Sam Altman rebuffs Elon Musk. Plus: Make Full length songs with AI

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Date: 16-Feb-2025

Hey AI enthusiast,

Welcome to the latest edition of the One More Thing in AI newsletter.

We'll explore a new AI tool that can turn your lyrics into a full song, YouTube's AI tool for video creation, and even the scoop on Elon Musk's rejected offer to buy OpenAI.

Best regards,

Renjit

Elon Musk’s $97.4 Billion Offer for OpenAI Rejected—Here’s What Happened

Imagine offering nearly $100 billion to buy a company and getting turned down. That’s exactly what happened to Elon Musk when he tried to buy OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Musk’s Big Offer 🚀

Musk, the billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX, recently offered to buy OpenAI with the help of investors from his AI company, xAI. His stated goal? To bring OpenAI back to its original mission—a nonprofit focused on AI research for the public good.

Musk helped start OpenAI in 2015, but he left in 2018 after disagreements with CEO Sam Altman. Now, he wants back in.

Here is the link to the offer that Musk made»

OpenAI’s Answer? No Thanks. ❌

OpenAI’s response was fast and clear. CEO Sam Altman even joked on social media:
“No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

The company’s board also said they were not interested in selling, making it clear that OpenAI will continue in its current direction.

Why Musk Wants OpenAI 🔍

Musk has his own AI company, xAI, which competes with OpenAI. Some say this offer wasn’t just about mission and values—it was a business move to shake up the AI industry. Learning from Open AI’s team and the latest models can move things fast for xAi!

What This Means for AI 🤖

This battle comes at a time when AI companies are growing fast and raising billions of dollars.
Big names like Musk and Altman are shaping the future, and AI competition is only getting more intense. One thing is certain: the AI race is far from over.

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AI That Turns Lyrics into Full Songs: Meet YuE 🎵

AI can create short music clips, but making a full song with vocals and instruments? That’s still really hard. Most AI powered music tools can’t keep lyrics and melodies aligned for an entire song—only a few closed systems can do it well.

Why Is This So Hard? 🤔

• Music is long – Songs last minutes, not seconds.
• Lyrics get messy – AI struggles to match words with melody.
• Not enough training data – We don’t have many lyrics-to-music examples to teach AI.

How YuE Solves It 🚀

YuE is an open-source AI model that can turn lyrics into full songs (up to 5 minutes long!). It keeps the words clear, the melody catchy, and the song coherent. 

Here’s how it works:

1️⃣ Smarter training – Uses an enhanced audio tokenizer to cut training costs and speed up learning.

2️⃣ Track-synced vocals & instruments – Introduces a dual-token system that works within Llama’s architecture, making it easier to scale.

3️⃣ Lyrics-chain-of-thoughts – Allows the model to build the song progressively, ensuring lyrics drive the melody.

4️⃣ Three-stage training – Focuses on scalability, musical quality, and better control over lyrics.

It is surreal to listen to AI created songs in various genres like Rap, Mandarin pop and K-pop. The good news is that the team from China has open sourced the project and other builders can use the code to build new solutions on top of it.

YuE could help musicians, content creators, and producers make high-quality AI music.🎶

Try it out here » link

Create Videos with Words: YouTube Shorts’ New AI Tool

Imagine typing a few words and watching them turn into a video. YouTube Shorts now lets you do just that with its new AI tool, Veo 2.

Before, creators could add AI-made backgrounds to their Shorts. Now, with Veo 2, you can create entire video clips just by typing what you want to see. For example, if you need a scene of a sunny beach but can’t film one, just type “sunny beach,” and Veo 2 will make the clip for you.

1. To use this feature, open the Shorts camera (on YouTube app in select countries for now), choose ‘Green Screen,’ then ‘Dream Screen.’

2. Type your idea, pick the image, and your background is set.

3. To add a new clip, tap ‘Add’ in the media picker, then ‘Create.’

4. Enter your idea, choose the image, and set the length.

5. All AI-made videos will have a special mark to show they’re created with AI (using a tool called SynthAI). Given the proliferation of AI image and video creation tools, we will need to see more tools like SynthAI.

Right now, this (Veo 2) feature is available in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with plans to reach more places soon.

What This Means for Creators and Influencers

This tool makes it easier to create fun and engaging content without needing special equipment or locations.

You can bring your ideas to life quickly, helping you connect better with your audience. It’s a new way to make your content stand out and keep your followers interested.

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