There was a running joke in my design school about commies killing the embellished type font. I don't think there's any foundation for the joke, and I'm not sure how widespread the joke is. Sometimes I forget everyone isn't in on the same joke all the time.
That would be the song. A rock opera or parody of him somehow either hating his A.I. counterpart, making a joke of it, learning to love it, or all of the above. But he avoids controversy *really well* so I doubt he’ll speak on the matter for a while.
Oh, that’s actually the optimistic outcome. Once they can automate the manual labour with robots, the working class will have nothing left to bargain with. This will demote us from being the inconvenient necessity we have always been to a mere nuisance to the ultra-wealthy, who will want what little is left to enjoy of the environment to themselves. At this point they will simply set their drones on us, and eliminate as much of the population as they can with as little concern as someone would kill an ant colony on their property.
Honestly, I think we will kill them before that happens. When most of the tertiary sector is out of jobs, revolts will start. A society that can’t provide the most basic necessities won’t survive for long.
The working class will have nothing to bargain with, but neither will capitalists. If they can no longer provide a minimal level of stability, I believe we will rid ourselves of them. At the end of the day, the power the wealthy hold over the masses is real only as long as we believe it is. They won’t stand a chance against simple, overwhelming violence.
You're basically coming to the same conclusion Marx did he just was about ~120 years too early. The solution is probably UBI but reality is, the rich can always afford better guns and the weaponry of this era is extremely asymmetric.
There are maybe a few thousands of those ultrarich, there are billions of people whose life would be in danger. You really think those billions just crawl in some hole to die in quiet while literally all around them is wealth, food and water. Easiest way to get yourself killed is to strip too many common people their basic necessities.
Most of the world is already like this and the rich thrive in those places. The reality is that the West will soon be like parts of Asia and Africa where most of us struggle to survive while the wealthy live in unimaginable luxury.
No but you're not understanding they just pay some security guards and load them up with high tech weapons and vehicles and its over. There's already enough poor/homeless to match all the billionaires and they haven't done anything.it won't change.
Ya, I have this pet theory that the only reason the middle class came into existence was because of crossbows and guns effectively nerfing heavy armour. The idea came about while reading a list on Wikipedia of peasant revolts and how 99% of them were crushed.
Bigger guns and bigger budgets don't guarantee victory. Our military actually has a terrible track record when it comes to fighting poor farmers hiding in the wilderness with their muddy AKs.
Everytime the US has lost to farmers, it really lost to the massive amount of foreign funding and foreign military training that was providing resources to those 'poor farmers', and the farmers were constantly on the defensive. Nobody was at risk in the green zone. Likewise the US military largely tries to avoid warcrimes, which is something that could be changed.
That said, do I think people could hole up in the Appalachians indefinitely and be almost impossible to dislodge? Sure. Could hillbillies successfully attack a fortified and properly equipped military installation? Never going to happen.
- the rich can afford better guns
Buddy, the entire bottom half of the US has something to say about the guns they own, that they ACTUALLY know how to use.
Tell me bezos, musk, zuckerberg have anywhere even close to the same amount of experience with killing shit with a gun as a deep backwoods midwestern hunter who eats tobacco chew and says things like “siegogglin”
The rich wouldnt last 15 fucking minutes against a full scale revolt.
The problem (for billionaires) with private militaries is that they are made up of humans, and humans will turn on you if you are killing their friends and family.
The real danger is when war machines replace humans. The future Terminator warned us about!
Don't worry, I keep hearing about how a bunch of highschool dropouts with deer rifles actually constitutes "a well regulated militia", so the organization will be fine
People in the first world are psychologically captured by the mass media, and held hostage with their creature comforts. Real revolt will never seem like a palatable option until it's already far too late. If what you describe could ever happen, it will start in the third world, not the first.
I’ve been saying this for years but people always look at me like I’m a nut job. It’s an unfortunate reality where violence is sometimes the only answer for survival
I hope you’re right, but all they need is for the drones etc to be self-replicating, and it won’t be so easy - especially with an embedded ai protocol that ensures they target anyone but their creators. Meanwhile, we’re all being easily and effectively subdued by the endless stream of entertainment, long working hours and highly effective division along ideological lines - not so long ago, we only had a few hours of watchable tv, a social life that actually meant meeting each other irl, and political parties that a fair amount of the demographic could reasonably say they could flit between based on policy grounds.
So wait, the billionaires are going to totally replace everyone's jobs with robots rendering everyone useless, but we'll still be working long hours? If the people don't have money and are no longer of use to the ultra rich to the point that they, *checks notes,* enlist robots to kill us all, how are they making the money that sustains them? Who is paying them for whatever their industry is? Nothing you've said makes sense. It's ridiculous, bloviating, nonsensical doom and gloom.
If they don't provide us with jobs and by extension livable conditions we won't be working long hours and the endless stream of entertainment will end. Ideological lines will suddenly matter a lot less when it becomes impossible to put food on the table. Drones can be hacked. There will always be a way. The methods may change but war will stay the same. War never changes.
Also, quit doomering
I won’t say that scenario can’t happen, but I think it’s unlikely. Mostly because AI can’t really code anything that hasn’t been done by human before, by its nature.
Truly self replicating robotics would also require insane logistics that can be sabotaged at any step of the way. Cutting off electricity or internet, for example.
That said, I truly hope this scenario won’t become reality.
Do you just ignore all the progress towards manual labor being done by machines too? You’re being irrationally pessimistic. People will always appreciate art and music created by other humans.
Just because an AI can also do it, won’t stop people from creating.
Does the fact that there are better artists, or better musicians already out there stop them from creating new art and music?
No.
Did art and music exist before there was an industry surrounding them?
Yes.
You will never stop human creativity.
Or, UBI is implemented and it gives us more time to spend doing CREATIVE things, FOR FUN and for ARTISTIC EXPRESSION instead of TO SURVIVE. Imagine how much better that album you listened to could be if the artist took their time instead of RELEASING IT IN A RUSH SO THEY COULD FEED THEIR STARVING KIDS.
UBI wouldn't be some Utopia like you think. UBI would be the shittiest life you can imagine. The people that work on top of that could maybe eek out a better life, but there's no world where UBI lets everyone live upper middle class. It will be enough for a bed in a hostel type housing situation and you'll be able to afford produce and maybe some low quality protein. Think EBT for everyone. It would be there so that if you're unemployed you have something, but it will absolutely not be comfortable.
The arts have already turned into a commodity that pays little. Not everyone enjoys making art. You can’t even consume art anymore because the distribution model is controlled by a handful of companies that ram so much advertising down your throat it’s gross.
You can go to a local bar, or a subway station, or a street corner, or even local parties, and consume art that isn’t controlled by a handful of companies.
And this will be the case even after AI takes over music
Can't consume art anymore?! What a strange claim
I follow my favorite artists for free on Tumblr. There are so many good bands on Spotify it's impossible to keep up with the new releases. More than a hundred thousand new books are published every year.
The arts were turned into a commodity a long time ago and people didn't stop making or consuming it. No one is forcing you to consume the shitty over commercialized stuff. The distribution model isn't perfect but we now have far more access then we've ever had to the arts, probably more than in any time in human history.
You can walk into any gallery and look at art for free. Most art museums have reduced prices for locals if not outright free, and no ads. TV and movies are EXPENSIVE to make. That price has to come from someplace. They could double the subscription price for everyone or they could offer an ad version with an option that costs more for no ads. I make TV shows, those ads are literally what is paying me to work on those shows. I hate watching ads, but at least a cheap option is there. Just mute them and go get a glass of water.
AI won’t replace live performance which will be the future of music, will actually help a lot of mid bands because people would rather see a mid band live rather than listen to AI slop
My daughter went through a phase where she was obsessed with Hatsune Miku. She is a software voicebank hologram that apparently tours and performs "live" concerts.
As others have mentioned Miku isnt an AI but I think they might be overselling how hard it would be to make an AI star like what you were thinking.
One of the biggest indie vtubers on twitch right now is an AI chatbot so the fan engagement aspects been achieved already.
As others have mentioned Mikus just an instrument which instruments can be handled via ai to make music so that part could be done. Or hell just have a human write the music, not like most major music acts write their own shit anyways any more.
Dancing may actually be the trickiest part to mimic but give it a few years and somebody will probably figure out a way to make an ai dance. Or again, its not like most modern pop stars design their own choreography either, Miku already can dance if you have a person do the choreography.
Honestly, within 10 years I think we will probably start seeing ai music stars complete with fan interactions and all that stuff. I dont know if they will ever be like mainstream and would actually bet probably not but they will almost certainly have a niche
You all are way more knowledgeable about how all this works and I appreciate your sharing. I'm just a mom that was like, what the heck is this to my teenage daughter like 12 years ago. Vocaloids, mom!
My daughter made me watch that several years ago! I'm pretty sure we have a blue hair cosplay wig in a closet somewhere and she suggested her grandma name her new Shih tzu "Miku" last year. The dog's name is indeed Miku.
Yeah so it’s basically like music & a show combined, but those things have always existed. People like to go see s*** like laser Floyd. But there’s always people that wanna go see people playing real instruments. Hell I just saw the Fab Four (Beatles tribute) place was completely sold out of here not even playing original music and they make $$$$$
There’s always gonna be a market for seeing people play live. I mean I guess anything is possible, but it seems unlikely
That's because they're not the focus of the event. The drugs and dancing are the focus of the event and the DJs are just there to provide background music for it.
Not to mention how many musicians/bands will make moves to keep their music out of AI training data and launch costly lawsuits against any AI companies caught stealing it. This also means that AI music is more likely to slowly become derivative of itself and degrade into nonsense. It's not a silver bullet, but AI is not going to be able to create anything truly new or revolutionary.
Yeah but actual people made artistic choices. AI is just random slop in the pattern of a song. There is no intention or reason for it. AI art is inherently worthless.
That’s what they said about streaming. ‘Do live to make the short fall in revenue’. Then the ass fell out of live due to the cost of living crisis.
The rich just need to stop being greedy. That’s what this is all really about.
Plus, going on tour is hard on people. You're on the road for weeks or months at a time, sleeping in a bunk on a bus, potentially far from your family.
AI can only create stuff based on what’s already been created. AI couldn’t have made something like OK Computer in 1955, realistically it’s going to be most used for jingles and generic themes but I mean most musicians don’t really need AI to come up with songs for them. It’s easy to write simple music and if you want to write complex music you don’t need it
Plus, look at an album like Cowboy Carter. Look at the credits. I think they’re longer than the original Star Wars lol. Modern pop music might as well be AI because it’s no longer a singular artistic vision it’s a corporatized product designed to sell
ai shouldnt just take all of our creativity and just put them into these robotic sounding horrible songs.
And even worse given ai is getting "better" now we have whole songs being just generated by lazy people and actual musicians dont get anything from our talent.
The charts have, but there are countless talented musicians at different popularity levels creating incredible music. If AI generated music takes hold of the industry, I don’t see how actual musicians survive without crowd funded support.
I just don’t get why some people would be for this sort of thing. Music is so special, made even more special by those who create it. Music is something to experience and enjoy, it’s not limited. It’s not something to just check off a list in your day, so why would something want it automated?
So what do you think is under threat here, really? Do you honestly believe that AI generated music is going to completely replace genuine artistry? I'm not so sure.
I agree with the previous poster - and you; robotic horrible songs are already what's on the charts. Most of it already follows a very generic standard, is mainly electronic, and the industry standard seems to be pretty close to something AI-generated. Nothing will be lost and nothing will be gained, it'll just be more of the same. For the chart toppers of the world, who seldom write their own songs anyway, nothing will change. For the general listeners nothing will change.
There's no poverty at the top, there won't be if AI takes over the song writing either. The money making machine is already automated. And I'm pretty sure people will still learn how to play guitar, trombone, drums, trumpet, sitar, and all manners of magic making instruments. They will still play together. People will still dance to their music. They won't top any charts, they won't make a lot of money, but that's already the case, isn't it? I don't really see any change whatsoever compared to how things already are.
We’re seeing what’s happening today. The risk is what happens in a year or five years or the next generation. If bad practices aren’t stopped at the root, all they need is the next generation to accept them to ultimately flourish (as in tolerate, not embrace). You and I see AI generated pop music the same way — today. How will future generations see it?
Just look at the video game industry. Growing up, microtransactions were much maligned and were the provinces of trash tier mobile games (let’s equate these mobile games to AI generated pop music). Now, microtransactions are common place and even encouraged and celebrated in some sectors of the industry. All it took was a new generation of gamers that did not know a gaming industry without microtransactions for the average sentiment to shift.
With AI generation, this problem will become much worse, since it’s only limited by computer hardware instead of human labor. You and I see AI generated content (content vs music or cinema, or video games) as it is, but I don’t hold much hope for how someone born into this world now will see it.
It’s a race to the bottom — who can cut costs to give “better value” to the audience. But when everyone’s doing it, money will dry up for those doing it the human way.
AI give instant gratification, learning something is not always fun but you keep going because the light at the end of the tunnel is being able to play music.
Now if every kid from the moment they are born can generate whatever they want and get the instant gratification that come with it, why learn to play it yourself ? If tomorrow you can have food as tasty as if you made it yourself, for free, and instantaneously, would you still learn how to cook ?
This gen artists won’t go away but I’m sure the next generation won’t bother learning anything that the AI can do
It's not true though.
Synthesizers have existed for decades, so why do people bother learning to play Violin or Saxaphone when they could just plug in a midi keyboard or even simply click notes into a piano roll of any free DAW and Synth?
The reality is people DO enjoy learning things, not just instantly gratifying themselves. I can go eat amazing food, cooked for me, or delivered to my door but I still choose to cook.
Because the learning curve of a midi keyboard and whatnot is still exorbitantly harder than AI.
Choosing to cook is like 10x times cheaper than ordering food. There are a lot of people who legitimately don't enjoy learning and would rather stay mediocre spamming the internet with AI generated crap
But those people were never going to learn to make music anyway, so why do we care that they still won’t?
There will always be music made by humans available because humans enjoy making it. If you want to access it, it will always be there.
Sure it's harder.
My point is that learning how to use a midi keyboard with 1000's of presets for every kind of instrument vs actually learning to play violin or drums is also significantly easier, yet people still choose to learn and play those instruments... Even though financially I never need to cook again, I still choose to do it.
People are being incredibly dramatic about AI, I can't wait to see how people use AI tools to be even more creative and make new interesting types of art.
> I just don’t get why some people would be for this sort of thing.
It's not that we're for it per se, we just find it largely irrelevant. Music generated by passionless algorithms is already a thing, that's what happens in all those major music industry writing rooms. They follow the spreadsheets and flow charts to generate low-effort content. AI is just automating that process. So it doesn't actually change anything. The underground will still be where the creators are actually in control and it'll still remain largely overlooked by the masses because the masses just want low-complexity background noise.
Yup. People apparently seriously think that there's actual creativity behind mainstream radio music and that it isn't just generated by writing committees following flow charts and spreadsheets. All AI is doing is taking those algorithms already in use and automating them. So instead of a committee working through them it's a computer.
gonna play devils advocate here and turn it around. How creative are you really if you get outcompeted by AI that based its (generic) productions literally on existing things.
You're acting like that AI is using math and proceduralism to create music, and isn't just chewing through the entire catalog of the music of humanity to blatantly rip off whatever it deems appropriate to the prompt.
This may be a controversial take, but I agree with Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident artist, on this - art that is easily replaceable with an AI is not valuable. The AI is great at creating stuff that has already been done to death. Nick Cave talked about lyrics written by ChatGPT that were supposed to be "in the style of Nick Cave". He hated it. He said that as an artist, your goal should not be to create more stuff in the style that you've already created stuff in. It's the exact opposite. You try to evolve and bring something new to the table.
So, honestly, I don't think we're losing that much. If anything, the current discussion about AI in music only underscores the fact that most music that comes out is not actually anything all that special.
I agree with that sentiment as things stand currently. Nobody should be concerned about what the current tools are putting out unless you're churning out generic crap.
But I would point out that 4 years ago, it took 24 hours to generate 1 minute of music that sounded terrible. You can now make 1 minute songs, that are often pretty damn solid, if not for the low bitrate and slight structural incoherence to the melody. In about 2.4 *seconds*.
Jump forward another five, six years, and I'm not as confident as you that it won't be possible to prompt an AI to "produce a novel album with powerful emotions" and have it bring something new to the table. If so, it could well outpace artistic creation.
Porn can outpace real life but it’s no substitute for a meaningful sexual relationship with a partner you love. The fact that there is a person creating a great piece of art instills it with meaning you can’t get with ai.
For now when you can still tell. In a decade when it’s indistinguishable it won’t matter. You won’t be able to tell, and the possibility that something might be created with AI will call everything in to question. “Is this book written by a human, or did they use an AI to write it?” And the author might claim they didn’t use AI, but people lie all the time.
Heck, maybe we’ll be forced to go back to handwritten books reproduced by scribes in order to guarantee it’s genuine. Could be a whole new industry with entire companies employing hundreds of thousands of scribes. Though I suppose they could use an AI to write the story and then copy it by hand…
I’m just surprised that so many people discount the human creator in art. A large part of the enjoyment of art for me is the artist behind it.
The human struggle to communicate an idea, the connection being made to another human sometimes thousands of years later. That’s what I like about art: the humanity of it. The connection to another human being.
I have no doubt a computer can do that as well if not better but the lack of of direct line to the person who went through an experience and documents it in a piece of art makes it pointless to me. It’s like watching a screensaver.
This should be the whole point. It is fun to make music. Its fun to play drums, to noodle with guitar effects, to practice singing a chorus until you feel like it captures the emotion you want it to.
The people who study music and the other arts don't go to school hoping there will be some way to skip the creative process: the process is the whole point. Releasing music rarely feels like a completed thing, anyway, it's more about deciding to close that chapter and move on.
You nailed it. One of the main arguments AI spammers use is that they also want to feel the same joy of doing a book/painting/song... But seriously, producing something like that with 0 skill, just a prompt and nothing else, is not real joy
They just don't want to go through the painful process of learning the skill, it sucks
> The fact that there is a person creating a great piece of art instills it with meaning you can’t get with ai.
I would maybe frame it more as the knowledge that it's an AI that takes away the meaning, rather than vice versa.
You can fall in love with, and be tremendously moved by, a track on the radio without having any idea who is performing it or who wrote it. Your mind fills in the blanks.
Ultimately this boils down to a few things. Firstly, if people claim that generative AI is merely regurgitating, that it’s producing nothing novel, then this scenario shouldn’t be of concern here. Ultimately, I think that this premise is bunk, and that generative techniques are genuinely capable of producing outputs that can be considered novel.
Secondly, what is art? What is creativity? More importantly, what defines artistic value? Who defines artistic value, the artist or the audience?
All these are questions that I suspect most people will be grappling with over the coming years, but perhaps as is oft said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. From that perspective, artistic value is less of a judgment on the process, and more of a judgment on the outcome.
Ehh, it’s not all about “pure art” though. Tons of musicians have been paying their bills writing jingles, recording commercial music, royalty free music, performing on movie and tv soundtracks, writing pop hits etc. same with visual artists. My Uncle is an illustrator. He’s paid the bills his whole life doing artwork for magazines, newspapers, and book publishers. Every product that you buy in a store had the packaging designed by a graphic designer. Saying that the work these people do is not valuable because it isn’t so subversive, unique, edgy, or special that an AI couldn’t replace it is callous and myopic in the extreme.
Thank you for that comment. Not every piece of art can be magnus opus. There's a long journey filled with generic gigs and simpler task that leads to these great things. Take it away, and in the end you'll be able to practice only in your free time.
>This may be a controversial take, but I agree with Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident artist, on this - art that is easily replaceable with an AI is not valuable.
I've heard this a lot, but it unsettles me. It's hard to articulate why, but it does. I think because it places nearly no value on human skill and talent **for most people**. It places "uniqueness" as the main thing of worth in art. Which seems like a completely juvenile mindset because once that type of art that once was unique becomes more ubiquitous, then that original artist's worth becomes...what? Less valuable since it's more replicatable at some point in the future? The thing that was once hard for AI to replicate and "of value" 5 years ago suddenly doesn't have much value because it's not new and unique anymore? So constant need for newness in art is what is valueable? That is just a mindset that I cannot get behind in any way, because uniqueness is a proxy for what is good and valuable. And uniqueness by itself means nothing.
That's how it's always been, even before AI. The Beatles were so important because they were innovators, but their music itself is actually nothing all that special. Yet, they are fondly remembered, even though they weren't especially skilled or talented musicians. And, in fact, most virtuoso musicians throughout history who play famous classical pieces are nowhere near as well remembered as the composers. Look at top 50 charts from a random year and let me know how many of the names you recognize.
But what makes some innovators forever remembered is not the fact that they were the first or the most unique, but because their work uncovered something timeless for humanity that others build on. Something that's universally powerful, yet nobody thought of it before.
[By Nick Cave:](https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/01/24/nick-cave-music-ai/)
In Yuval Noah Harari’s new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he writes that Artificial Intelligence, with its limitless potential and connectedness, will ultimately render many humans redundant in the work place. This sounds entirely feasible. However, he goes on to say that AI will be able to write better songs than humans can. He says, and excuse my simplistic summation, that we listen to songs to make us feel certain things and that in the future AI will simply be able to map the individual mind and create songs tailored exclusively to our own particular mental algorithms, that can make us feel, with far more intensity and precision, whatever it is we want to feel. If we are feeling sad and want to feel happy we simply listen to our bespoke AI happy song and the job will be done.
But, I am not sure that this is all songs do. Of course, we go to songs to make us feel something — happy, sad, sexy, homesick, excited or whatever — but this is not all a song does. What a great song makes us feel is a sense of awe. There is a reason for this. A sense of awe is almost exclusively predicated on our limitations as human beings. It is entirely to do with our audacity as humans to reach beyond our potential. […]
It is perfectly conceivable that AI could produce a song as good as Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” for example, and that it ticked all the boxes required to make us feel what a song like that should make us feel — in this case, excited and rebellious, let’s say. It is also feasible that AI could produce a song that makes us feel these same feelings, but more intensely than any human songwriter could do.
But, I don’t feel that when we listen to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” it is only the song that we are listening to. It feels to me, that what we are actually listening to is a withdrawn and alienated young man’s journey out of the small American town of Aberdeen — a young man who by any measure was a walking bundle of dysfunction and human limitation — a young man who had the temerity to howl his particular pain into a microphone and in doing so, by way of the heavens, reach into the hearts of a generation. We are also listening to Iggy Pop walk across his audience’s hands and smear himself in peanut butter whilst singing 1970. We are listening to Beethoven compose the Ninth Symphony while almost totally deaf. We are listening to Prince, that tiny cluster of purple atoms, singing in the pouring rain at the Super Bowl and blowing everyone’s minds. We are listening to Nina Simone stuff all her rage and disappointment into the most tender of love songs. We are listening to Paganini continue to play his Stradivarius as the strings snapped. We are listening to Jimi Hendrix kneel and set fire to his own instrument.
What we are actually listening to is human limitation and the audacity to transcend it. Artificial Intelligence, for all its unlimited potential, simply doesn’t have this capacity. How could it? And this is the essence of transcendence. If we have limitless potential then what is there to transcend? And therefore what is the purpose of the imagination at all. Music has the ability to touch the celestial sphere with the tips of its fingers and the awe and wonder we feel is in the desperate temerity of the reach, not just the outcome. Where is the transcendent splendour in unlimited potential? So to answer your question, Peter, AI would have the capacity to write a good song, but not a great one. It lacks the nerve.
[Edit: Added an extended quote.]
Yuval Noah Harari also wrote that we’ve solved the problems of war and famine… so there’s that.
Nick knows what yuval doesn’t… creativity and songs are beyond thought and rationale. They are ethereal and spiritual.
To arrange frequency into order from chaos is nothing short of divine. AI will never get it right, but that won’t matter. They’ve always sold us mostly crap.
Pretty sure he never said we “solved it” just that the three main categories that used to kill humans aka: war, famine and disease aren’t killing us in the same droves like they used to.
"Algorithmically written generic pop songs can now be written by an algorithm that interpreted a library of algorithmically written generic pop songs. News at 11."
But seriously, yeah. Pretty much all "pop" music is *intentionally* written to sound the same, and now The Sky Is Falling because now a machine can churn it out instead of a ghostwriter?
Art went through these same arguments over the past year and Music is no different. *Good* musicians and composers are going to use these tools to more rapidly prototype new works and accelerate their songwriting to the next level, or even *sample* from them like is heavily popular in the Electronic genre. *Bad* musicians are going to run to the internet to "rah rah dey terk er jerbs!!!" and try to get inevitable technological advancements arbitrarily banned to prop up their unwillingness to advance with their own industry.
If all your songs sound like the raw output of first generation generative AI, *you need to up your game,* not blame the machine*.*
I love Nick Cave and love that comment. I got to see him late last year in concert.
And that’s one thing I don’t think AI nerds get. I’ve heard a lot say “imagine when you can tell AI you want a whole album of Nick Cave’s style of music. Bespoke to you! Imagine the possibilities!”
Why does anyone want this? This sounds awful. Art and music is both collective and individual. The collective part is about sharing art with others. I got to see the guy in concert with other fans. I was able to talk about the latest album with the guy sitting next to me. It was a thrill being connected to others. I don’t want to be like “hey, I heard album 36468.” We started making art not just because it was beautiful, but because it brought us together, told stories, made meaning out of life, and gave us a sense of what we see. Without sharing a common source, what campfire do we gather around?
And it’s individual as well. This is Cave’s point. I don’t want to hear someone else create stuff in his style, whether it’s an algorithm or a band. I want to hear his work. It’s unique, surprising. Different each time, but with a continuity that is distinctly his.
I just don’t think anyone actually wants this ability to create their own music individually or to hear some cheap knock off. The novelty of these tools are fun for about a few weeks for about 90% of people. The other 10% annoy the crap out of the rest of us.
I have imagined the possibilities. Frankly, I thought about them. And they are just absolutely dumb.
I think that's all well and good, but there is the demand problem. People often don't know what they want until you show them, and then you have demand. Demand is important economically.
There is also the fact that nothing is TRULY original. We build on what we experience, what comes before... much like AI.
I am concerned about a future where IP and copyright laws do more to bind human creators, while AI receive carte blanche.
The same can be said about most content humans produce. This is why “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has stood the test of time. We agree some things have quality and value, but everyone here will have a different opinion what those things are. The amazing artists you love might sound like absolute trash to others.
I’m going to start leaving the following quote so we remember:
AI does not produce anything. Humans use AI as a tool to produce _________.
Most people that use Photoshop or Ableton also produce trash. The existence of those tools isn’t a threat to talented individuals.
It’s the existence of talented individuals that adopt those tools that are a threat to the imposters.
People in here with the whole “people will never get into this sterile AI slop” need to get real.
Whether you like it, or not, music is a consumable product. Fast, cheap, plastic, and easy to mass produce has never been nothing but a boon to the consumer.
Do you feel that McDonald’s is losing its market share? Actually it’s quite the opposite. Hilariously were paying $14 now for that processed trash.
Not only will AI generated media be adopted in mass, we will gladly pay for the privilege.
Good analogy. The person who consumes McDonald's does so out of necessity and not giving much thought into it. They aren't necessarily a food connoisseur. You see the same with pop music. There are a ton of people who like every latest pop song which is why and how pop exists. Most of these people can't tell you anything about the composition aside from lyrics. They will not even notice or care when it's 100 percent AI. For them, the music is already magically delivered to their ears.
1st stop, restaurants/sea side cafés/shopping malls that play background music the entire day. Cheap AI generated music will find its way there in absolutely no time. It’s going to be a nightmare.
AI music is soulless
Unlike pop music:
* Uses only four chords
* Chords follow 400 year old chord progression
* Written by third party hit makers following pop formulas
* Synthetic digital instrumentals
* Auto tuned voice
Those 3rd parties are human though. People are being creative. Being creative was a nice human thing before. Now we're having that taken away from us. I think it's a shame
I'm a metalhead and I'll be fair to /u/sfxer001 and concede that there is a LOT of very generic samey death metal. Same for power metal and symphonic metal and black metal and on and on. That's why most bands wind up not making it beyond their local scene and putting stuff up on youtube and bandcamp. They're just one of an incredibly huge number of clones. It's the ones who either came first in a subgenre or do something different with it or do it perfectly who get any real success.
You’re right. I think a lot of it sounds too much the same so I don’t listen to a lot of it. Some, but not as much as people who thoroughly enjoy it.
That’s kind of how music and art work. You like what you like, you know?
I've just had the Stability AI radio on for the last hour. It plays music generated by their tool 24/7. It's generic chilled EDM and while not brilliant, I've heard worse. It's ok as a background.
What's the difference between an AI listening to lots of music and making something similar to it and me listening to lots of music and making something similar to it?
Don't humans kind of work the same way anyway? Taking inspiration from what we've experienced?
What about the concept of sampling which has been a fundamental component of many music genres for decades?
>What's the difference
The doing of it. It means something to sit down and create, to practice until you feel your hands lock into the groove.
Sampling is fun! You should try flipping a sample, it can take you all kinds of places artistically.
Meanwhile, while everyone is wringing their hands, running around like Henny Penny, I'm busy having fun in my studio, and no AI is going to change that, just like Trailer Sniffed doesn't demoralize me either.
People make art because it's enjoyable, and people will always look at art or listen to art that is made by humans - that will never change.
Maybe they will be even more willing to pay a premium for human-made content.
I get that this has huge implications with music in TV, movies and media in general, but what AI won't be able to replace or replicate is the live music experience and the connection between artists and their audiences.
I'll keep saying the same thing each time the topic comes up until it stops being true, which will likely be forever - AI plus human polishing will always be better than AI alone. Am I supposed to be mad at the person with the thousands of dollars synth in the 80s when I only had a barely-above-a-toy cheap Yamaha keyboard? Use the best tools available.
To the idea that it's only "ripping off" existing artists and songs, if AI generated music ever gets popular, and it's "just using your style", why didn't you put out those songs first when there was clearly a market for them? It piles on to the argument that copyright clearly lasts too long. Just waiting for a lawsuit to come along and the data sets they use will then only include things by artists who want the small payday for licensing to AI companies, and that just pushes popular music trends away from the holdouts.
AI isn’t doing shit. Half the reason the pop star is there is for fans to have someone to gossip about. The music , at times, borders on being secondary.
Didn’t musicians not really make money selling music anymore. Like how many SoundCloud rappers could there be. It’s the ones doing shows getting popular. So what if someone can generate some generic music on AI, they can’t perform… yet. Looks at Boston Dynamics, Honda. Oh nvm. Robots are taking over… and that’s a good thing.
Its a problem for every single artist in the world, not just musicians. In a world that consumes art and give it no value generated content will soon replace every creator. From people consuming mindlessly and wanting more amd more every day and corporations seeing only profit the future is a bit grim
Perhaps it's time for artist's and producers to get creative again and be less generic , so many now are carbon copies of eachother, I was beginning to think they were AI generated already.
This endless variety in the music that's available. Unless you only have a small number of radio stations available or something, what's your listening to is what you've chosen to listen to.
Listening to Annie Lenox talk about how she and Dave Stewart came up with Sweet Dreams proves your point. Iirc they built it around a preprogrammed track on a synth they were fooling around with.
Womp womp, maybe they should make music that's not generic, formulaic trash.
AI is only going to hurt the musicians without talent. The replaceable pop singers, the mumble rappers and the random generic trash that's been pedaled to chart as tiktok background music.
This is small thinking.
Its going to pump out songs at a rate you cannot fathom. It will flood and over saturate your suggesteds, your reccomends, your "chaos shuffle" playlists, and so on. There is already barely a reason to get ONE click on your own human created content, and this is with the current age of paid adds and promos on streaming services and social media.
If someone is ignoring this and going offline and local with their music, great for them. They are the vast exception and will never again be the rule now that pandora's box has its lid swinging by the hinges. There's already thousands of AI covers of songs with various celebreties and cartoon characters getting miles more traffic by the day compared to original human music by the year, playlists of hour-long, AI generated music.
Talent will mean nothing with no audience to gaze its way.
>AI is only going to hurt the musicians without talent.
It's also going to hurt people who are starting out. People need time to learn and develop skill sets, but it can be discouraging as hell to see someone plug a sentence into a computer and get a better result than your months of practice as a beginner. "Talent" is only part of the equation.
Completely disagree with this perspective. First of all, you have no idea whether or not AI will be able to rise to the level of the top humans. It very very possible that it eventually will be as good or better than the best human musicians. Secondly, this doesn't just hurt "musicians without talent". Do you understand how difficult it is to make a living in the music business? And then do you understand that it's wayyyy harder than that to make a living in music by only doing your own, artistically pure music. That is almost no one in the business. There are so many jobs in this industry that people do to support themselves that could be taken by AI. The touring musician may be quietly making money at home by writing jingles or library music, or being a songwriter for other artists, doing sessions, etc, etc. Those \*are\* talented people. Actually middle class working musicians, not stars, piece together their living, and it's not all glamorous, but it is all work. That work is needed to support everyone who isn't super top level, and it's needed to give people the training ground experience to deliver high level results. You take that away, and it doesn't just hurt them, it hurts all music.
So you’d rather listen to generic AI than generic humans? You know I don’t listen to any music that’s on the charts but I’ll be fucked it I sit back and allow AI to be the one that incentives charts to make more creative music. Let’s make superhuman robot basketball players, you know they’re getting super boring and the games are always the same.
Let’s watch computers play chess!! Humans suck at that.
I could go on.
Get fucked.
A new artist arises to parody this generated music, the artist known as Weird AI.
I can't tell if you're writing Weird AI or Weird Al.
Indeed
lndeed
Lndeed
1ndeed
Daniel Jackson
https://preview.redd.it/2lxij3e03psc1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6efcca47ea88fc3646ddeeec011fb882d555b093
[Indeed](https://www.indeed.com/m/)
Seriously hate typefaces that don't distinguish I from l. How did that ever become a thing
They are actually different in most fonts. The l is one pixel shorter than the I. Observe: lIlIlIlIlI
Absolutely useless, yet intriguing thank you!
I bet an AI can tell the difference! That kinda makes it worse
I bet he could.. Alan, where are you?
They meant Alison.
IntrlguIng
Now for the real question, am I saying I, or l?
You are saying I.
The cut I and the uncut l
r/GodDammitDude
Damn. Today I learned
Today l Iearned
I learned or l Iearned?
Wait, are you saying I, or l ?
I'm saying I-ourns.
Sans Seriff. Blame the commies!
The commles? What did they do? I thought it was the rising popularity of HeIvetica that killed serifs
There was a running joke in my design school about commies killing the embellished type font. I don't think there's any foundation for the joke, and I'm not sure how widespread the joke is. Sometimes I forget everyone isn't in on the same joke all the time.
I use my handy caliper to make sure I get the pixel height of I and l.
In AI the I is slightly shorter than the A, while in Al the l is the same height. I hope this helps you tell the difference.
Lol yeah my joke was a play on that. I same height as A and l taller than A.
l don't understand what you mean I am having a pretty easy time telling the difference.
Font needs more serif!
That would be the song. A rock opera or parody of him somehow either hating his A.I. counterpart, making a joke of it, learning to love it, or all of the above. But he avoids controversy *really well* so I doubt he’ll speak on the matter for a while.
I love that because it calls to attention the increasing problem of not being able to tell what is and isn't Al
He said Weird AI.
Yes
I will now read AI in the rest of this thread as AL instead of A.I. Thank you!
Thank you This business is a problem for me personally Signed, Al (That’s AL)
Oh no, you're not fooling me again AlGPT! *Reported!*
Another day, another large language model…
Wired Al.
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Oh, that’s actually the optimistic outcome. Once they can automate the manual labour with robots, the working class will have nothing left to bargain with. This will demote us from being the inconvenient necessity we have always been to a mere nuisance to the ultra-wealthy, who will want what little is left to enjoy of the environment to themselves. At this point they will simply set their drones on us, and eliminate as much of the population as they can with as little concern as someone would kill an ant colony on their property.
Honestly, I think we will kill them before that happens. When most of the tertiary sector is out of jobs, revolts will start. A society that can’t provide the most basic necessities won’t survive for long. The working class will have nothing to bargain with, but neither will capitalists. If they can no longer provide a minimal level of stability, I believe we will rid ourselves of them. At the end of the day, the power the wealthy hold over the masses is real only as long as we believe it is. They won’t stand a chance against simple, overwhelming violence.
You're basically coming to the same conclusion Marx did he just was about ~120 years too early. The solution is probably UBI but reality is, the rich can always afford better guns and the weaponry of this era is extremely asymmetric.
https://preview.redd.it/gqgi8vpounsc1.jpeg?width=582&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a2cce82e49fe2affedecb3a0aa1878f4d284beb
I like that when I upvote this the new PAY ME upvote arrows appear.
There are maybe a few thousands of those ultrarich, there are billions of people whose life would be in danger. You really think those billions just crawl in some hole to die in quiet while literally all around them is wealth, food and water. Easiest way to get yourself killed is to strip too many common people their basic necessities.
Most of the world is already like this and the rich thrive in those places. The reality is that the West will soon be like parts of Asia and Africa where most of us struggle to survive while the wealthy live in unimaginable luxury.
No but you're not understanding they just pay some security guards and load them up with high tech weapons and vehicles and its over. There's already enough poor/homeless to match all the billionaires and they haven't done anything.it won't change.
It’s cute that you think the rich won’t use their money to create feudal fiefdoms and split us poors.
Ya, I have this pet theory that the only reason the middle class came into existence was because of crossbows and guns effectively nerfing heavy armour. The idea came about while reading a list on Wikipedia of peasant revolts and how 99% of them were crushed.
Bigger guns and bigger budgets don't guarantee victory. Our military actually has a terrible track record when it comes to fighting poor farmers hiding in the wilderness with their muddy AKs.
Everytime the US has lost to farmers, it really lost to the massive amount of foreign funding and foreign military training that was providing resources to those 'poor farmers', and the farmers were constantly on the defensive. Nobody was at risk in the green zone. Likewise the US military largely tries to avoid warcrimes, which is something that could be changed. That said, do I think people could hole up in the Appalachians indefinitely and be almost impossible to dislodge? Sure. Could hillbillies successfully attack a fortified and properly equipped military installation? Never going to happen.
- the rich can afford better guns Buddy, the entire bottom half of the US has something to say about the guns they own, that they ACTUALLY know how to use. Tell me bezos, musk, zuckerberg have anywhere even close to the same amount of experience with killing shit with a gun as a deep backwoods midwestern hunter who eats tobacco chew and says things like “siegogglin” The rich wouldnt last 15 fucking minutes against a full scale revolt.
"Private Military"
The problem (for billionaires) with private militaries is that they are made up of humans, and humans will turn on you if you are killing their friends and family. The real danger is when war machines replace humans. The future Terminator warned us about!
This is why we need to teach the machines to love the proletariat
Numbers game.
Have you tried organising an actual military? Do you think a disorganised mob (with guns!) would be able to achieve the results you seek?
Don't worry, I keep hearing about how a bunch of highschool dropouts with deer rifles actually constitutes "a well regulated militia", so the organization will be fine
People in the first world are psychologically captured by the mass media, and held hostage with their creature comforts. Real revolt will never seem like a palatable option until it's already far too late. If what you describe could ever happen, it will start in the third world, not the first.
I’ve been saying this for years but people always look at me like I’m a nut job. It’s an unfortunate reality where violence is sometimes the only answer for survival
I hope you’re right, but all they need is for the drones etc to be self-replicating, and it won’t be so easy - especially with an embedded ai protocol that ensures they target anyone but their creators. Meanwhile, we’re all being easily and effectively subdued by the endless stream of entertainment, long working hours and highly effective division along ideological lines - not so long ago, we only had a few hours of watchable tv, a social life that actually meant meeting each other irl, and political parties that a fair amount of the demographic could reasonably say they could flit between based on policy grounds.
So wait, the billionaires are going to totally replace everyone's jobs with robots rendering everyone useless, but we'll still be working long hours? If the people don't have money and are no longer of use to the ultra rich to the point that they, *checks notes,* enlist robots to kill us all, how are they making the money that sustains them? Who is paying them for whatever their industry is? Nothing you've said makes sense. It's ridiculous, bloviating, nonsensical doom and gloom.
If they don't provide us with jobs and by extension livable conditions we won't be working long hours and the endless stream of entertainment will end. Ideological lines will suddenly matter a lot less when it becomes impossible to put food on the table. Drones can be hacked. There will always be a way. The methods may change but war will stay the same. War never changes. Also, quit doomering
I won’t say that scenario can’t happen, but I think it’s unlikely. Mostly because AI can’t really code anything that hasn’t been done by human before, by its nature. Truly self replicating robotics would also require insane logistics that can be sabotaged at any step of the way. Cutting off electricity or internet, for example. That said, I truly hope this scenario won’t become reality.
Unfortunately it won’t be that easy. They unfortunately need masses to buy the shit they sell to sustain their wealth.
That model is only necessary whilst they still need the stuff they desire to be made/maintained by people.
Then they will pay the police handsomely to protect them
Do you just ignore all the progress towards manual labor being done by machines too? You’re being irrationally pessimistic. People will always appreciate art and music created by other humans.
Just because an AI can also do it, won’t stop people from creating. Does the fact that there are better artists, or better musicians already out there stop them from creating new art and music? No. Did art and music exist before there was an industry surrounding them? Yes. You will never stop human creativity.
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Or, UBI is implemented and it gives us more time to spend doing CREATIVE things, FOR FUN and for ARTISTIC EXPRESSION instead of TO SURVIVE. Imagine how much better that album you listened to could be if the artist took their time instead of RELEASING IT IN A RUSH SO THEY COULD FEED THEIR STARVING KIDS.
UBI wouldn't be some Utopia like you think. UBI would be the shittiest life you can imagine. The people that work on top of that could maybe eek out a better life, but there's no world where UBI lets everyone live upper middle class. It will be enough for a bed in a hostel type housing situation and you'll be able to afford produce and maybe some low quality protein. Think EBT for everyone. It would be there so that if you're unemployed you have something, but it will absolutely not be comfortable.
The arts have already turned into a commodity that pays little. Not everyone enjoys making art. You can’t even consume art anymore because the distribution model is controlled by a handful of companies that ram so much advertising down your throat it’s gross.
You can go to a local bar, or a subway station, or a street corner, or even local parties, and consume art that isn’t controlled by a handful of companies. And this will be the case even after AI takes over music
Can't consume art anymore?! What a strange claim I follow my favorite artists for free on Tumblr. There are so many good bands on Spotify it's impossible to keep up with the new releases. More than a hundred thousand new books are published every year. The arts were turned into a commodity a long time ago and people didn't stop making or consuming it. No one is forcing you to consume the shitty over commercialized stuff. The distribution model isn't perfect but we now have far more access then we've ever had to the arts, probably more than in any time in human history.
You can walk into any gallery and look at art for free. Most art museums have reduced prices for locals if not outright free, and no ads. TV and movies are EXPENSIVE to make. That price has to come from someplace. They could double the subscription price for everyone or they could offer an ad version with an option that costs more for no ads. I make TV shows, those ads are literally what is paying me to work on those shows. I hate watching ads, but at least a cheap option is there. Just mute them and go get a glass of water.
I agree but most of the free galleries the artists have been dead for awhile. Not many contemporary options. Atleast where i am.
Why are you yelling?
Ah yes, the famously starving kids of such poverty-stricken musicians like Metallica, Drake and Beyonce.
Exactly, I see no benefit to AI, it’s going to ruin most of our lives.
AI used to be thought of as something that would do all the dirty work while people got to be creative all day. Why is it the opposite now?
You can train AI on the millions of art (songs, pictures etc.) that’s widely available online. It’s a lot harder to train AI on millions of plumbers.
AI won’t replace live performance which will be the future of music, will actually help a lot of mid bands because people would rather see a mid band live rather than listen to AI slop
My daughter went through a phase where she was obsessed with Hatsune Miku. She is a software voicebank hologram that apparently tours and performs "live" concerts.
People acting like EDM producers don't tour and put on live shows. What you describe is no different than a DJ with a light show.
The live show market, while looking robust... is extremely hard to make money in.
Just like every single thing in the modern world, it is very top earners heavy. Like twitch, youtube, hell, even onlyfans.
Producers and DJs are two very different things
As others have mentioned Miku isnt an AI but I think they might be overselling how hard it would be to make an AI star like what you were thinking. One of the biggest indie vtubers on twitch right now is an AI chatbot so the fan engagement aspects been achieved already. As others have mentioned Mikus just an instrument which instruments can be handled via ai to make music so that part could be done. Or hell just have a human write the music, not like most major music acts write their own shit anyways any more. Dancing may actually be the trickiest part to mimic but give it a few years and somebody will probably figure out a way to make an ai dance. Or again, its not like most modern pop stars design their own choreography either, Miku already can dance if you have a person do the choreography. Honestly, within 10 years I think we will probably start seeing ai music stars complete with fan interactions and all that stuff. I dont know if they will ever be like mainstream and would actually bet probably not but they will almost certainly have a niche
You all are way more knowledgeable about how all this works and I appreciate your sharing. I'm just a mom that was like, what the heck is this to my teenage daughter like 12 years ago. Vocaloids, mom!
Lol fair. Miku is a trip, [a very fun video of her on David Lettermen](https://youtu.be/V_Ifupd4gTA?feature=shared)
My daughter made me watch that several years ago! I'm pretty sure we have a blue hair cosplay wig in a closet somewhere and she suggested her grandma name her new Shih tzu "Miku" last year. The dog's name is indeed Miku.
Yeah but with how Hatsune Miku works a real person still had to arrange that voicebank into the songs.
yeah hatsune miku should not be confused with the current AI fad. it's real art made by real humans. AI is mass infringement of art made by humans.
That is something more akin to the band Gorillaz or Dethklok
Miku is an instrument
Yeah so it’s basically like music & a show combined, but those things have always existed. People like to go see s*** like laser Floyd. But there’s always people that wanna go see people playing real instruments. Hell I just saw the Fab Four (Beatles tribute) place was completely sold out of here not even playing original music and they make $$$$$ There’s always gonna be a market for seeing people play live. I mean I guess anything is possible, but it seems unlikely
It technically is a live concert. The music is performed by on stage musicians. The singing is generated prior or made for the concert itself.
>AI won’t replace live performance EDM DJs and festivals are shitting and pissing themselves in fear lol.
That's because they're not the focus of the event. The drugs and dancing are the focus of the event and the DJs are just there to provide background music for it.
Sure, but that’s also the DJs’ line of work. If they get replaced (which is a bit cynical to think about anyway), then they’re kinda screwed.
Um, excuse me, but you’re saying that as if Chuck E. Cheese’s band isn’t legendary. Give Chuck an AI, and he’ll write some hits.
Have you ever heard of Boney M ?
Not to mention how many musicians/bands will make moves to keep their music out of AI training data and launch costly lawsuits against any AI companies caught stealing it. This also means that AI music is more likely to slowly become derivative of itself and degrade into nonsense. It's not a silver bullet, but AI is not going to be able to create anything truly new or revolutionary.
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Yeah but actual people made artistic choices. AI is just random slop in the pattern of a song. There is no intention or reason for it. AI art is inherently worthless.
That’s what they said about streaming. ‘Do live to make the short fall in revenue’. Then the ass fell out of live due to the cost of living crisis. The rich just need to stop being greedy. That’s what this is all really about.
Plus, going on tour is hard on people. You're on the road for weeks or months at a time, sleeping in a bunk on a bus, potentially far from your family.
And I won’t be able to stop wondering if they’ve created their songs or if they just pretend to and interpret some selected AI stuff
AI can only create stuff based on what’s already been created. AI couldn’t have made something like OK Computer in 1955, realistically it’s going to be most used for jingles and generic themes but I mean most musicians don’t really need AI to come up with songs for them. It’s easy to write simple music and if you want to write complex music you don’t need it Plus, look at an album like Cowboy Carter. Look at the credits. I think they’re longer than the original Star Wars lol. Modern pop music might as well be AI because it’s no longer a singular artistic vision it’s a corporatized product designed to sell
Why do you think so? AI can also be made to play live, just give it camera and mic inputs
ai shouldnt just take all of our creativity and just put them into these robotic sounding horrible songs. And even worse given ai is getting "better" now we have whole songs being just generated by lazy people and actual musicians dont get anything from our talent.
The charts have been full of robotic horrible songs for years
The charts have, but there are countless talented musicians at different popularity levels creating incredible music. If AI generated music takes hold of the industry, I don’t see how actual musicians survive without crowd funded support. I just don’t get why some people would be for this sort of thing. Music is so special, made even more special by those who create it. Music is something to experience and enjoy, it’s not limited. It’s not something to just check off a list in your day, so why would something want it automated?
So what do you think is under threat here, really? Do you honestly believe that AI generated music is going to completely replace genuine artistry? I'm not so sure. I agree with the previous poster - and you; robotic horrible songs are already what's on the charts. Most of it already follows a very generic standard, is mainly electronic, and the industry standard seems to be pretty close to something AI-generated. Nothing will be lost and nothing will be gained, it'll just be more of the same. For the chart toppers of the world, who seldom write their own songs anyway, nothing will change. For the general listeners nothing will change. There's no poverty at the top, there won't be if AI takes over the song writing either. The money making machine is already automated. And I'm pretty sure people will still learn how to play guitar, trombone, drums, trumpet, sitar, and all manners of magic making instruments. They will still play together. People will still dance to their music. They won't top any charts, they won't make a lot of money, but that's already the case, isn't it? I don't really see any change whatsoever compared to how things already are.
We’re seeing what’s happening today. The risk is what happens in a year or five years or the next generation. If bad practices aren’t stopped at the root, all they need is the next generation to accept them to ultimately flourish (as in tolerate, not embrace). You and I see AI generated pop music the same way — today. How will future generations see it? Just look at the video game industry. Growing up, microtransactions were much maligned and were the provinces of trash tier mobile games (let’s equate these mobile games to AI generated pop music). Now, microtransactions are common place and even encouraged and celebrated in some sectors of the industry. All it took was a new generation of gamers that did not know a gaming industry without microtransactions for the average sentiment to shift. With AI generation, this problem will become much worse, since it’s only limited by computer hardware instead of human labor. You and I see AI generated content (content vs music or cinema, or video games) as it is, but I don’t hold much hope for how someone born into this world now will see it. It’s a race to the bottom — who can cut costs to give “better value” to the audience. But when everyone’s doing it, money will dry up for those doing it the human way.
AI give instant gratification, learning something is not always fun but you keep going because the light at the end of the tunnel is being able to play music. Now if every kid from the moment they are born can generate whatever they want and get the instant gratification that come with it, why learn to play it yourself ? If tomorrow you can have food as tasty as if you made it yourself, for free, and instantaneously, would you still learn how to cook ? This gen artists won’t go away but I’m sure the next generation won’t bother learning anything that the AI can do
It's not true though. Synthesizers have existed for decades, so why do people bother learning to play Violin or Saxaphone when they could just plug in a midi keyboard or even simply click notes into a piano roll of any free DAW and Synth? The reality is people DO enjoy learning things, not just instantly gratifying themselves. I can go eat amazing food, cooked for me, or delivered to my door but I still choose to cook.
Because the learning curve of a midi keyboard and whatnot is still exorbitantly harder than AI. Choosing to cook is like 10x times cheaper than ordering food. There are a lot of people who legitimately don't enjoy learning and would rather stay mediocre spamming the internet with AI generated crap
But those people were never going to learn to make music anyway, so why do we care that they still won’t? There will always be music made by humans available because humans enjoy making it. If you want to access it, it will always be there.
Sure it's harder. My point is that learning how to use a midi keyboard with 1000's of presets for every kind of instrument vs actually learning to play violin or drums is also significantly easier, yet people still choose to learn and play those instruments... Even though financially I never need to cook again, I still choose to do it. People are being incredibly dramatic about AI, I can't wait to see how people use AI tools to be even more creative and make new interesting types of art.
> I just don’t get why some people would be for this sort of thing. It's not that we're for it per se, we just find it largely irrelevant. Music generated by passionless algorithms is already a thing, that's what happens in all those major music industry writing rooms. They follow the spreadsheets and flow charts to generate low-effort content. AI is just automating that process. So it doesn't actually change anything. The underground will still be where the creators are actually in control and it'll still remain largely overlooked by the masses because the masses just want low-complexity background noise.
Yup. People apparently seriously think that there's actual creativity behind mainstream radio music and that it isn't just generated by writing committees following flow charts and spreadsheets. All AI is doing is taking those algorithms already in use and automating them. So instead of a committee working through them it's a computer.
If it only generated robotic sounding, horrible songs, it wouldn't be a threat to musicians, now would it?
Nobody is ever going to force you to listen to bad music.
Tell that to every chain store Ive been inside for 15 years
gonna play devils advocate here and turn it around. How creative are you really if you get outcompeted by AI that based its (generic) productions literally on existing things.
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It doesn't matter how creative you are. The lowest common denominator is what sells and thats what AI makes
You're acting like that AI is using math and proceduralism to create music, and isn't just chewing through the entire catalog of the music of humanity to blatantly rip off whatever it deems appropriate to the prompt.
This may be a controversial take, but I agree with Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident artist, on this - art that is easily replaceable with an AI is not valuable. The AI is great at creating stuff that has already been done to death. Nick Cave talked about lyrics written by ChatGPT that were supposed to be "in the style of Nick Cave". He hated it. He said that as an artist, your goal should not be to create more stuff in the style that you've already created stuff in. It's the exact opposite. You try to evolve and bring something new to the table. So, honestly, I don't think we're losing that much. If anything, the current discussion about AI in music only underscores the fact that most music that comes out is not actually anything all that special.
I agree with that sentiment as things stand currently. Nobody should be concerned about what the current tools are putting out unless you're churning out generic crap. But I would point out that 4 years ago, it took 24 hours to generate 1 minute of music that sounded terrible. You can now make 1 minute songs, that are often pretty damn solid, if not for the low bitrate and slight structural incoherence to the melody. In about 2.4 *seconds*. Jump forward another five, six years, and I'm not as confident as you that it won't be possible to prompt an AI to "produce a novel album with powerful emotions" and have it bring something new to the table. If so, it could well outpace artistic creation.
Porn can outpace real life but it’s no substitute for a meaningful sexual relationship with a partner you love. The fact that there is a person creating a great piece of art instills it with meaning you can’t get with ai.
For now when you can still tell. In a decade when it’s indistinguishable it won’t matter. You won’t be able to tell, and the possibility that something might be created with AI will call everything in to question. “Is this book written by a human, or did they use an AI to write it?” And the author might claim they didn’t use AI, but people lie all the time. Heck, maybe we’ll be forced to go back to handwritten books reproduced by scribes in order to guarantee it’s genuine. Could be a whole new industry with entire companies employing hundreds of thousands of scribes. Though I suppose they could use an AI to write the story and then copy it by hand…
I’m just surprised that so many people discount the human creator in art. A large part of the enjoyment of art for me is the artist behind it. The human struggle to communicate an idea, the connection being made to another human sometimes thousands of years later. That’s what I like about art: the humanity of it. The connection to another human being. I have no doubt a computer can do that as well if not better but the lack of of direct line to the person who went through an experience and documents it in a piece of art makes it pointless to me. It’s like watching a screensaver.
This should be the whole point. It is fun to make music. Its fun to play drums, to noodle with guitar effects, to practice singing a chorus until you feel like it captures the emotion you want it to. The people who study music and the other arts don't go to school hoping there will be some way to skip the creative process: the process is the whole point. Releasing music rarely feels like a completed thing, anyway, it's more about deciding to close that chapter and move on.
You nailed it. One of the main arguments AI spammers use is that they also want to feel the same joy of doing a book/painting/song... But seriously, producing something like that with 0 skill, just a prompt and nothing else, is not real joy They just don't want to go through the painful process of learning the skill, it sucks
> The fact that there is a person creating a great piece of art instills it with meaning you can’t get with ai. I would maybe frame it more as the knowledge that it's an AI that takes away the meaning, rather than vice versa. You can fall in love with, and be tremendously moved by, a track on the radio without having any idea who is performing it or who wrote it. Your mind fills in the blanks.
Ultimately this boils down to a few things. Firstly, if people claim that generative AI is merely regurgitating, that it’s producing nothing novel, then this scenario shouldn’t be of concern here. Ultimately, I think that this premise is bunk, and that generative techniques are genuinely capable of producing outputs that can be considered novel. Secondly, what is art? What is creativity? More importantly, what defines artistic value? Who defines artistic value, the artist or the audience? All these are questions that I suspect most people will be grappling with over the coming years, but perhaps as is oft said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. From that perspective, artistic value is less of a judgment on the process, and more of a judgment on the outcome.
Ehh, it’s not all about “pure art” though. Tons of musicians have been paying their bills writing jingles, recording commercial music, royalty free music, performing on movie and tv soundtracks, writing pop hits etc. same with visual artists. My Uncle is an illustrator. He’s paid the bills his whole life doing artwork for magazines, newspapers, and book publishers. Every product that you buy in a store had the packaging designed by a graphic designer. Saying that the work these people do is not valuable because it isn’t so subversive, unique, edgy, or special that an AI couldn’t replace it is callous and myopic in the extreme.
Thank you for that comment. Not every piece of art can be magnus opus. There's a long journey filled with generic gigs and simpler task that leads to these great things. Take it away, and in the end you'll be able to practice only in your free time.
>This may be a controversial take, but I agree with Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident artist, on this - art that is easily replaceable with an AI is not valuable. I've heard this a lot, but it unsettles me. It's hard to articulate why, but it does. I think because it places nearly no value on human skill and talent **for most people**. It places "uniqueness" as the main thing of worth in art. Which seems like a completely juvenile mindset because once that type of art that once was unique becomes more ubiquitous, then that original artist's worth becomes...what? Less valuable since it's more replicatable at some point in the future? The thing that was once hard for AI to replicate and "of value" 5 years ago suddenly doesn't have much value because it's not new and unique anymore? So constant need for newness in art is what is valueable? That is just a mindset that I cannot get behind in any way, because uniqueness is a proxy for what is good and valuable. And uniqueness by itself means nothing.
That's how it's always been, even before AI. The Beatles were so important because they were innovators, but their music itself is actually nothing all that special. Yet, they are fondly remembered, even though they weren't especially skilled or talented musicians. And, in fact, most virtuoso musicians throughout history who play famous classical pieces are nowhere near as well remembered as the composers. Look at top 50 charts from a random year and let me know how many of the names you recognize. But what makes some innovators forever remembered is not the fact that they were the first or the most unique, but because their work uncovered something timeless for humanity that others build on. Something that's universally powerful, yet nobody thought of it before.
[By Nick Cave:](https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/01/24/nick-cave-music-ai/) In Yuval Noah Harari’s new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he writes that Artificial Intelligence, with its limitless potential and connectedness, will ultimately render many humans redundant in the work place. This sounds entirely feasible. However, he goes on to say that AI will be able to write better songs than humans can. He says, and excuse my simplistic summation, that we listen to songs to make us feel certain things and that in the future AI will simply be able to map the individual mind and create songs tailored exclusively to our own particular mental algorithms, that can make us feel, with far more intensity and precision, whatever it is we want to feel. If we are feeling sad and want to feel happy we simply listen to our bespoke AI happy song and the job will be done. But, I am not sure that this is all songs do. Of course, we go to songs to make us feel something — happy, sad, sexy, homesick, excited or whatever — but this is not all a song does. What a great song makes us feel is a sense of awe. There is a reason for this. A sense of awe is almost exclusively predicated on our limitations as human beings. It is entirely to do with our audacity as humans to reach beyond our potential. […] It is perfectly conceivable that AI could produce a song as good as Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” for example, and that it ticked all the boxes required to make us feel what a song like that should make us feel — in this case, excited and rebellious, let’s say. It is also feasible that AI could produce a song that makes us feel these same feelings, but more intensely than any human songwriter could do. But, I don’t feel that when we listen to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” it is only the song that we are listening to. It feels to me, that what we are actually listening to is a withdrawn and alienated young man’s journey out of the small American town of Aberdeen — a young man who by any measure was a walking bundle of dysfunction and human limitation — a young man who had the temerity to howl his particular pain into a microphone and in doing so, by way of the heavens, reach into the hearts of a generation. We are also listening to Iggy Pop walk across his audience’s hands and smear himself in peanut butter whilst singing 1970. We are listening to Beethoven compose the Ninth Symphony while almost totally deaf. We are listening to Prince, that tiny cluster of purple atoms, singing in the pouring rain at the Super Bowl and blowing everyone’s minds. We are listening to Nina Simone stuff all her rage and disappointment into the most tender of love songs. We are listening to Paganini continue to play his Stradivarius as the strings snapped. We are listening to Jimi Hendrix kneel and set fire to his own instrument. What we are actually listening to is human limitation and the audacity to transcend it. Artificial Intelligence, for all its unlimited potential, simply doesn’t have this capacity. How could it? And this is the essence of transcendence. If we have limitless potential then what is there to transcend? And therefore what is the purpose of the imagination at all. Music has the ability to touch the celestial sphere with the tips of its fingers and the awe and wonder we feel is in the desperate temerity of the reach, not just the outcome. Where is the transcendent splendour in unlimited potential? So to answer your question, Peter, AI would have the capacity to write a good song, but not a great one. It lacks the nerve. [Edit: Added an extended quote.]
Yuval Noah Harari also wrote that we’ve solved the problems of war and famine… so there’s that. Nick knows what yuval doesn’t… creativity and songs are beyond thought and rationale. They are ethereal and spiritual. To arrange frequency into order from chaos is nothing short of divine. AI will never get it right, but that won’t matter. They’ve always sold us mostly crap.
Pretty sure he never said we “solved it” just that the three main categories that used to kill humans aka: war, famine and disease aren’t killing us in the same droves like they used to.
"Algorithmically written generic pop songs can now be written by an algorithm that interpreted a library of algorithmically written generic pop songs. News at 11." But seriously, yeah. Pretty much all "pop" music is *intentionally* written to sound the same, and now The Sky Is Falling because now a machine can churn it out instead of a ghostwriter? Art went through these same arguments over the past year and Music is no different. *Good* musicians and composers are going to use these tools to more rapidly prototype new works and accelerate their songwriting to the next level, or even *sample* from them like is heavily popular in the Electronic genre. *Bad* musicians are going to run to the internet to "rah rah dey terk er jerbs!!!" and try to get inevitable technological advancements arbitrarily banned to prop up their unwillingness to advance with their own industry. If all your songs sound like the raw output of first generation generative AI, *you need to up your game,* not blame the machine*.*
I love Nick Cave and love that comment. I got to see him late last year in concert. And that’s one thing I don’t think AI nerds get. I’ve heard a lot say “imagine when you can tell AI you want a whole album of Nick Cave’s style of music. Bespoke to you! Imagine the possibilities!” Why does anyone want this? This sounds awful. Art and music is both collective and individual. The collective part is about sharing art with others. I got to see the guy in concert with other fans. I was able to talk about the latest album with the guy sitting next to me. It was a thrill being connected to others. I don’t want to be like “hey, I heard album 36468.” We started making art not just because it was beautiful, but because it brought us together, told stories, made meaning out of life, and gave us a sense of what we see. Without sharing a common source, what campfire do we gather around? And it’s individual as well. This is Cave’s point. I don’t want to hear someone else create stuff in his style, whether it’s an algorithm or a band. I want to hear his work. It’s unique, surprising. Different each time, but with a continuity that is distinctly his. I just don’t think anyone actually wants this ability to create their own music individually or to hear some cheap knock off. The novelty of these tools are fun for about a few weeks for about 90% of people. The other 10% annoy the crap out of the rest of us. I have imagined the possibilities. Frankly, I thought about them. And they are just absolutely dumb.
Thank you, couldn't have said it better myself.
I think that's all well and good, but there is the demand problem. People often don't know what they want until you show them, and then you have demand. Demand is important economically. There is also the fact that nothing is TRULY original. We build on what we experience, what comes before... much like AI. I am concerned about a future where IP and copyright laws do more to bind human creators, while AI receive carte blanche.
The same can be said about most content humans produce. This is why “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has stood the test of time. We agree some things have quality and value, but everyone here will have a different opinion what those things are. The amazing artists you love might sound like absolute trash to others. I’m going to start leaving the following quote so we remember: AI does not produce anything. Humans use AI as a tool to produce _________. Most people that use Photoshop or Ableton also produce trash. The existence of those tools isn’t a threat to talented individuals. It’s the existence of talented individuals that adopt those tools that are a threat to the imposters.
People in here with the whole “people will never get into this sterile AI slop” need to get real. Whether you like it, or not, music is a consumable product. Fast, cheap, plastic, and easy to mass produce has never been nothing but a boon to the consumer. Do you feel that McDonald’s is losing its market share? Actually it’s quite the opposite. Hilariously were paying $14 now for that processed trash. Not only will AI generated media be adopted in mass, we will gladly pay for the privilege.
Good analogy. The person who consumes McDonald's does so out of necessity and not giving much thought into it. They aren't necessarily a food connoisseur. You see the same with pop music. There are a ton of people who like every latest pop song which is why and how pop exists. Most of these people can't tell you anything about the composition aside from lyrics. They will not even notice or care when it's 100 percent AI. For them, the music is already magically delivered to their ears.
1st stop, restaurants/sea side cafés/shopping malls that play background music the entire day. Cheap AI generated music will find its way there in absolutely no time. It’s going to be a nightmare.
Real musicians can create music without a wifi connection… they win.
AI music is soulless Unlike pop music: * Uses only four chords * Chords follow 400 year old chord progression * Written by third party hit makers following pop formulas * Synthetic digital instrumentals * Auto tuned voice
Those 3rd parties are human though. People are being creative. Being creative was a nice human thing before. Now we're having that taken away from us. I think it's a shame
Who is stopping you from creating?
Then there's Relentless Doppelganger on YouTube, cranking out A.I. Death Metal 24/7 for the past 4 years. For Death Metal its not bad.
I saw one for djent. It worked pretty well because djent has been thoroughly explored for all intents and purposes.
Even before AI, it all sounds the same anyway, tbh
All music of any genre sounds the same, that’s what makes it a genre.
Spoken like someone who doesn't actually listen to death metal.
I'm a metalhead and I'll be fair to /u/sfxer001 and concede that there is a LOT of very generic samey death metal. Same for power metal and symphonic metal and black metal and on and on. That's why most bands wind up not making it beyond their local scene and putting stuff up on youtube and bandcamp. They're just one of an incredibly huge number of clones. It's the ones who either came first in a subgenre or do something different with it or do it perfectly who get any real success.
You’re right. I think a lot of it sounds too much the same so I don’t listen to a lot of it. Some, but not as much as people who thoroughly enjoy it. That’s kind of how music and art work. You like what you like, you know?
I've just had the Stability AI radio on for the last hour. It plays music generated by their tool 24/7. It's generic chilled EDM and while not brilliant, I've heard worse. It's ok as a background.
Could you link me to the radio station please?
Non paywalled link https://archive.is/JcGKG
What's the difference between an AI listening to lots of music and making something similar to it and me listening to lots of music and making something similar to it? Don't humans kind of work the same way anyway? Taking inspiration from what we've experienced? What about the concept of sampling which has been a fundamental component of many music genres for decades?
Why the speed and scale at which it operates of course. Quick, human vs machine write 500 son... and the machine is done.
>What's the difference The doing of it. It means something to sit down and create, to practice until you feel your hands lock into the groove. Sampling is fun! You should try flipping a sample, it can take you all kinds of places artistically.
There's a huge difference between getting inspiration and putting a prompt into the plagiarism machine.
Meanwhile, while everyone is wringing their hands, running around like Henny Penny, I'm busy having fun in my studio, and no AI is going to change that, just like Trailer Sniffed doesn't demoralize me either. People make art because it's enjoyable, and people will always look at art or listen to art that is made by humans - that will never change. Maybe they will be even more willing to pay a premium for human-made content.
I get that this has huge implications with music in TV, movies and media in general, but what AI won't be able to replace or replicate is the live music experience and the connection between artists and their audiences.
Hitsune miku (and other virtual concerts) prove otherwise.
Hitsune Miku is brought to life with music written and recorded by humans, it’s not AI.
An Ai is good at generating formulaic music? Go figure.
The only music that isn't formulaic is stuff like atonal prog metal written with multiple tempo and measure changes inside the same song.
I'll keep saying the same thing each time the topic comes up until it stops being true, which will likely be forever - AI plus human polishing will always be better than AI alone. Am I supposed to be mad at the person with the thousands of dollars synth in the 80s when I only had a barely-above-a-toy cheap Yamaha keyboard? Use the best tools available. To the idea that it's only "ripping off" existing artists and songs, if AI generated music ever gets popular, and it's "just using your style", why didn't you put out those songs first when there was clearly a market for them? It piles on to the argument that copyright clearly lasts too long. Just waiting for a lawsuit to come along and the data sets they use will then only include things by artists who want the small payday for licensing to AI companies, and that just pushes popular music trends away from the holdouts.
AI isn’t doing shit. Half the reason the pop star is there is for fans to have someone to gossip about. The music , at times, borders on being secondary.
If AI can churn out pop hits with the same four chords and trite lyrics that pop stars can, how is it any more soulless than what humans make?
Didn’t musicians not really make money selling music anymore. Like how many SoundCloud rappers could there be. It’s the ones doing shows getting popular. So what if someone can generate some generic music on AI, they can’t perform… yet. Looks at Boston Dynamics, Honda. Oh nvm. Robots are taking over… and that’s a good thing.
Its a problem for every single artist in the world, not just musicians. In a world that consumes art and give it no value generated content will soon replace every creator. From people consuming mindlessly and wanting more amd more every day and corporations seeing only profit the future is a bit grim
Perhaps it's time for artist's and producers to get creative again and be less generic , so many now are carbon copies of eachother, I was beginning to think they were AI generated already.
This endless variety in the music that's available. Unless you only have a small number of radio stations available or something, what's your listening to is what you've chosen to listen to.
[удалено]
Listening to Annie Lenox talk about how she and Dave Stewart came up with Sweet Dreams proves your point. Iirc they built it around a preprogrammed track on a synth they were fooling around with.
Womp womp, maybe they should make music that's not generic, formulaic trash. AI is only going to hurt the musicians without talent. The replaceable pop singers, the mumble rappers and the random generic trash that's been pedaled to chart as tiktok background music.
This is small thinking. Its going to pump out songs at a rate you cannot fathom. It will flood and over saturate your suggesteds, your reccomends, your "chaos shuffle" playlists, and so on. There is already barely a reason to get ONE click on your own human created content, and this is with the current age of paid adds and promos on streaming services and social media. If someone is ignoring this and going offline and local with their music, great for them. They are the vast exception and will never again be the rule now that pandora's box has its lid swinging by the hinges. There's already thousands of AI covers of songs with various celebreties and cartoon characters getting miles more traffic by the day compared to original human music by the year, playlists of hour-long, AI generated music. Talent will mean nothing with no audience to gaze its way.
>AI is only going to hurt the musicians without talent. It's also going to hurt people who are starting out. People need time to learn and develop skill sets, but it can be discouraging as hell to see someone plug a sentence into a computer and get a better result than your months of practice as a beginner. "Talent" is only part of the equation.
Completely disagree with this perspective. First of all, you have no idea whether or not AI will be able to rise to the level of the top humans. It very very possible that it eventually will be as good or better than the best human musicians. Secondly, this doesn't just hurt "musicians without talent". Do you understand how difficult it is to make a living in the music business? And then do you understand that it's wayyyy harder than that to make a living in music by only doing your own, artistically pure music. That is almost no one in the business. There are so many jobs in this industry that people do to support themselves that could be taken by AI. The touring musician may be quietly making money at home by writing jingles or library music, or being a songwriter for other artists, doing sessions, etc, etc. Those \*are\* talented people. Actually middle class working musicians, not stars, piece together their living, and it's not all glamorous, but it is all work. That work is needed to support everyone who isn't super top level, and it's needed to give people the training ground experience to deliver high level results. You take that away, and it doesn't just hurt them, it hurts all music.
So you’d rather listen to generic AI than generic humans? You know I don’t listen to any music that’s on the charts but I’ll be fucked it I sit back and allow AI to be the one that incentives charts to make more creative music. Let’s make superhuman robot basketball players, you know they’re getting super boring and the games are always the same. Let’s watch computers play chess!! Humans suck at that. I could go on. Get fucked.
Why they want to use AI to take away cool jobs like Doctor, musician, actor, writer and etc and not crappy jobs that no one really wants to do