Liza Minnelli uses artificial intelligence to release first new music in 13 years | Liza Minnelli

Liza Minnelli has released her first new music in 13 years, adding vocals to an artificial intelligence-generated dance track.

The track, “Kids, Wait Until You Hear This” — which is also the title of her upcoming memoir — is an unexpected foray into deep house for the 79-year-old Minnelli, who adds a handful of spoken word statements to the pumping backing.

Minnelli has not released any new music since 2013, when she performed a score for the American television musical drama Smash, and expressed her strong belief in the possibility of creating music with artificial intelligence.

On its Facebook page, it advertised the company behind the track, ElevenLabs, as a “six billion dollar tech giant.” [doing] Amazing stuff… What wouldn’t I let this great company do? Create, reproduce or transcribe audio! …We used artificial intelligence arrangements. Not the AI ​​singing…the shouts are all mine!”

“I’ve always believed that music is about connection and emotional truth,” she said in an accompanying press release. “What interested me here was the idea of ​​using my voice and new tools in the service of expression, not in place of it. This project respects the artist’s voice, the artist’s choices, and the artist’s ownership. I grew up watching my parents create amazing dreams that other people own. ElevenLabs allows anyone to be a creator and an owner. This is important.”

The track is part of a collection of other music created or modified by artificial intelligence, with Art Garfunkel among the other artists featured. His compositional track features a spoken excerpt from his memoir What Is All But Luminous, in which he pays tribute to his father through AI piano backing.

“Music has always evolved alongside technology, from microphones to multitrack recording,” Garfunkel said. “What impressed me about this experience was the respect for the music. The human remains at the center. My voice combined with the technology simply opens another door.”

The duo’s enthusiastic uptake of AI stands in marked contrast to others in the industry: There are concerns that AI-generated music will undermine the hiring of human musicians, imitating the work of others without properly compensating them.

Ed Sheeran said: “If you’re taking a job from a human, I think that’s probably a bad thing. The whole point of society is that we’re all doing jobs. If everything was done by robots, everyone would be out of work. I just find AI a bit weird.”

Lil Wayne doubted the AI’s ability to accurately imitate his voice: “I’m naturally amazing and organic. I’m one of a kind. So actually, I’d like to see this thing try to imitate this motherfucker.”

However, a wave of new “generative AI” companies, such as Udio, Suno, and Klay, are forging ahead, striking deals with record labels to let users manipulate artists’ works using AI tools, or create entirely new tracks using text prompts, based on AI that absorbs the work of others and uses it to inform new compositions. Artists can choose to subscribe to these services or not.

Record companies were initially hostile to the companies, and threatened legal action, but since then there have been a number of settlements and partnerships.

After settling with Universal and Warner, Udio announced this week that it has partnered with Merlin, an umbrella organization representing independent labels like Beggars Group, Epitaph, Domino, Sub Pop and Warp — meaning artists from Arctic Monkeys to Aphex Twin can make their music available to Udio’s AI tools.

Speaking to The Guardian this week, Suno founder Mickey Shulman said the use of AI in music was already widespread. “It’s been described to me that we’re the Ozimians of the music industry – everyone is in it and no one wants to talk about it,” he said.