splash alexa skill

AI music platform Splash has released an Alexa skill that enables users to create custom tracks with voice prompts. Photo Credit: Splash

AI music-generation platform Splash has officially released a skill for Amazon Echo devices, enabling users to create custom songs with voice prompts.

Amazon-backed Splash, which has trained its AI model exclusively on a self-owned music library, unveiled the skill at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) today. Also detailed in a formal announcement message that was shared with DMN, said skill is already live on devices with Alexa support.

A cursory examination of the relevant tool shows that users are initially asked to select the desired genre, instruments, and style for their AI music. From there, the Splash Echo skill plays a snippet of the resulting creation before inquiring as to whether one would like to add other components – among them vocals (about seemingly any subject), different styles or instruments, lyric modifications, and much more.

Further pivots can be made in the same way (all via voice commands, of course), and users can access completed works, finalized with the “full song” instruction, on mobile devices by providing a phone number. Through the corresponding webpage, one can play the track at hand, share a link, plug the work on Twitter, or simply download an audio file.

In a statement, Splash chief product officer Richard Slatter touted the just-released skill as “a hugely exciting step” on a journey “to democratize music creation.”

“Through our collaboration with Amazon,” communicated the former Twitter higher-up Slatter, “we’re crafting a new way for people to express themselves and connect with others through music. Our goal is to democratize music creation, and this marks a hugely exciting step in that journey.”

Expanding upon the sentiment, Amazon’s Alexa Skills director and GM, Mark Yoshitake, expressed the belief that “Splash is fostering a new breed of musicians.”

“We’re excited that Splash is using our new tools to incorporate voice capabilities into its AI-powered music creation technology,” relayed the former Google head of product and design Yoshitake. “Splash is fostering a new breed of musicians by harnessing the power of AI, and we’re proud to collaborate with them to enable even more ways for music to be created through voice.”

Especially given the responsiveness and impressive capabilities of the skill, it goes without saying that the remainder of 2024 appears poised to bring about far-reaching developments in the AI-music arena.

Longer term, time will reveal the precise market impact (when it comes to song volume and much else) of enabling most anyone, regardless of their skills and know-how, to create music. In addition to Splash, music generators including (but certainly not limited to) Boomy, Riffusion, Rightsify’s Hydra, Universal Music-backed Soundful, and Google’s MusicLM allow laypersons to generate tracks.

And if the past year’s breakthroughs are any indication, these and an abundance of similar offerings are positioned to become dramatically more powerful in the not-so-distant future.