OpenAI might soon be the newest name in the music industry, and not because it hired a DJ. According to The Information, the company is developing a new AI tool that can generate music from text prompts. Yes, the same team that gave the world talking chatbots, image creators, and the viral Sora video generator might now want to make your next favorite song.
The upcoming tool doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s reportedly designed to work much like OpenAI’s image and video models. Users would simply describe the kind of music they want—say, “melancholic synthwave for a rainy night” or “jazzy lo-fi beats with vinyl crackle” – and the AI would produce a track to match. OpenAI’s ChatGPT already features realistic voice outputs, while its Sora 2 model can produce video clips with sound effects and speech. Adding music to that lineup would make perfect sense.
AI music generation has quietly exploded this year. The Suno app has reportedly reached over $100 million in annual recurring revenue, with Microsoft even bringing it into Copilot. Google has its own experimental tool, MusicLM, while startups like Udio and Riffusion are also competing for the top spot in text-to-track technology. Clearly, people want to make music without needing to learn an instrument—or even clap in rhythm.
Reports suggest OpenAI is taking a slightly more academic approach. The company is said to be working with students from Juilliard to annotate musical scores, which could help its model better understand composition and structure. That might give it an edge over existing tools that can sound impressive but often fall apart if you listen too closely.
Of course, the record labels are not exactly singing along. Companies like Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have already filed lawsuits against Suno and Udio, accusing them of using copyrighted songs to train their AIs. If OpenAI jumps into the mix, it’ll face the same scrutiny. Given its size and visibility, the legal spotlight will be even brighter this time.
Still, the potential is massive. Imagine pairing a custom soundtrack with your AI-generated video in Sora or asking ChatGPT to compose background music for your podcast. The idea of personalized, on-demand music could change how creators, and maybe even professional musicians, work.
If the rumors are true, OpenAI’s next release won’t be another chatbot – it might be an album drop that never needs a studio, producer, or even a single human note.
