"Love is in the air, your AI Valentine's Day music is ready": We test the best and worst AI love song generators for the 'perfect gift' this Valentine's day

If you are feeling a little uneasy about the world, your life, your future, and that of humankind, fear not! Your personal relationships could be about to get that bit spicier.

AI might well be the beginning of the end as far as humanity goes, but it might also give you a leg up in the love department before it gets there. Use it to create a song for your partner, and there's no way they will be able to resist your charms, right?

Yes, AI might be having a scary impact in some quarters, but like much of the people around you, we're just burying our heads in the sand to ignore all of that, and just cherry-picking its positives, and one of those – creating a special song for that special loved one – might well be the best use of AI we've found yet.

We've looked at the impact of AI in music creation before, and so far the results have been a very mixed bag. AI can certainly contribute to the music production process in that it can help create beats and melodies, and even sing for you – in a famous voice or two, should you wish – but when you set it the task of 'just getting on with it' and creating a vague tune, you very often end up with soulless, bland and, not surprisingly, not very human results.

Like AI does, though, it has improved, and the more you feed it, the better it gets. So we've given a few AI music generation websites the task of creating a Valentine's love song for our (likely soon-to-be ex) partner, and while the resulting music might not be as good as something you meticulously produced yourself over months of sweating in the studio, it will almost certainly do the trick fast and might just impress them.

So if you are as lazy as us and/or have forgotten that Valentine's Day is just around the corner, this could be the tonic your love life needs. After all, "the ultimate gift of love is music," a great philosopher (probably) once said.

There are many websites that claim to deliver AI-generated music, quick sharp, and for very little – or thankfully no – outlay. The usual words of warning apply though: most, if not all, of these websites want you to pay down the line or subscribe; they will demand your email and registration in return for some tunes; and you very probably won't be able to broadcast the musical results in a public forum (as we can't here).

That's because, importantly, the copyright of the music will, more often than not, be owned by the websites, or even scarier, the algorithm itself.

However, if you're good with all of the above, have realised that the shops are now closed, and are panicking about getting a love gift, then stick with us. Forget the flowers, chuck the champagne, it's time to ask AI for the musical answer.

1. AIMusic.fm

Top of Google, and not surprisingly given its URL, was AIMusic.fm which claims to be able to not only create AI music, but voices and cover versions too. And it has to be said that this is one of the better sites out there, getting straight to the point of music-making very quickly indeed.

If ever there was any doubt that you need little human involvement, it's clear from the outset here. Just type in a broad-stroke prompt – we chose 'Valentine's Day, I love you', or choose a style and hit Generate.

A couple of minutes later, we had two songs of different styles, one with a 'male' singer, one with a 'female'. Each version had the same lyrics, kicking off with 'Got flowers in my hands and a smile on my face, it's Valentine's day and we've found our place'. Bless.

The resulting songs, both called Heart Full of You, were so impressive that we initially suspected that they were perhaps just standard songs from a catalogue on the site that were matched to our vague requirements. We couldn't, for example, choose a name to put in the song for the lyrics to include – some sites, see below, do offer this.

So while the music is good, it's perhaps not as personalised as it could be. Still, the AI voices look impressive, with everyone from 'Taylor Swift' to 'Donald Trumpt' (sic), available for cover versions.

Overall: Worth a go but expect cash demands pretty quickly.

2. Soundverse.ai

Soundverse claims to 'generate AI music with the ultimate music assistant'. Again, you can get up and running pretty much straight away, although you'll need to create an account and give away your email.

This site offers additional features over AI music, including auto-song completion and stem separation. Again you choose your style of music by Genre or Theme, but there are also options to choose Speed, Instrument, Duration and Vibe. We typed 'Valentine's Day' and also selected Wedding & Romance from the Theme options, although the 'Wedding' part might be jumping the gun a little.

"Love is in the air, your Valentine's Day music is ready," Soundverse.ai then told us, adding, "to serenade" on the end which isn't quite right, if you think about it. Nor was the name 'Verantns Dey' on the song – is that an AI-generated name? And the music didn't improve on things, with a scratchy quality, perhaps improved if we paid a subscription for better quality.

Our second attempt, using 'Romance' as a theme was better, one a kind of synth arpeggiation, one a more classical piece you could imagine dancing too if dressed up Bridgerton-style.

We're not sure if any of these tunes would lead to gentle lovemaking with any potential partner, or, more likely, a lesson in music production. We'd be happy with either scenario, though, to be honest.

Overall: lots of options, including recording your own voice, and you can try multiple times, but the music we ended up with might only successfully serenade Aphex Twin or Brian Eno;' Colin Firth if you're lucky.

Mureka.ai

Now we're talking, or at least now the AI is singing, because what you type in at Mureka.ai becomes a song lyric so you can get pretty personal very quickly. Mureka also offers genres to choose from and, of course, a subscription for added benefits including getting a commercial license – handy.

Again, it's easy to get some music, but like other sites, you pretty much only get one go before it charges. We had typed in 'Valentine's Day I Love You' into the browser before we realised this, and hit the Play button, very quickly getting our results.

As we said, the big news here is that those words are sung, albeit, in our case, just the once at the beginning of each song. They did also sound a little bolted on to the backing music, itself sounding quite 'generated'.

Overall: probably the best mix of speed, music and focus, allowing you to create a personal message – 'song' might be pushing it – with music in no time.

Other sites

There are many, many other music creation websites out there, with more added as we type, probably created by AI, who knows? There's music to be made, but more money to be made too, and that's where it all ultimately leads, and it's not money for you or any human musicians.

However, on our search, we did stumble across one website, songfinch.com, that potentially strikes a good balance between ease of music production and actual human involvement.

It lets you describe the kind of music you want, and then matches you with a choice of actual human artists – well, we hope so; there are photos and everything.

Your chosen musician will then create an individual song for you, and it costs – a not inconsiderable $199.99 – but you get your individual song in less than a week. Yes, $200 to a human is the expensive option, but how much is the love of your life worth? Exactly.

Other than that, unless you have completely forgotten about Valentine's Day, Christmas, an important birthday, or any other occasion that might demand your love played out in musical form, then we'd suggest doing it yourself and keeping it real.

If you do go down the AI route this Valentine's, let us know how you get on, but don't coming running to us for advice if it all goes pair-shaped. (We've sent all of the results of this feature to our partner as gifts, and haven't heard from them since.)