to let “users remix songs that could be used to create short videos.”