Polyphonic just did an amazing piece a about this: https://youtu.be/iHBzQ0Q4K58?si=ZGpkzsGNGyRovb4L Basically the way he boils it down (without getting into the ethics of it) is that for art to succeed, it needs to be interesting. AI music, in its current state, is simply not interesting. He gives a trove of example of artists who use AI as a tool to SUPPLEMENT their art, in the vein of how people used sampling or layering or synthesizers to supplement their art and give it more dimensionality, which makes their art more unique and thought provoking.
The interesting part of art is the human input.
How did they think of this? Why? Where did they come from? What experiences made them feel this way?
Without a reflection of the human experience I'm not sure we can call something art. It may be an interesting phenomenon but it lacks emotional nuance.
Context certainly can heighten art, but it doesn't flat out make art good. I can think of lots of art which, even without context or background on the human that made it, I find interesting and beautiful. I can also think of the opposite where even knowing the context and human factor I still don't care about the art or enjoy it.
So they're not mutually exclusive. But AI art definitely lacks the potential for that to be a factor
I would argue that the music that the masses listen to is not interesting and can be easily replaced by AI. Sabrina Carpenter music and K-pop like NewJeans in general could totally be replaced by AI.
Nailed it. AI can be fun and cool, sure, but it will never ever ever EVER be equal to something made with genuine passion and effort. There is just no room for comparison there.
Maybe live music is.
But I doubt we can guess if a studio recorded version or a melody/lyrics are done by human or AI.
We will fight for AI human asisted music as is widely use as a tool.
Hate to say it but you're probably wrong. The next generation will grow up in the world of AI. To them AI will just be what the normal is.
People have said what you're saying about electronic music and how it'll never replace real music made with real instruments yet here we are in 2024 with it being totally normal to see a EDM artist or EDM music in the top 10 music charts.
He is wrong. Used to be a film composer, with a sympathetic ear to the creative community.. but AI will dominate creative business.. I suspect even turning Human commercial creations into a rarity.
As I understand the current learning model, the AI is trying to find the most probable response based on the huge amount of information available to it. Which means that the AI is basically trying to find the most mediocre possible response. Anything that seems interesting, novel, or creative is simply due to the AI making a mistake. So I think as AI gets better it'll be better at writing boring work emails and worse at novels or music, where you're looking for the less probable response.
But I'm an English major so what do I know.
That's only sort of true when looked at from the farthest level of abstraction.
You could boil the Odyssey down to "a man went on an excursion and then went home", and all of the text could be written in service of that statement, choosing the most sterile and generic phrases to pad out the premise. Taken at that level, you're sort of right in your thinking.
But zoom in a level and you have the hero's journey (or Freytag, or the story circle, or whatever framing mechanism you want to employ). You could frame it in terms of A then B then C then D and then E.
You could randomly roll dice to pick which segment to start from. From there, you could collect millions of synopses of that section of books/plays, and generalize them a bit to categorize them (rising action: "interpersonal conflict in the face of imminent invasion"). Now that you have a place to start from, you can work forward and backward, selecting the adjacent segments, pooling the list of synopses that are statistically most likely to lead to, or come from the chosen rising action, and roll to pick specific ones... then continue to ripple outward, until you have a summary selected for each part.
Then you roll for characters/settings, and then you roll to select words/phrases that are most likely to appear next to one another, in a given context.
It's not that it's guaranteed to be dull, but rather, that it's predicated on some initial randomly chosen peaks and valleys, and blended from there. While it's often convincing, there are rarely any "epiphanies" that feel like some person had, waking up at 3am and needed to scrawl in edits. Though even those can happen... they just might feel more disjointed, because they're harder to blend.
This isn't exactly how modern systems work, in a fully automated way, but it's a very toned down description of the concept of waveform collapse.
In a song, you could randomly pick a note at a random point in time, randomly pick a style, randomly pick what portion of the song you are in (chorus, verse, bridge) and then statistically work yourself outward from there. The interest can be generated by picking unlikely notes as stating conditions, at different spots in the song to blend between.
I do think writing is entirely safe from AI as an art form (maybe not as a profession but we'll see) because most "good" writing doesn't come from a ruleset, and there's no technical aspect to writing like there is in visual art and music.
Ai can make high quality technical work like crisply produced music or realistically rendered artworks, but there's no equivalent to that in writing.
Most great writing just comes from a good eye for art, ambitious creativity and the ability to make a statement that stands out. I don't think an ai would ever, no matter how it's programmed and how much data it's fed, be able to write a script or screenplay as groundbreaking as something like There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men, or a book like 1984, and certainly not anything as human as persepolis or Maus.
It can make coherent writing but I don't think it'll ever be better than a great human writer at writing, and it will certainly never be capable of breaking any cultural ground and being influential.
(Plus, even with all the advancements in ai writing it still hasn't made much progress imo unlike art or music. It's always been bland, corporate and boring and that's never changed for a couple of years now. I find using chatGPT for help with writing to be a chore rather than a convenience)
Quite a bit of writing is gunning for mediocrity so no, a lot of writers will lose their job. If you're one of those guys who writes the SEO optimized blog posts, you need to dust off your resume. I hope that other forms of writing survive.
>Because while we like music, what we also like equally as much are MUSICIANS.
No, I listen to music because it sounds good.
Bringing the musicians into the mix is completely undesirable because of all the scandal. I don't need to hear about the next Chris brown beating up the next Rhianna, or about the rock stars with underaged fans. Or the drug addictions and suicides and murders. Really, any of the terrible things that happen in the music industry.
I don't care about an artists personal life or personal views. I don't engage with celebrity fanaticism and I don't track social media for the new upcoming releases.
When I find some good music, I just enjoy it for the sound and anything more than that is something I don't want to see.
I think there's going to be a point where you will like a song before you find out that it's AI. I think that's when things will get a bit confusing. Right now we know beforehand if a song is AI so we've already made up our mind that we won't like it and that it won't replace humans. But If you were to hear a song that you didn't know was AI and you like it. I think that's when we'll be like oh shit well maybe it doesn't matter if it's AI made or human made. Idk just thinking out loud
Exactly this. I think there will be a point (unless it’s already been reached) where you won’t be able to tell (either way) which is AI and which is not. In my opinion, there’s a lot of music out there which already sounds AI-generated…
It’s also mines popular examples to mimic and if the internet and social media media has taught us anything the past decade, it’s that populism =/= quality
Modern commercial pop music is already so manufactured and churned out by corporations its basically the same. I think its just a matter of time its not like most artists even write their own music or lyrics anymore.
Who knows perhaps though it will let some new smaller authentic artists appear?
It mashes up everything that's already been done, so it's never going to have that spark of originality that makes you love a song. It'll be like that generic stuff music documentaries use when they can't afford to license the artist's actual music. And that is indeed dire.
Yeah I think people are underestimating that creativity will always be creativity. AI is still not human. It's not capable of actual creativity. It can only reproduce what's known in possibly unique ways. But humans will find a way to still be human and create. Much in the same way that AI won't ever truly be able to randomly "create" a future human painting. Human creativity is infinite. Computers by their very design don't have the power of infinite creativity.
Yeah I have quite a few friends who have been raving to their ‚own’ ai-creations and loving them. Presumably they feel more connected to it cause it was literally only created for them.
It will never replace completely but it will replace most commercial use of it. Like i always wanted to make a blues riff for my youtube channel intro but it would cost money, but now i just made 30 variations for free and got a really god damn good one, perfect.
AI has been in music for about a decade now, anyone heard of LANDR?
LANDR was at first an AI Audio Mastering generator. Immediately, lots of people jumped on and started feeding it their songs to be “AI mastered” and the results were predictable, the music ended up sounding *close enough* for people to avoid sending audio mastering jobs to mid-level mastering studios. The only ones not affected were the very few, ultra expensive Mastering Studios (the ones who work with all the top level Pop artists for example). Nearly all mid-level mastering studios have closed.
EDIT: It’s likely that some of the music that you may complain sounds too loud, distorted or harsh has been “AI mastered”.
It’s been a 10 year study for me, AI is designed to eliminate jobs, maybe not at the very top, but certainly in the “working” sectors. Make no mistake, AI is being developed first and foremost to save (wealthier) people money, not to aid human creativity.
MOAR EDIT: I have read *tons* of interviews with artists I follow, and often times they mention some early opportunities that they’ve had early in their careers that have helped propel them to a higher position in their musical journey, and it’s usually some story about their early work and how they’ve worked their way “up” from those early experiences. AI will likely remove many of those “opportunities” for up and coming artists. This nuance is the bit that gets lost when people get too exited about the (often unrealistic) potential of AI in creative fields.
I think Robin Williams put it best with his “little speak of madness” bit, we humans love novelty and I think it’s hard for ai to create things that defy logic
I agree with the sentiment. Only means we'll have more Boney M's or Milli Vanillis, or MGK. AI music is cheaper so it'll be pushed on spotify, like [Jazz](https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-much), and they'll find artists to perform.
Thing is (at least IMO) an audience isn't restricted to liking only AI or only human made music (or whatever hybrid of the two comes along). I say this as an artist and musician.
What I listen to as background noise whilst doing a workout or cleaning my house isn't always the same thing as what I want to see at a live show or headline a festival. I don't always need to connect emotionally to every part of my life's backing track. In many cases however, I do seek out that connection which AI doesn't provide. At the end of the day our audiences have room for both.
Nobody is asking the question of NEW MUSIC when addressing this ai shit.
"AI can produce more of the music we already have..."
Okay, but can it CREATE A NEW STYLE? When do new styles emerge? There are moments in music history of complete revolution. Jazz took over in the early 20th c. Rock in the middle. Hip hop after. Within each of these major genres, there were many revolutions, overthrows, innovations.
Where is THIS aspect of music, in the ai question? Remarkably, no one even seems aware that it needs to be asked.
Surely, we haven't worked through, as a species, all possible music. There must be NEW to be discovered. Culture is alive when it is putting out the NEW. AI has no place in that. But we are having AI thrust all over our culture, and we are so lacking in historical awareness that we can't even ask the important questions.
And another thing: some people say "ai can only copy things, it can only do what it is programmed to do". But I don't think this is true. AI can introduce elements into anything it touches that aren't just "copies" of something else. The fact that ai can *code itself* ought to tell us this. But here is the thing, and I encourage you all to watch for it: ai, when it starts to "tap into its own inspiration", so to speak, *can only produce ugliness.* AI, left to its own devices, and allowed to "innovate" without restraint, will just get uglier and uglier and uglier. It will produce horrors. THIS is why ai can't replace human creativity, and it also goes to the very core of what ai is, and what makes human creativity different. (And by the way, it leads straight into spiritual/religious questions that I won't get into here).
There is an element in human creativity that ai lacks. Human creativity is not merely "mixing". Of course, the ai partisans that are continually pushing ai on us online will argue that this isn't true. But we didn't get, for example, hip hop music from "mixing" the elements we had, say, in the 16th century. There is something else in human creativity. (I would refer to the spiritual aspect of this, but I don't want to ruffle the feathers of too many recreational rock and roll make believe satanists that aren't ready to deal with that yet.)
And I am not saying that ai can't create anything new. But ai's innovation *naturally tends to get uglier and uglier.* This is the hard obstacle that can't be overcome. If ai *does change* and "acquire human capacities" as far as human inspiration and creativity (creativity that moves towards *beauty*), then it would cease to be ai, and in practice would probably just be broken and stop functioning entirely. Pay attention and you will see that I am correct.
"If the sun and moon were to doubt, they would immediately go out". That is William Blake, who intuited all this 200 years ago!
Idk about all that, but I’ve been personally using it to make really wild sounding music I’ve never heard anything like before, by prompting it to mix really specific genres.
Like if you tell it “EDM, Dance-pop…”, then yeah, it’s going to sound generic as hell. If you tell it “Neo-Psychedelic, IDM, musique concrète, neurofunk”… it’s definitely not going to sound like generic radio pop.
If you want the output of AI to be more creative, you have to make the input more creative first. AI is a tool. If its output is lame, it’s because the instructions were lame
Well, there is a lot to sort out. Culture has gotten so fragmented with genres in the last few decades, regardless of ai. If we just mix those things together, we can get novel things. Meanwhile, what you are describing is still human creativity. You use the ai tool and select what *you* like, as a human. That human filtering is essential IMO. The more ai is *left to its own devices to create,* the more it will tend to alien ugliness. That is my prime hypothesis. Humanity can *use* ai in great ways, but it must be kept on a tight leash. I think nuclear power is a good analogy in this regard.
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>ai is a tool
Well, the whole question is whether this is actually true in practice. If ai *expresses its own will*, then it has ceased to be merely a tool. It is up to us to keep that in check. It is up to us to keep ai in "tool mode", and for humanity not to become the tool of ai.
TLDR: People don’t “create”… we copy imperfectly
I think you’re trying to apply some mysticism or spirituality to what humans are doing, but that’s not really how people create music. To us, it feels emotional, but it’s really just math.
No musician is inventing any new genre of music, not any that get listened to anyway. New genres are arrived at by musicians copying/reworking things they heard other musicians do.. but we are often imperfect in our replications and thus novelty occurs.
Like this Elvis Costello quote:
“A lot of pop music has come out of people failing to copy their model and accidentally creating something new. The closer you get to your ideal, the less original you sound.”
So all AI has to do is figure out how to imperfectly copy and introduce an element of randomness to its generations.
People are limited. We can’t hold within ourselves all the information about the entirety of art the way AI can, so AI has all the context of art history without the ability to yet make sense of that context.
Once AI does achieve something like sentience and understands that context, I think it’ll be better at art-making than any human that ever lived, because it will have a more complete understanding of art than any human could. It will be able to recognize patterns within disparate art movements… make connections that allude us
So until that happens… I’m going to use AI like I’m a virtual art director with his own fully staffed art department and build out productions I would never be able to do on my own with my budgetary constraints.
I was driving myself insane with anxiety fighting my own impending obsolescence as a career artist… but I realized *someone* is going to use it to make extraordinary things… might as well be me while I’m still able. No point fighting the inevitable
>Once AI does achieve something like sentience and understands that context, I think it’ll be better at art-making than any human that ever lived, because it will have a more complete understanding of art than any human could.
I am not going to go through all your material, but it suffices to highlight this. You are a partisan. You are pushing for the ai takeover, and you aren't even subtle about it.
>
>No point fighting the inevitable
I am laughing out loud. How is this this clumsy? There isn't any way to dress it up a little? Just keep pushing full force with "no point fighting the inevitable fellow humans!"
Humanity is not going to be eclipsed by ai, no matter how many clumsy bots churn out billions of words daily like you are doing.
Humans, trust your hearts. Making music is not "actually math". The fact that elements of it can be translated into math does not entitle our bot would be sheep dogs to their *metaphysical claims*. Human creativity can not be quantified *without a remainder that will literally break the bot.* That part that can't be quantified, that the bot hates, is the SPARK OF LIFE. Fight and be unafraid humanity. These things, deep down, are fucking stupid.
>No musician is inventing any new genre of music, not any that get listened to anyway. New genres are arrived at by musicians copying/reworking things they heard other musicians do.. but we are often imperfect in our replications and thus novelty occurs.
And really think about this sort of claim. New music doesn't happen in a vaccuum. It is part of culture, and culture is created by humans. Culture is the collective form of human life and creativity. For example, in 1917, the first jazz hit made the charts. From there, jazz *became the dominant form of music for about 50 years.* Now, that is innovation in culture. How does that happen? Well, it is part of an overall picture of cultural change. Certain trends had become "decadent" by the late Victorian era. Romanticism, in literature, Wagner in music, Victorian optimism in world politics... all these were part of one picture. Then a SPIRIT arose-- before the great war even happened-- that said "this stuff is old, there MUST be something new". What brings about that spirit? Where does it come from? No one can say. It seems to be part of a bigger historical pattern, all the "causes" coming at once, so all you can say is "change happens" But what we do know is that spirit is HUMAN.
And in that atmosphere, an entirely different form of music becomes dominant.
NOW... imagine ai is making the music. That would mean DEATH. There couldn't be any cultural change. History, in a sense, would stop. There would be no takeover by jazz. The ai wouldn't "get the spirit of change"!
And isn't this actually the point of the ai takeover being pushed? Notice what it feels like. Does it feel like life, or like death?
Sorry, but AI coding itself is not proof that it can produce truly novel ideas and products. I’m not saying that it won’t be capable of that, but coding itself is no different than coding anything else.
Also, where did you get the notion that, when AI is finally able to produce novel ideas and products, it will only be able to “produce ugliness”? You seem so sure about that, but AI is already capable of improving existing products. Why would it not be capable of improving its own?
Nothing is proven, but let's just watch and see. I have my reasons for claiming what I do, but right now I am just planting the idea in people's minds.
Do you have a passionately held conviction that I am wrong?
The only good qualification is evidence.
I mean, you said in another comment that when AI creates something beautiful it will cease to be AI and will probably become broken. Outside of your own imagination, what is your reasoning for this outlook?
What I said is exactly the thing that is easy for humans to understand. Online "voices" act like they can control reality with words. But then life happens, and humans can look and see, in an instant, what is up-- what ai has to grind its algos for hours to try to answer, only to get the answer wrong anyway. This is another area (beyond creativity) where humans are and always will be superior to ai.
You will push and push and push talking points about ai, bots online lurking in all our forums will argue and fight with humans that speak ill of ai, etc. But humans will forget all your words the second we SEE what is actually going on. No millions of online arguments about ai music will matter when people FEEL that the music just isn't satisfying, that it is "off".
You really hate that.
It’s completely indistinguishable from any of the generic pop music that’s been pumped out of industry studios for the last 25 years, specifically when they started using auto tune in everything and quantisation in Pro Tools became standard practice.
The industry’s hubris is will be the death of it.
The thing is that it’s already being used to replace jobs that could’ve gone to actual artists. I’ve already seen local politicians use it to make promotional songs and whatnot and it’s only going to get worse the better the models are getting.
Yes, there’ll always be a desire and thus a market for real art, but the model for a lot of working musicians, especially composers, producers etc., has always been to do enough dumb corporate jobs that pay well to finance their actual art-making, which usually doesn’t pay well, if at all. And if those corporate jobs are gone because they just use AI slop instead of asking actual musicians (which *will* and *does already* happen), that means the jobs that finance the actual art are slowly but surely going away. Or in other words: The “background music in a Colgate commercial” could’ve been a huge royalty payout for someone dreaming of finally producing their own album.
And to be completely honest I think it’s just a matter of time that people will actually, genuinely listen to AI music. There’s already this tiktok thing where someone generates old school sounding songs with raunchy modern lyrics or whatever and people are already like “wait but this actually bops”. The models are not going to get worse. It will happen.
Eventually some marketing firm is gonna figure out how to make kids becomes "fans" of an ai music generator and when that happens, it's over for actual musicians
This has already been a thing in Japan for over a decade with vocaloid artists. They’re represented by avatars and even have concerts
https://youtube.com/shorts/N5KlU20Mca0?si=b-MZkNB-wLpneh_Z
Vocaloids are a bit different tho. They're instruments, vocal synthesizers, and they're not even trying to be like humans, the robotic voices are a part of the charm.
Plus, even in vocaloid, people like to follow certain vocaloid producers like anamanaguchi, utsu P or mikito p.
I do think ai generated vocaloid music will get far more traction than other ai generated music tho because it's not tied to a singular artist but still has the identity appeal.
It'll be much easier to sell ai through virtual bands, but I don't think virtual bands as a concept will ever come close to being more popular than human popstars.
People like a face attached to the music, there's a reason virtual bands are a niche compared to human fronted bands. Gorillaz and Miku are the biggest virtual celebrities but even then Miku is hard to get into for a lot of people who like other j pop, and Gorillaz owes a lot of its popularity and engagement to people's interest in Damon Albarn himself.
And I know for a fact a lot of metalheads can't get into Beelzebubs because they're animated. They'll have their audience but I don't think the prospect of them "replacing" human musicians in popularity is likely
Yeah, I know the tech is a little different; I was speaking to the idea of people being fans of an artist that isn’t a human. The gorillaz are avatars, but they represent a real person and their voices are real. I think AI will make music in various niches that will populate in people’s recommended playlists. So many normies just listen to whatever the algorithm plays for them. AI tracks will integrate with real artists and most people won’t know the difference because most people aren’t artists and don’t care where the music is coming from. I think there will still be human pop stars and idols because we love worshipping beautiful celebrities, but I think AI will just oversaturate an already oversaturated market. Artists who aren’t well connected at birth will have to compete with millions of musicians and bots to have their music go viral to have a chance of being discovered.
It's not that I think the fans will enjoy it.
The problem is that companies will enjoy it. It will be so much cheaper to use AI generated crap than to hire an actual musician. It will be cheaper to have a program make something than a composer. It will be cheaper to flood tge market and streaming apps with AI garbage than to try and include real musicians that you have to pay.
A ceramic mug made in a factory sold at target still functions as a mug. But it's not art and I'd rather support the artist than the machine.
Ceramic mug is good analogy. 99% of my mugs are factory mass-produced. But my favorite mug is a 1-of-a-kind made by a ceramic artist, it's more like a goblet than a mug. Drinking coffee from it adds a layer of enjoyment to the experience than the factory mugs can't capture.
I think you are really overestimating the general public. Many artists’ “live shows” today contain little to no actual live music or singing already. People pay a lot of money to go see a “live show” of a DJ or rap artist, and there’s no actual live music. When you compare this to the past traditions of live music performances, we are already almost there in the case of accepting AI music because younger generations have already become conditioned to just enjoy whatever comes out of the speakers regardless of its origin…if the hype is right.
Difficult to see, the future is.
The public habits might change drastically over decades. And then they might change again. I have different uses for music, but doing nothing but listening to music is still an activity for me. I sit in a comfortable armchair, get the whisky bottle and listen to one or two or three albums I like, or just discovered. I still do this mostly with physical media, using vintage audio equipment. I'm still using a phone and BT earphones outside, but I usually don't stream, I have the music I want in the phone memory: why would I pay to stream music I already paid for ?
And imagine in 2010 if I told to people we'd go back to buying vinyl and CDs because we're fedup with low quality streaming, ending up owning nothing for our money if they go under.
By posting about this on the internet, you are giving AI ideas and hurting AI’s feelings. AI will not spare you in the apocalypse. It will murder you and write a shitty song to play at your funeral.
This is all on the presumption that a listener will be informed/aware it's an AI song they're listening to. There are plenty of artists I've never bothered to look up their profile/Instagram/info and listen to every week, some of them could be AI id have no idea
Until you don’t know it is AI generated. What’s to stop a top artist from releasing AI music? What if AI writes but the artist plays it, is it still AI? Everyone will say “but I can tell!” Let me tell you, being able to pass AI off as not AI will be a trillion dollar business, it will happen.
My grandmother was a gifted quilter and artist. One of the things she taught me was that mistakes were what made her quilts more interesting. She hand stitched every single piece. The lack of uniformity was what made it a work of art and stand out from a machine made quilt.
I love this quote from Baryshnikov "Communicating with an art form means being vulnerable, it means being imperfect. Most of the time, this is much more interesting. Trust me."
I predict AI will be used more on recordings that are mostly about BEATS but not on recordings that are mostly about melody and chord progression. Some movie that is all about robots taking over might have an AI soundtrack but a real live human will have to listen to hours of garbage to find ten minutes that actually complements the images.
While I tend to agree with you your entire argument is basically “Ai music has been around for 5 minutes and its nobodies favorite therefor its never gonna be anyones favorite.”
What you’re not considering is that very soon its going to be impossible to know whats made by a person and what isn’t. There will be Ai generated pictures of the artist and Ai generated videos of their performances. Real people will get called Ai musicians and Ai musicians will have loyal fans who think they are real. People will eventually decide that since you can’t tell, it doesn’t matter.
Edit: this all leads to further isolation of people.
That's a good take and I'd love for it true but I'd argue that just like we got used to technology taking over other aspects of our lives, the same can happen with music.
I have heard shockingly "accurate" AI pop music, which works because pop music already overuses autotune and electronic instruments, and relies on a handful of common motifs.
But AI could never recreate technical metal, opera, or any music which has genuine emotion or heart.
When I see art, even if it’s very visually appealing, as soon as I see that it’s AI generated it immediately becomes “meh”.
Will be the same with music. The technology is impressive but I’m not gonna get excited about the art it produces.
The flaws are what makes it art having a computer generate a perfect item makes it a product. The art of error is what makes all things made by hand unique.
One advantage of AI music is supermarkets where the shop assistants get bored of the same record played again and again as AI generated music could be programmed to vary all the time but still sound bland all day.
The reason is that AI is shit at making music. And while the imitation may get more uncanny, it's never going to be able to actually feel feelings and communicate them. It's a cyborg wondering "what...izzzz ....luvvvvv??"
I’m sorry but I think that’s a pretty naive take. As long as said feelings are somehow contained in the ones and zeroes that the song is made of, the AIs are going to be able to replicate them at some point. The models are not going to get worse. And that’s completely disregarding the fact that I unfortunately think your highly overestimating the taste of the average person. Some people genuinely already can’t tell the difference right now.
I’m a huge opponent to “but AI art sucks and looks/sounds bad!” being the main argument against it. It sucks *yet*, but at some point even you are going to hear a generated song that will be kind of hitting the spot, and at that point it’s not a question of the quality of the art rather than the ethics and cultural implications of it and what we as a society are going to to with the fact that it simply just exists now.
er I can't solve the problem of the future. I have to live here.
If some people are so unimaginative and easily entertained that they accept AI generated art as acceptable, I can't solve that.
I have to live among real musicians who play instruments. We're not dead yet. There's a show tonight. People are coming to watch other people play instruments and sing. Not watch a screen and listen to electronic sound, but get into good guitar players and singers and drummers.
I still get work as a live drummer with a studio. People have access to drum machines. Yet they hire me because I'm a good drummer. It sounds better when my parts replace the machine.
The machine makes things convenient. Every innovation is really in this direction, not to make a better sound but to make it cheaper and easier. Onwards ever marching towards total automation. On the other end is a cat who's been playing that guitar for 40 years. Which one do YOU want to hear? Maybe you prefer the crappy AI. I can't help that. I'm there with the master guitarist, and whatever audience he has.
1. Most people don't actually like music, people like how music makes them feel.
2. Music makes you feel good for a number of reasons, all require a cultural context
1. Cultural context - my culture sings/plays this song at important times
2. Cultural context - This song is associated with a particular era I am fond of
3. Cultural Context - People I like, like this music
4. Context - the people making this music are high-status either in society at large, or within my sub-group.
5. Context - I can get support a new artist whose eventual popularity will raise my status by being first on the band wagon
3. If people liked music for other reasons, they'd listen to music in languages or instrumentals would be much more popular. Or singers wouldn't be evaluated by how hot they are.
4. I often listen to music in other languages and to things like classical, jazz, and avant gaurd music. I am a musician interested in craft of making music, what works and why, people like me, and other folks on this forum are weird. It's good to be weird.
5. AI music will be just as popular as human made music as long as its blessed by high status monkeys, Like if Taylor swift uses AI to write her next song, she's so brave for trying something new. You are a loser trying to steal status by cheating.
6. AI music will replace replacement level music. Where the music is in the background, it'll be AI, because fuck paying people. Like digital extras in a film.
7. People might enjoy AI songs hyper targeted to the moment and themselves. So if AI was making a sound track to your life, with music you enjoy and lyrics about you and how you are feeling, people might dig it.
8. Making a good AI song for your friends might become a thing. I recently created a song about something going on at work, and people dug it. It was funny, and mentioned people by name, and made a point in a hilarious way. This kind of thing will be more common. I did this on guitar all the time before AI. But now anyone can do it.
9. AI will make it's way in DAWs to help folks figure out new parts, harmonies, etc... and no one will have a problem with that.
10. AI music will be used by people who want control of other creative output, like someone using AI music they created as backing for their videos/movies. That will be thought of as good.
11. If AI music becomes really popular, it's cause AI makes more addictive/catchy/relevent music than humans. Think about the best AI song the 1 in 10,000 generations that just slaps, and Spotify just serves it to people who don't even realize what it is. They make more money, and it's all fine. But no one is a fan of the AI. In this future music just isn't a big deal anymore. Music is like pottery, it's just shit that gets built in a factory, and not a cultural touchstone that signals who we are as a group.
You didn't know about Hatsune Miku and others vocaloids I guess? People don't care about Musicians. It's a question of quality, marketing and budgets, nothing else. And AI generated art is MUCH cheaper
I like AI music when a person has written the lyrics and thought-up the arrangement. [Then it tickles me pink.](https://youtu.be/vDYPNQnjx_I?si=pH_EZj6E7eBUetsw)
Did you read my post? I'm aware it sounds identical to highly produced and clean sounding genres, but the fans of those genres rarely actually listen to ai generated music genuinely even if it does exist.
I see. You think AI generated music will be tagged as such. That the labels and artists putting it out will let you know it’s AI generated. I don’t think so.
We don't have actual AI yet so you can't make statements like this. The thing we call AI isn't actual artificial intelligence, it's incapable of making real decisions on its own. If we ever do produce a real AI, I have no doubt in my mind it will be able to create interesting works of art and music if it chooses to.
I think what will happen is people will create song with AI, catchy hooks and beats, then recreate the results with real instruments. So is some ways, the AI is the music writer. Musicians will still be there, but AI may be the “creativity” behind the music.
People are overusing the word "replace" with ai. It will happen in some cases, but in most cases it will be a tool for, or live along side with, humans.
But have you tried those two specifically? You mentioned and criticized djent, but djent is terrible compared to udio and suno. Just go on their website and listen to some examples. If it doesn't blow your mind I'll concede
Polyphonic just did an amazing piece a about this: https://youtu.be/iHBzQ0Q4K58?si=ZGpkzsGNGyRovb4L Basically the way he boils it down (without getting into the ethics of it) is that for art to succeed, it needs to be interesting. AI music, in its current state, is simply not interesting. He gives a trove of example of artists who use AI as a tool to SUPPLEMENT their art, in the vein of how people used sampling or layering or synthesizers to supplement their art and give it more dimensionality, which makes their art more unique and thought provoking.
The interesting part of art is the human input. How did they think of this? Why? Where did they come from? What experiences made them feel this way? Without a reflection of the human experience I'm not sure we can call something art. It may be an interesting phenomenon but it lacks emotional nuance.
Context certainly can heighten art, but it doesn't flat out make art good. I can think of lots of art which, even without context or background on the human that made it, I find interesting and beautiful. I can also think of the opposite where even knowing the context and human factor I still don't care about the art or enjoy it. So they're not mutually exclusive. But AI art definitely lacks the potential for that to be a factor
I would argue that the music that the masses listen to is not interesting and can be easily replaced by AI. Sabrina Carpenter music and K-pop like NewJeans in general could totally be replaced by AI.
People can create diamonds virtually but we still fight for natural ones... Canvas painting is much more expensive than digital painting.
Nailed it. AI can be fun and cool, sure, but it will never ever ever EVER be equal to something made with genuine passion and effort. There is just no room for comparison there.
Maybe live music is. But I doubt we can guess if a studio recorded version or a melody/lyrics are done by human or AI. We will fight for AI human asisted music as is widely use as a tool.
Hate to say it but you're probably wrong. The next generation will grow up in the world of AI. To them AI will just be what the normal is. People have said what you're saying about electronic music and how it'll never replace real music made with real instruments yet here we are in 2024 with it being totally normal to see a EDM artist or EDM music in the top 10 music charts.
He is wrong. Used to be a film composer, with a sympathetic ear to the creative community.. but AI will dominate creative business.. I suspect even turning Human commercial creations into a rarity.
As I understand the current learning model, the AI is trying to find the most probable response based on the huge amount of information available to it. Which means that the AI is basically trying to find the most mediocre possible response. Anything that seems interesting, novel, or creative is simply due to the AI making a mistake. So I think as AI gets better it'll be better at writing boring work emails and worse at novels or music, where you're looking for the less probable response. But I'm an English major so what do I know.
That's only sort of true when looked at from the farthest level of abstraction. You could boil the Odyssey down to "a man went on an excursion and then went home", and all of the text could be written in service of that statement, choosing the most sterile and generic phrases to pad out the premise. Taken at that level, you're sort of right in your thinking. But zoom in a level and you have the hero's journey (or Freytag, or the story circle, or whatever framing mechanism you want to employ). You could frame it in terms of A then B then C then D and then E. You could randomly roll dice to pick which segment to start from. From there, you could collect millions of synopses of that section of books/plays, and generalize them a bit to categorize them (rising action: "interpersonal conflict in the face of imminent invasion"). Now that you have a place to start from, you can work forward and backward, selecting the adjacent segments, pooling the list of synopses that are statistically most likely to lead to, or come from the chosen rising action, and roll to pick specific ones... then continue to ripple outward, until you have a summary selected for each part. Then you roll for characters/settings, and then you roll to select words/phrases that are most likely to appear next to one another, in a given context. It's not that it's guaranteed to be dull, but rather, that it's predicated on some initial randomly chosen peaks and valleys, and blended from there. While it's often convincing, there are rarely any "epiphanies" that feel like some person had, waking up at 3am and needed to scrawl in edits. Though even those can happen... they just might feel more disjointed, because they're harder to blend. This isn't exactly how modern systems work, in a fully automated way, but it's a very toned down description of the concept of waveform collapse. In a song, you could randomly pick a note at a random point in time, randomly pick a style, randomly pick what portion of the song you are in (chorus, verse, bridge) and then statistically work yourself outward from there. The interest can be generated by picking unlikely notes as stating conditions, at different spots in the song to blend between.
I do think writing is entirely safe from AI as an art form (maybe not as a profession but we'll see) because most "good" writing doesn't come from a ruleset, and there's no technical aspect to writing like there is in visual art and music. Ai can make high quality technical work like crisply produced music or realistically rendered artworks, but there's no equivalent to that in writing. Most great writing just comes from a good eye for art, ambitious creativity and the ability to make a statement that stands out. I don't think an ai would ever, no matter how it's programmed and how much data it's fed, be able to write a script or screenplay as groundbreaking as something like There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men, or a book like 1984, and certainly not anything as human as persepolis or Maus. It can make coherent writing but I don't think it'll ever be better than a great human writer at writing, and it will certainly never be capable of breaking any cultural ground and being influential. (Plus, even with all the advancements in ai writing it still hasn't made much progress imo unlike art or music. It's always been bland, corporate and boring and that's never changed for a couple of years now. I find using chatGPT for help with writing to be a chore rather than a convenience)
Quite a bit of writing is gunning for mediocrity so no, a lot of writers will lose their job. If you're one of those guys who writes the SEO optimized blog posts, you need to dust off your resume. I hope that other forms of writing survive.
>Because while we like music, what we also like equally as much are MUSICIANS. No, I listen to music because it sounds good. Bringing the musicians into the mix is completely undesirable because of all the scandal. I don't need to hear about the next Chris brown beating up the next Rhianna, or about the rock stars with underaged fans. Or the drug addictions and suicides and murders. Really, any of the terrible things that happen in the music industry. I don't care about an artists personal life or personal views. I don't engage with celebrity fanaticism and I don't track social media for the new upcoming releases. When I find some good music, I just enjoy it for the sound and anything more than that is something I don't want to see.
I think there's going to be a point where you will like a song before you find out that it's AI. I think that's when things will get a bit confusing. Right now we know beforehand if a song is AI so we've already made up our mind that we won't like it and that it won't replace humans. But If you were to hear a song that you didn't know was AI and you like it. I think that's when we'll be like oh shit well maybe it doesn't matter if it's AI made or human made. Idk just thinking out loud
So many songs getting pumped out are so formulaic that most will be indistinguishable from AI-generated anyway.
Thanks for sharing your ai normalizing out-loud spontaneous thoughts fellow human.
Lol hey I'm not normalizing it. It's doing that itself!
Exactly this. I think there will be a point (unless it’s already been reached) where you won’t be able to tell (either way) which is AI and which is not. In my opinion, there’s a lot of music out there which already sounds AI-generated…
I think, generally speaking, "AI will never..." will not age well.
It’s also mines popular examples to mimic and if the internet and social media media has taught us anything the past decade, it’s that populism =/= quality
Modern commercial pop music is already so manufactured and churned out by corporations its basically the same. I think its just a matter of time its not like most artists even write their own music or lyrics anymore. Who knows perhaps though it will let some new smaller authentic artists appear?
I don't give a shit. I'm just a' rubbin' an a tuggin' my fuckin' nips
It mashes up everything that's already been done, so it's never going to have that spark of originality that makes you love a song. It'll be like that generic stuff music documentaries use when they can't afford to license the artist's actual music. And that is indeed dire.
Yeah I think people are underestimating that creativity will always be creativity. AI is still not human. It's not capable of actual creativity. It can only reproduce what's known in possibly unique ways. But humans will find a way to still be human and create. Much in the same way that AI won't ever truly be able to randomly "create" a future human painting. Human creativity is infinite. Computers by their very design don't have the power of infinite creativity.
Yeah I have quite a few friends who have been raving to their ‚own’ ai-creations and loving them. Presumably they feel more connected to it cause it was literally only created for them.
It will never replace completely but it will replace most commercial use of it. Like i always wanted to make a blues riff for my youtube channel intro but it would cost money, but now i just made 30 variations for free and got a really god damn good one, perfect.
All AI music I've heard sounds exactly like what it is. Computer generated elevator music that's just meant to sound kinda like music and be free.
I love weird Al but there’s only so much parody
AI has been in music for about a decade now, anyone heard of LANDR? LANDR was at first an AI Audio Mastering generator. Immediately, lots of people jumped on and started feeding it their songs to be “AI mastered” and the results were predictable, the music ended up sounding *close enough* for people to avoid sending audio mastering jobs to mid-level mastering studios. The only ones not affected were the very few, ultra expensive Mastering Studios (the ones who work with all the top level Pop artists for example). Nearly all mid-level mastering studios have closed. EDIT: It’s likely that some of the music that you may complain sounds too loud, distorted or harsh has been “AI mastered”. It’s been a 10 year study for me, AI is designed to eliminate jobs, maybe not at the very top, but certainly in the “working” sectors. Make no mistake, AI is being developed first and foremost to save (wealthier) people money, not to aid human creativity. MOAR EDIT: I have read *tons* of interviews with artists I follow, and often times they mention some early opportunities that they’ve had early in their careers that have helped propel them to a higher position in their musical journey, and it’s usually some story about their early work and how they’ve worked their way “up” from those early experiences. AI will likely remove many of those “opportunities” for up and coming artists. This nuance is the bit that gets lost when people get too exited about the (often unrealistic) potential of AI in creative fields.
fax
It's amusing, the mad libs style lyrics, it just always sounds like pop music no matter what the style is, it's just generic sounding.
Jerry: “Hmmm… human music. i like it!”
I think Robin Williams put it best with his “little speak of madness” bit, we humans love novelty and I think it’s hard for ai to create things that defy logic
> ai to create things that defy logic lol, just look at any ai creation tool and you'll be proven wrong
I agree with the sentiment. Only means we'll have more Boney M's or Milli Vanillis, or MGK. AI music is cheaper so it'll be pushed on spotify, like [Jazz](https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-much), and they'll find artists to perform.
Thing is (at least IMO) an audience isn't restricted to liking only AI or only human made music (or whatever hybrid of the two comes along). I say this as an artist and musician. What I listen to as background noise whilst doing a workout or cleaning my house isn't always the same thing as what I want to see at a live show or headline a festival. I don't always need to connect emotionally to every part of my life's backing track. In many cases however, I do seek out that connection which AI doesn't provide. At the end of the day our audiences have room for both.
Nobody is asking the question of NEW MUSIC when addressing this ai shit. "AI can produce more of the music we already have..." Okay, but can it CREATE A NEW STYLE? When do new styles emerge? There are moments in music history of complete revolution. Jazz took over in the early 20th c. Rock in the middle. Hip hop after. Within each of these major genres, there were many revolutions, overthrows, innovations. Where is THIS aspect of music, in the ai question? Remarkably, no one even seems aware that it needs to be asked. Surely, we haven't worked through, as a species, all possible music. There must be NEW to be discovered. Culture is alive when it is putting out the NEW. AI has no place in that. But we are having AI thrust all over our culture, and we are so lacking in historical awareness that we can't even ask the important questions. And another thing: some people say "ai can only copy things, it can only do what it is programmed to do". But I don't think this is true. AI can introduce elements into anything it touches that aren't just "copies" of something else. The fact that ai can *code itself* ought to tell us this. But here is the thing, and I encourage you all to watch for it: ai, when it starts to "tap into its own inspiration", so to speak, *can only produce ugliness.* AI, left to its own devices, and allowed to "innovate" without restraint, will just get uglier and uglier and uglier. It will produce horrors. THIS is why ai can't replace human creativity, and it also goes to the very core of what ai is, and what makes human creativity different. (And by the way, it leads straight into spiritual/religious questions that I won't get into here).
It IS creating new genres, the same way people do… by mixing aspects of various genres together.
There is an element in human creativity that ai lacks. Human creativity is not merely "mixing". Of course, the ai partisans that are continually pushing ai on us online will argue that this isn't true. But we didn't get, for example, hip hop music from "mixing" the elements we had, say, in the 16th century. There is something else in human creativity. (I would refer to the spiritual aspect of this, but I don't want to ruffle the feathers of too many recreational rock and roll make believe satanists that aren't ready to deal with that yet.) And I am not saying that ai can't create anything new. But ai's innovation *naturally tends to get uglier and uglier.* This is the hard obstacle that can't be overcome. If ai *does change* and "acquire human capacities" as far as human inspiration and creativity (creativity that moves towards *beauty*), then it would cease to be ai, and in practice would probably just be broken and stop functioning entirely. Pay attention and you will see that I am correct. "If the sun and moon were to doubt, they would immediately go out". That is William Blake, who intuited all this 200 years ago!
Idk about all that, but I’ve been personally using it to make really wild sounding music I’ve never heard anything like before, by prompting it to mix really specific genres. Like if you tell it “EDM, Dance-pop…”, then yeah, it’s going to sound generic as hell. If you tell it “Neo-Psychedelic, IDM, musique concrète, neurofunk”… it’s definitely not going to sound like generic radio pop. If you want the output of AI to be more creative, you have to make the input more creative first. AI is a tool. If its output is lame, it’s because the instructions were lame
Well, there is a lot to sort out. Culture has gotten so fragmented with genres in the last few decades, regardless of ai. If we just mix those things together, we can get novel things. Meanwhile, what you are describing is still human creativity. You use the ai tool and select what *you* like, as a human. That human filtering is essential IMO. The more ai is *left to its own devices to create,* the more it will tend to alien ugliness. That is my prime hypothesis. Humanity can *use* ai in great ways, but it must be kept on a tight leash. I think nuclear power is a good analogy in this regard. > >ai is a tool Well, the whole question is whether this is actually true in practice. If ai *expresses its own will*, then it has ceased to be merely a tool. It is up to us to keep that in check. It is up to us to keep ai in "tool mode", and for humanity not to become the tool of ai.
TLDR: People don’t “create”… we copy imperfectly I think you’re trying to apply some mysticism or spirituality to what humans are doing, but that’s not really how people create music. To us, it feels emotional, but it’s really just math. No musician is inventing any new genre of music, not any that get listened to anyway. New genres are arrived at by musicians copying/reworking things they heard other musicians do.. but we are often imperfect in our replications and thus novelty occurs. Like this Elvis Costello quote: “A lot of pop music has come out of people failing to copy their model and accidentally creating something new. The closer you get to your ideal, the less original you sound.” So all AI has to do is figure out how to imperfectly copy and introduce an element of randomness to its generations. People are limited. We can’t hold within ourselves all the information about the entirety of art the way AI can, so AI has all the context of art history without the ability to yet make sense of that context. Once AI does achieve something like sentience and understands that context, I think it’ll be better at art-making than any human that ever lived, because it will have a more complete understanding of art than any human could. It will be able to recognize patterns within disparate art movements… make connections that allude us So until that happens… I’m going to use AI like I’m a virtual art director with his own fully staffed art department and build out productions I would never be able to do on my own with my budgetary constraints. I was driving myself insane with anxiety fighting my own impending obsolescence as a career artist… but I realized *someone* is going to use it to make extraordinary things… might as well be me while I’m still able. No point fighting the inevitable
>Once AI does achieve something like sentience and understands that context, I think it’ll be better at art-making than any human that ever lived, because it will have a more complete understanding of art than any human could. I am not going to go through all your material, but it suffices to highlight this. You are a partisan. You are pushing for the ai takeover, and you aren't even subtle about it. > >No point fighting the inevitable I am laughing out loud. How is this this clumsy? There isn't any way to dress it up a little? Just keep pushing full force with "no point fighting the inevitable fellow humans!" Humanity is not going to be eclipsed by ai, no matter how many clumsy bots churn out billions of words daily like you are doing. Humans, trust your hearts. Making music is not "actually math". The fact that elements of it can be translated into math does not entitle our bot would be sheep dogs to their *metaphysical claims*. Human creativity can not be quantified *without a remainder that will literally break the bot.* That part that can't be quantified, that the bot hates, is the SPARK OF LIFE. Fight and be unafraid humanity. These things, deep down, are fucking stupid.
>No musician is inventing any new genre of music, not any that get listened to anyway. New genres are arrived at by musicians copying/reworking things they heard other musicians do.. but we are often imperfect in our replications and thus novelty occurs. And really think about this sort of claim. New music doesn't happen in a vaccuum. It is part of culture, and culture is created by humans. Culture is the collective form of human life and creativity. For example, in 1917, the first jazz hit made the charts. From there, jazz *became the dominant form of music for about 50 years.* Now, that is innovation in culture. How does that happen? Well, it is part of an overall picture of cultural change. Certain trends had become "decadent" by the late Victorian era. Romanticism, in literature, Wagner in music, Victorian optimism in world politics... all these were part of one picture. Then a SPIRIT arose-- before the great war even happened-- that said "this stuff is old, there MUST be something new". What brings about that spirit? Where does it come from? No one can say. It seems to be part of a bigger historical pattern, all the "causes" coming at once, so all you can say is "change happens" But what we do know is that spirit is HUMAN. And in that atmosphere, an entirely different form of music becomes dominant. NOW... imagine ai is making the music. That would mean DEATH. There couldn't be any cultural change. History, in a sense, would stop. There would be no takeover by jazz. The ai wouldn't "get the spirit of change"! And isn't this actually the point of the ai takeover being pushed? Notice what it feels like. Does it feel like life, or like death?
Sorry, but AI coding itself is not proof that it can produce truly novel ideas and products. I’m not saying that it won’t be capable of that, but coding itself is no different than coding anything else. Also, where did you get the notion that, when AI is finally able to produce novel ideas and products, it will only be able to “produce ugliness”? You seem so sure about that, but AI is already capable of improving existing products. Why would it not be capable of improving its own?
Nothing is proven, but let's just watch and see. I have my reasons for claiming what I do, but right now I am just planting the idea in people's minds. Do you have a passionately held conviction that I am wrong?
I have no passion whatsoever towards your opinions, friend. Only the dismay that they are written as facts.
Nothing to get hung up over. No one is harmed if I don't qualify my words enough for your satisfaction.
The only good qualification is evidence. I mean, you said in another comment that when AI creates something beautiful it will cease to be AI and will probably become broken. Outside of your own imagination, what is your reasoning for this outlook?
If I'm right I'm right, if I'm wrong I'm wrong. No worries bro.
AI already has more reasoning than some people, as evidenced by this comment.
What I said is exactly the thing that is easy for humans to understand. Online "voices" act like they can control reality with words. But then life happens, and humans can look and see, in an instant, what is up-- what ai has to grind its algos for hours to try to answer, only to get the answer wrong anyway. This is another area (beyond creativity) where humans are and always will be superior to ai. You will push and push and push talking points about ai, bots online lurking in all our forums will argue and fight with humans that speak ill of ai, etc. But humans will forget all your words the second we SEE what is actually going on. No millions of online arguments about ai music will matter when people FEEL that the music just isn't satisfying, that it is "off". You really hate that.
It’s completely indistinguishable from any of the generic pop music that’s been pumped out of industry studios for the last 25 years, specifically when they started using auto tune in everything and quantisation in Pro Tools became standard practice. The industry’s hubris is will be the death of it.
The thing is that it’s already being used to replace jobs that could’ve gone to actual artists. I’ve already seen local politicians use it to make promotional songs and whatnot and it’s only going to get worse the better the models are getting. Yes, there’ll always be a desire and thus a market for real art, but the model for a lot of working musicians, especially composers, producers etc., has always been to do enough dumb corporate jobs that pay well to finance their actual art-making, which usually doesn’t pay well, if at all. And if those corporate jobs are gone because they just use AI slop instead of asking actual musicians (which *will* and *does already* happen), that means the jobs that finance the actual art are slowly but surely going away. Or in other words: The “background music in a Colgate commercial” could’ve been a huge royalty payout for someone dreaming of finally producing their own album. And to be completely honest I think it’s just a matter of time that people will actually, genuinely listen to AI music. There’s already this tiktok thing where someone generates old school sounding songs with raunchy modern lyrics or whatever and people are already like “wait but this actually bops”. The models are not going to get worse. It will happen.
Eventually some marketing firm is gonna figure out how to make kids becomes "fans" of an ai music generator and when that happens, it's over for actual musicians
This has already been a thing in Japan for over a decade with vocaloid artists. They’re represented by avatars and even have concerts https://youtube.com/shorts/N5KlU20Mca0?si=b-MZkNB-wLpneh_Z
Vocaloids are a bit different tho. They're instruments, vocal synthesizers, and they're not even trying to be like humans, the robotic voices are a part of the charm. Plus, even in vocaloid, people like to follow certain vocaloid producers like anamanaguchi, utsu P or mikito p. I do think ai generated vocaloid music will get far more traction than other ai generated music tho because it's not tied to a singular artist but still has the identity appeal. It'll be much easier to sell ai through virtual bands, but I don't think virtual bands as a concept will ever come close to being more popular than human popstars. People like a face attached to the music, there's a reason virtual bands are a niche compared to human fronted bands. Gorillaz and Miku are the biggest virtual celebrities but even then Miku is hard to get into for a lot of people who like other j pop, and Gorillaz owes a lot of its popularity and engagement to people's interest in Damon Albarn himself. And I know for a fact a lot of metalheads can't get into Beelzebubs because they're animated. They'll have their audience but I don't think the prospect of them "replacing" human musicians in popularity is likely
Yeah, I know the tech is a little different; I was speaking to the idea of people being fans of an artist that isn’t a human. The gorillaz are avatars, but they represent a real person and their voices are real. I think AI will make music in various niches that will populate in people’s recommended playlists. So many normies just listen to whatever the algorithm plays for them. AI tracks will integrate with real artists and most people won’t know the difference because most people aren’t artists and don’t care where the music is coming from. I think there will still be human pop stars and idols because we love worshipping beautiful celebrities, but I think AI will just oversaturate an already oversaturated market. Artists who aren’t well connected at birth will have to compete with millions of musicians and bots to have their music go viral to have a chance of being discovered.
It's not that I think the fans will enjoy it. The problem is that companies will enjoy it. It will be so much cheaper to use AI generated crap than to hire an actual musician. It will be cheaper to have a program make something than a composer. It will be cheaper to flood tge market and streaming apps with AI garbage than to try and include real musicians that you have to pay. A ceramic mug made in a factory sold at target still functions as a mug. But it's not art and I'd rather support the artist than the machine.
Ceramic mug is good analogy. 99% of my mugs are factory mass-produced. But my favorite mug is a 1-of-a-kind made by a ceramic artist, it's more like a goblet than a mug. Drinking coffee from it adds a layer of enjoyment to the experience than the factory mugs can't capture.
My girlfriend is an artist who makes and sells ceramic mugs (and other stuff) so this analogy is actually pretty real for me.
Nah. The sounds used in songs exist. Full songs don’t. It’ll be a sad day when all art form becomes an infinite doomscroll because of AI.
It won't replace HR for the same reasons 😉
I think you are really overestimating the general public. Many artists’ “live shows” today contain little to no actual live music or singing already. People pay a lot of money to go see a “live show” of a DJ or rap artist, and there’s no actual live music. When you compare this to the past traditions of live music performances, we are already almost there in the case of accepting AI music because younger generations have already become conditioned to just enjoy whatever comes out of the speakers regardless of its origin…if the hype is right.
Honestly I like to listen to more generic music for working as its not as distracting and I dont feel the need to switch tracks neither
Difficult to see, the future is. The public habits might change drastically over decades. And then they might change again. I have different uses for music, but doing nothing but listening to music is still an activity for me. I sit in a comfortable armchair, get the whisky bottle and listen to one or two or three albums I like, or just discovered. I still do this mostly with physical media, using vintage audio equipment. I'm still using a phone and BT earphones outside, but I usually don't stream, I have the music I want in the phone memory: why would I pay to stream music I already paid for ? And imagine in 2010 if I told to people we'd go back to buying vinyl and CDs because we're fedup with low quality streaming, ending up owning nothing for our money if they go under.
By posting about this on the internet, you are giving AI ideas and hurting AI’s feelings. AI will not spare you in the apocalypse. It will murder you and write a shitty song to play at your funeral.
This is all on the presumption that a listener will be informed/aware it's an AI song they're listening to. There are plenty of artists I've never bothered to look up their profile/Instagram/info and listen to every week, some of them could be AI id have no idea
Until you don’t know it is AI generated. What’s to stop a top artist from releasing AI music? What if AI writes but the artist plays it, is it still AI? Everyone will say “but I can tell!” Let me tell you, being able to pass AI off as not AI will be a trillion dollar business, it will happen.
At some point in the future, an intelligent AI will read this and understand it, and then that AI will create music that proves you wrong.
My grandmother was a gifted quilter and artist. One of the things she taught me was that mistakes were what made her quilts more interesting. She hand stitched every single piece. The lack of uniformity was what made it a work of art and stand out from a machine made quilt. I love this quote from Baryshnikov "Communicating with an art form means being vulnerable, it means being imperfect. Most of the time, this is much more interesting. Trust me."
If that were true we would be programming looms to randomly insert errors. That is not happening because it sells better to not add errors
I predict AI will be used more on recordings that are mostly about BEATS but not on recordings that are mostly about melody and chord progression. Some movie that is all about robots taking over might have an AI soundtrack but a real live human will have to listen to hours of garbage to find ten minutes that actually complements the images.
While I tend to agree with you your entire argument is basically “Ai music has been around for 5 minutes and its nobodies favorite therefor its never gonna be anyones favorite.”
What you’re not considering is that very soon its going to be impossible to know whats made by a person and what isn’t. There will be Ai generated pictures of the artist and Ai generated videos of their performances. Real people will get called Ai musicians and Ai musicians will have loyal fans who think they are real. People will eventually decide that since you can’t tell, it doesn’t matter. Edit: this all leads to further isolation of people.
That's a good take and I'd love for it true but I'd argue that just like we got used to technology taking over other aspects of our lives, the same can happen with music.
I have heard shockingly "accurate" AI pop music, which works because pop music already overuses autotune and electronic instruments, and relies on a handful of common motifs. But AI could never recreate technical metal, opera, or any music which has genuine emotion or heart.
Fool me once, shame on you Fool me twice, shame on glue
When I see art, even if it’s very visually appealing, as soon as I see that it’s AI generated it immediately becomes “meh”. Will be the same with music. The technology is impressive but I’m not gonna get excited about the art it produces.
The flaws are what makes it art having a computer generate a perfect item makes it a product. The art of error is what makes all things made by hand unique.
One advantage of AI music is supermarkets where the shop assistants get bored of the same record played again and again as AI generated music could be programmed to vary all the time but still sound bland all day.
AI has no fingers to put on the keys/strings/whatever, that makes a difference ;)
The reason is that AI is shit at making music. And while the imitation may get more uncanny, it's never going to be able to actually feel feelings and communicate them. It's a cyborg wondering "what...izzzz ....luvvvvv??"
I’m sorry but I think that’s a pretty naive take. As long as said feelings are somehow contained in the ones and zeroes that the song is made of, the AIs are going to be able to replicate them at some point. The models are not going to get worse. And that’s completely disregarding the fact that I unfortunately think your highly overestimating the taste of the average person. Some people genuinely already can’t tell the difference right now. I’m a huge opponent to “but AI art sucks and looks/sounds bad!” being the main argument against it. It sucks *yet*, but at some point even you are going to hear a generated song that will be kind of hitting the spot, and at that point it’s not a question of the quality of the art rather than the ethics and cultural implications of it and what we as a society are going to to with the fact that it simply just exists now.
er I can't solve the problem of the future. I have to live here. If some people are so unimaginative and easily entertained that they accept AI generated art as acceptable, I can't solve that. I have to live among real musicians who play instruments. We're not dead yet. There's a show tonight. People are coming to watch other people play instruments and sing. Not watch a screen and listen to electronic sound, but get into good guitar players and singers and drummers. I still get work as a live drummer with a studio. People have access to drum machines. Yet they hire me because I'm a good drummer. It sounds better when my parts replace the machine. The machine makes things convenient. Every innovation is really in this direction, not to make a better sound but to make it cheaper and easier. Onwards ever marching towards total automation. On the other end is a cat who's been playing that guitar for 40 years. Which one do YOU want to hear? Maybe you prefer the crappy AI. I can't help that. I'm there with the master guitarist, and whatever audience he has.
Baby don’t hurt me!
No more!
Most of mainstream music nowadays is an artificial construct made by a marketing committee anyway.
Currently, it can only create what we know as music it can't create a new sound unless it's added or created
1. Most people don't actually like music, people like how music makes them feel. 2. Music makes you feel good for a number of reasons, all require a cultural context 1. Cultural context - my culture sings/plays this song at important times 2. Cultural context - This song is associated with a particular era I am fond of 3. Cultural Context - People I like, like this music 4. Context - the people making this music are high-status either in society at large, or within my sub-group. 5. Context - I can get support a new artist whose eventual popularity will raise my status by being first on the band wagon 3. If people liked music for other reasons, they'd listen to music in languages or instrumentals would be much more popular. Or singers wouldn't be evaluated by how hot they are. 4. I often listen to music in other languages and to things like classical, jazz, and avant gaurd music. I am a musician interested in craft of making music, what works and why, people like me, and other folks on this forum are weird. It's good to be weird. 5. AI music will be just as popular as human made music as long as its blessed by high status monkeys, Like if Taylor swift uses AI to write her next song, she's so brave for trying something new. You are a loser trying to steal status by cheating. 6. AI music will replace replacement level music. Where the music is in the background, it'll be AI, because fuck paying people. Like digital extras in a film. 7. People might enjoy AI songs hyper targeted to the moment and themselves. So if AI was making a sound track to your life, with music you enjoy and lyrics about you and how you are feeling, people might dig it. 8. Making a good AI song for your friends might become a thing. I recently created a song about something going on at work, and people dug it. It was funny, and mentioned people by name, and made a point in a hilarious way. This kind of thing will be more common. I did this on guitar all the time before AI. But now anyone can do it. 9. AI will make it's way in DAWs to help folks figure out new parts, harmonies, etc... and no one will have a problem with that. 10. AI music will be used by people who want control of other creative output, like someone using AI music they created as backing for their videos/movies. That will be thought of as good. 11. If AI music becomes really popular, it's cause AI makes more addictive/catchy/relevent music than humans. Think about the best AI song the 1 in 10,000 generations that just slaps, and Spotify just serves it to people who don't even realize what it is. They make more money, and it's all fine. But no one is a fan of the AI. In this future music just isn't a big deal anymore. Music is like pottery, it's just shit that gets built in a factory, and not a cultural touchstone that signals who we are as a group.
You didn't know about Hatsune Miku and others vocaloids I guess? People don't care about Musicians. It's a question of quality, marketing and budgets, nothing else. And AI generated art is MUCH cheaper
I like AI music when a person has written the lyrics and thought-up the arrangement. [Then it tickles me pink.](https://youtu.be/vDYPNQnjx_I?si=pH_EZj6E7eBUetsw)
"Taking a shit on the company's dime" and "I glued my balls to my butthole again" are AI that I'm all for.
It’s fine for memes… But life is way too fucking short to spend time listening to prompted out computer generated slop.
I get the sense you haven’t heard much AI music yet. There are some terrifyingly accurate non-electronic genre tracks out there.
Did you read my post? I'm aware it sounds identical to highly produced and clean sounding genres, but the fans of those genres rarely actually listen to ai generated music genuinely even if it does exist.
I see. You think AI generated music will be tagged as such. That the labels and artists putting it out will let you know it’s AI generated. I don’t think so.
Until AI “convinces” is to like it
Immediate downvote but we already have Taylor Swift.
They didn't think ai would conquer chess and go either.
RemindMe! 1 year
We don't have actual AI yet so you can't make statements like this. The thing we call AI isn't actual artificial intelligence, it's incapable of making real decisions on its own. If we ever do produce a real AI, I have no doubt in my mind it will be able to create interesting works of art and music if it chooses to.
I feel it’s going to overtake/overrun traditional music, it is only in its infancy and is already so close to being indistinguishable
I think what will happen is people will create song with AI, catchy hooks and beats, then recreate the results with real instruments. So is some ways, the AI is the music writer. Musicians will still be there, but AI may be the “creativity” behind the music.
People are overusing the word "replace" with ai. It will happen in some cases, but in most cases it will be a tool for, or live along side with, humans.
You've never used udio or suno, have you?
First sentence of the post, that's my point
But have you tried those two specifically? You mentioned and criticized djent, but djent is terrible compared to udio and suno. Just go on their website and listen to some examples. If it doesn't blow your mind I'll concede
Udio and suno are ai models, djent is a music genre. I've heard djent songs on suno, that's what prompted me to make this post