A team of generative AI researchers created a Swiss Army knife for sound, one that allows users to control the audio output simply using text.
While some AI models can compose a song or modify a voice, none have the dexterity of the new offering.
Called Fugatto (short for Foundational Generative Audio Transformer Opus 1), it generates or transforms any mix of music, voices and sounds described with prompts using any combination of text and audio files.
For example, it can create a music snippet based on a text prompt, remove or add instruments from an existing song, change the accent or emotion in a voice - even let people produce sounds never heard before.
This thing is wild, said Ido Zmishlany, a multi-platinum producer and songwriter - and cofounder of One Take Audio, a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge startups. Sound is my inspiration. It's what moves me to create music. The idea that I can create entirely new sounds on the fly in the studio is incredible.
A Sound Grasp of Audio We wanted to create a model that understands and generates sound like humans do, said Rafael Valle, a manager of applied audio research at NVIDIA and one of the dozen-plus people behind Fugatto, as well as an orchestral conductor and composer.
Supporting numerous audio generation and transformation tasks, Fugatto is the first foundational generative AI model that showcases emergent properties - capabilities that arise from the interaction of its various trained abilities - and the ability to combine free-form instructions.
Fugatto is our first step toward a future where unsupervised multitask learning in audio synthesis and transformation emerges from data and model scale, Valle said.
A Sample Playlist of Use Cases For example, music producers could use Fugatto to quickly prototype or edit an idea for a song, trying out different styles, voices and instruments. They could also add effects and enhance the overall audio quality of an existing track.
The history of music is also a history of technology. The electric guitar gave the world rock and roll. When the sampler showed up, hip-hop was born, said Zmishlany. With AI, we're writing the next chapter of music. We have a new instrument, a new tool for making music - and that's super exciting.
An ad agency could apply Fugatto to quickly target an existing campaign for multiple regions or situations, applying different accents and emotions to voiceovers.
Language learning tools could be personalized to use any voice a speaker chooses. Imagine an online course spoken in the voice of any family member or friend.
Video game developers could use the model to modify prerecorded assets in their title to fit the changing action as users play the game. Or, they could create new assets on the fly from text instructions and optional audio inputs.
Making a Joyful Noise One of the model's capabilities we're especially proud of is what we call the avocado chair, said Valle, referring to a novel visual created by a generative AI model for imaging.
For instance, Fugatto can make a trumpet bark or a saxophone meow. Whatever users can describe, the model can create.
With fine-tuning and small amounts of singing data, researchers found it could handle tasks it was not pretrained on, like generating a high-quality singing voice from a text prompt.
Users Get Artistic Controls Several capabilities add to Fugatto's novelty.
During inference, the model uses a technique called ComposableART to combine instructions that were only seen separately during training. For example, a combination of prompts could ask for text spoken with a sad feeling in a French accent.
The model's ability to interpolate between instructions gives users fine-grained control over text instructions, in this case the heaviness of the accent or the degree of sorrow.
I wanted to let users combine attributes in a subjective or artistic way, selecting how much emphasis they put on each one, said Rohan Badlani, an AI researcher who designed these aspects of the model.
In my tests, the results were often surprising and made me feel a little bit like an artist, even though I'm a computer scientist, said Badlani, who holds a master's degree in computer science with a focus on AI from Stanford.
The model also generates sounds that change over time, a feature he calls temporal interpolation. It can, for instance, create the sounds of a rainstorm moving through an area with crescendos of thunder that slowly fade into the distance. It also gives users fine-grained control over how the soundscape evolves.
Plus, unlike most models, which can only recreate the training data they've been exposed to, Fugatto allows users to create soundscapes it's never seen before, such as a thunderstorm easing into a dawn with the sound of birds singing.
A Look Under the Hood Fugatto is a foundational generative transformer model that builds on the team's prior work in areas such as speech modeling, audio vocoding and audio understanding.
The full version uses 2.5 billion parameters and was trained on a bank of NVIDIA DGX systems packing 32 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs.
Fugatto was made by a diverse group of people from around the world, including India, Brazil, China, Jordan and South Korea. Their collaboration made Fugatto's multi-accent and multilingual capabilities stronger.
One of the hardest parts of the effort was generating a blended dataset that contains millions of audio samples used for training. The team employed a multifaceted strategy to generate data and instructions that considerably expanded the range of tasks the model could perform, while achieving more accurate performance and enabling new tasks without requiring additional data.
They also scrutinized existing datasets to reveal new relationships among the dat
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
19/03/2026
Berklee Popular Music Institute's 24th Showcase Channels '80s Prom Nosta...
19/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/03/2026
How Chris Bolte Builds the Sound of PlayStation Games Chris Bolte '16 is a technical sound designer at Sucker Punch Productions, where he helps create the...
19/03/2026
Other Voices presents a legendary night of music as Foo Fighters bring their stadium anthems to St James' Church, An Daingean. The surprise performance teas...
19/03/2026
***Issued by RT on behalf of RTS Ireland Awards / Gradaim RTS 2026...
19/03/2026
It's a double feature on GFN Thursday. This week, GeForce NOW offers smoother sights in virtual reality (VR) and a sprawling new land to conquer.
Streaming...
18/03/2026
Newly named chief product officer (CPO), Larissa G rner Meeus will return to Net Insight on May 4.
Larissa G rner Meeus will become CPO of Net Insight on May 4...
18/03/2026
SVG Europe's The Football Summit 2026 explored how the sports broadcasting i...
18/03/2026
The 2026 NAB Show kicks off one month from today and SVG is once again set to cover the show from every angle. SVG's SportsTech@NAB Show Blog is now live - ...
18/03/2026
(L-R) The cast and crew of Dead Lover at The Ray Theater for its premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. (Photo by Robin Marshall/Shutterstock for Sundan...
18/03/2026
Yamaha C7 captured in Nashville
Wiltone Productions have announced the release of Music Row Piano, a deeply sampled Yamaha C7 piano library that's been ...
18/03/2026
Bass-enhancement plug-in upgraded
Along with a steady stream of new releases, Techivation have recently been revisiting some of the older plug-ins in their ...
18/03/2026
Mix-reference plug-in overhauled
iZotope's powerful mix-referencing plug-in has just reached its third major version, and now boasts a new capture proce...
18/03/2026
Latest EZKeys 2 expansion arrives
Toontrack's staggering collection of EZKeys 2 expansions has grown once again, and the latest instalment delivers a on...
18/03/2026
Jess Ho explores the politics of food in new SBS Audio podcast For The Culture
18 March, 2026
Media releases
New SBS Audio podcast For The Culture, hosted ...
18/03/2026
Future-ready broadcasts with ATSC 3.0 and enhanced services from Rohde & Schwarz...
18/03/2026
London Calling - When The Industry Convened to Help Streaming Find its MoJo In this blog, Laura Rognoni reflects on key discussions from the Connected TV World...
18/03/2026
SMPTE Unveils 2026 NAB Show Educational Presentations
Brie Clayton March 18, 2026
0 Comments
SMPTE , the home of media professionals, technologists, a...
18/03/2026
Auditel Ad Campaign Shot on Blackmagic PYXIS 12K
Brie Clayton March 18, 2026
0 Comments
LED wall virtual production blends 12K open gate acquisition w...
18/03/2026
Brainstorm transforms productivity and sustainability with Suite 7 at NAB Show 2...
18/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/03/2026
SMPTE , the home of media professionals, technologists, and engineers, today unveiled its educational presentations for the 2026 NAB Show. This year SMPTE will ...
18/03/2026
Maxon, maker of powerful, approachable software solutions for creators working in 2D and 3D design, motion graphics, visual effects, gaming, and more, today ann...
18/03/2026
Digital Alert Systems
Preview
2026 NAB Show
April 19 - 22
Booth C3452
At the 2026 NAB Show, Digital Alert Systems will showcase Version 6.0 of its DASDEC ...
18/03/2026
Setplex today announced that it will showcase its complete, fully integrated Zapflex platform for the first time at the 2026 NAB Show, introducing powerful new ...
18/03/2026
THIS ANNOUNCEMENT RELATES TO THE DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION THAT QUALIFIED OR MAY HAVE QUALIFIED AS INSIDE INFORMATION WITHIN THE MEANING OF ARTICLE 7(1) OF THE ...
18/03/2026
COW Jobs: Seeking DP for Low Budget Dramedy - Chicago
Brie Clayton March 17, 2026
0 Comments
Seeking Director of Photography for Low Budget Dramedy Fe...
18/03/2026
COW Jobs: Seeking Gaffer for Low Budget Dramedy - Chicago
Brie Clayton March 17, 2026
0 Comments
Seeking Gaffer for Low Budget Dramedy Feature Film- I...
18/03/2026
COW Jobs: Seeking Location, Sound for Low Budget Dramedy - Chicago
Brie Clayton March 17, 2026
0 Comments
Seeking Location/Sound for Low Budget Dramed...
18/03/2026
COW Jobs: Seeking Child Wrangler for Low Budget Film - Chicago
Brie Clayton March 17, 2026
0 Comments
Seeking Child Wrangler for Low Budget Dramedy Fe...
18/03/2026
Calrec Redefines Broadcast Workflows at NAB 2026 with its Most Powerful Hardware...
18/03/2026
Oscar Nominated Two People Exchanging Saliva Posted with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton March 17, 2026
0 Comments
DaVinci Resolve Studio handle...
18/03/2026
Boston Conservatory Presents Celebrated Musical Satire Urinetown Performances for this Center Stage production will take place at Boston Conservatory Theater ...
18/03/2026
Charlie Puth Joins Switched on Pop at Berklee NYC The Berklee alum spoke with host and Berklee NYC professor Charlie Harding for a live taping, answering audi...
A team of generative AI researchers created a Swiss Army knife for sound, one that allows users to control the audio output simply using text.
