I suspect most people don’t care whether something is AI-generated as long as it entertains them. AI is all over social media. It's all over Substack, too. I see writers on Substack using AI-generated images for their stories. Other writers talk about using ChatGPT. I see YouTube ads with musicians promoting the use of AI to finish their tracks. No musicians or talent required. AI is replacing artists in every form of digital art.
Live music is the last refuge for musicians. Once hologram concerts become acceptable, real musicians will be a novelty. And as AI improves, it is likely no one will be able to tell what is real or fake. These are sad times for artists.
"Once hologram concerts become acceptable ..." Ya, thanks Abba for pioneering on that wonderful development. The absolute Hunger & Lust for more Marches on
Well, they disappeared the thousands upon thousands of gigs out there for working musicians years ago so its only fair they are gonna lose their gigs too
You yourself have reported that AI company stocks have gone into the toilet. Don't you think the Hollywood executives would notice that, or are they still drunk and stoned like they always are?
AI stocks aren't actually in the toilet, as much as Ted and myself wish that were the case. These companies aren't betting on getting rich. They're betting on controlling the future.
Love that you write this. And. A favorite? Please 🙏 remove the last sentence about 12year olds: “… Maybe a few twelve year olds and fools, …”. I have raised 6 children. They were not fools at 12 years old. I taught 12 year-olds and they were the opposite of gullible fools. I, myself as a 12year old, convinced our principal to make the shop teacher stop hitting us with his 12” ruler that he called the “rule of education”. Thank you!!
From an actual 15 year old “ you can’t use AI to make cover art for your music EP, it’s using stolen creativity to promote a creative work”. The kids are more switched on than the hundreds of wanna-be AI grifters who post on places like LinkedIn about how they used gen AI to replace creative workers
Let the silence be deafening! Sing it out: AI has NO place in the arts. None. Let humans be inspired by humans, not data to be culled. The unions are trying, but personal experience suggests they won't be enough. The hope? Because AI is coming for everyone, the action that didn't happen for working musicians, extras, dancers, and VO's etc, will now.
Yes … it does have its uses in medicine, programming, research etc but must at least be kept out of the arts. It’s digital plagiarism. Human inspiration is the rarest of gifts and not meant to be denigrated by cost effective digital slop.
VMark, I take issue about AI's use in research: you have no way to assess the research AI calls upon to generate its answers. It may well be genuine research, but you don't know. Are you going to take a bot's word for it?
It doesn't matter who makes it. Consumers of art have never cared who the artists are. They only care about how the art makes them feel. You and me, as perceptive consumers of art, are going to be unsatisfied by AI slop. The masses probably won't give a shit, and that's what these fuckin companies are banking on.
Yup. As long as there is a Beat & Pad droning & pounding disco 4/4 somewhere in the background ,the Lemmings won't care. It'll be just too darn "Uncomfortable" for them to even think or Talk about
This is really good. I have a deep affection for drums and electric guitars, but the measure of whether you have something or not is revealed by simply playing the song. These songs are wonderful. Thanks for sharing.
I’m a musician. Unfortunately I see AI “product” improving by leaps and bounds (just my opinion and we all know the old saying). I think the general public will like the fake stuff and I don’t think they’ll hold the fakeness against it. I don’t know where this will end up. It’s a race to the bottom. I think at some point we may be absolutely delighted. We shall see.
I'm married to a musician and only an appreciator of the arts. A lot of what passes for music these days is just created noise on a loop, or stolen hooks. It's soulless. It all sounds the same, droning female voices or autotune.I think of all the live shows I've seen in my life from the 70's till now and it breaks my heart that young people don't experience that anymore. When I go to a live show there's a small contingent of younger ones but it's mostly older people. I hope the beauty and excitement of those days doesn't die with all of the older musicians and their fans. ( I am speaking of Rock and Pop, maybe it's different for other genres I don't follow?)
I agree that the gatekeepers of media promote crap. But I live in Austin Texas and see a lot of unknown live bands and trust me there’s awesome new music and young and old musicians out there. I forget the statistic but there’s a jillion new songs every day so it would make sense.
I have been making songs and co-creating with AI for about nine months so far. I have also been making playlists of AI songs for myself to listen to. My playlists include some of my AI created songs and some songs from other folks who have created songs using AI. I enjoy multiple genres of music so my playlist are quite varied. One particular playlist that I have made, I have called “Blown Away”. I named that playlist “Blown Away” for one particular reason - the songs are so good that I have been “blown away” by how good they actually are. Certainly, some AI songs are “slop“ but I would like to let you know that some AI songs are absolutely fabulous. Additionally, I have noticed that AI generated songs are getting better and better day by day and month by month. This is the future. Get used to it. If you are an artist, I suggest you jump in full steam ahead.
Why would I want to spend my hard earned money on music that someone didn't even compose, or a book that someone didn't write, or a painting (i'm a visual artist) that someone didn't spend any time learning to create? I know there are plenty of people (including you it seems) who don't see the problem in this tech.
I am not anti tech, and not even anti ai - as long as it's used for something useful (like it is able to detect cancer before humans can from scans for example). Art (be that writing, music or visual) isn't about the end product, it's about the process. Yes, the consumer of the product doesn't much care about how the end product got there necessarily, but as an artist what is even the point in making something if you hand over your voice (i mean creative voice/style) to a machine? Utterly empty and pointless.
Aside from the total soullessness of it, the fact a machine can't feel, or experience anything - doesn't the massive impact on the environment cause you to pause at all? Or do you not care as long as you get to have a bit of fun in the short term?
Oh i never get used to the future. Im still listening to cds i bought 30 years ago, and have no intention of getting into streaming. Thats one example, but as a general rule i avoid the future.
But i think youre not wrong. It is what it is. I think music and movies are the least of our worries, and these arts will be unfortunate casualties.
Maybe ai music would blow me away. But im still being blown away by music from the past. Bc being blown away by music, for me anyway, is something like having a day that blows me away. Its a confluence of elements, none of which are new, and my brain is a part of this process. Gibberish ik, but it plays out over and over in my life. Being blown away is as much a mood, a state of my being, as it is the result of some other persons efforts.
After phones and social media ive come to realize people are shit, and they really do just want the easiest ways to feel good for a moment. Like monkeys jerking off in a cage.. yeah they enjoy themselves, but they cant see themselves, and they dont care anyway. So, let them jerk off, its none of my business. If thats what people want out of their lives, thats what theyll get.
I agree that AI has made some great stuff and is getting better very quickly. I do think artists though do need to think about being outsourced. Maybe become a plumber or whatnot that can’t be taken over by AI.
I think there will always be a market for human made music. Music comes from within us, and that wont go away. Maybe musicians wont be the gods they were in the last century, and thats probably a good thing. Now if we could knock doctors and lawyers(and actors!) down to size as well, we'd be getting somewhere.
Why absolutely delighted? Because we don’t know what might happen. Maybe AI can produce a highly credible and even better “new” Beatles album. Maybe it can invent or spur humans to create new genres. Maybe it can set up a new business paradigm that works for artists. I don’t think it will be good for artists because of who owns it, but in theory it could be. There’s just so much we don’t know.
It's not just musicians and writers who are affected. Photographer's images are being scraped from the web and used to train AI image generation platforms, creating a huge amount of AI slop images and (for the most part) not compensating photographers, while doing so.
One facet of all this to consider is people’s love for celebrities. It isn’t just the music or movies that the audience responds to, it’s also the humans behind them—who they’re dating, what they’re wearing, the feuds they’re involved in, the way they interact with their fans.
I have to believe that Tilly Norwood will never be as interesting to people as Blake Lively or Olivia Wilde, and music fans will pick Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift over AI music-generators every time. As weird as it sounds, maybe parasocial relationships will be the thing that saves us all.
Not to be elitist about it, but when it comes to entrancing the masses I think we’ve been screwed for a long, long time. I’m just wondering why “they” think “they” need AI to do it. The old stuff has been working pretty well.
I was referring to the ease of being entertained, not the ease of the writing, or the ease of finding good writers. Those last two are relatively difficult. Some people are more than ready to be entertained by any damn thing. An arborist falling out of a tree for example - and landing on his still running chainsaw. My apologies to female arborists; I have known one who was quite excellent. Wasn’t going to fall out of any tree.
Record Labels could always put human faces to AI content so that they can market it. Meanwhile in the background they lay off all songwriters, producers, audio engineers, graphic designers, live musicians, etc etc because they use AI to do all that work
Idk i feel like peoples obsession with celebrities is already declining. Its all just about influencers and politicians now. I rarely hear people mention actors or musicians anymore
Celebrities, at least musicians and actors, actually make something for us to enjoy, something more reuseable than an insipid one time consumed video or post, repeated ad nauseum.
The difference really comes down to the "feed". That feed is the home of grifters and charlatans, and the death of music and movies as we knew them. Great actors and musicians will certainly exist, but their products wont live in this new ecosystem.
And while i never cared much for celebrity obsession, i did like what they made. That will be missed. An endless stream of crappy "content" is a paltry substitute.
As an audiophile, I have $$$ in my LPs, but I stream 80-90% of the time.
I would expect that AI films will dominate at 80-90% or more in 10-20 years, if not sooner. Human films will be for connoisseurs who watch as I listen to LPs now.
You're only talking about the medium here and equivocating it with the creators. Streaming is still streaming human music right now(mostly). You can't compare streaming vs LPs to AI films vs human films.
Andy, you hit the problem with analogies. They are imperfect. You have the right not to accept them.
Human films will likely have "special" funding; similar to how orchestras are funded perhaps. The issue implied concerns LOGISTICS. AI films don't need locations, etc. Hollywood EXTENDED will lose the ability to scout locations, contract with food providers, etc. Only a few "artistic" producers will remain or small logistical regions dedicated to human films. The analogy here would be the British high-performance auto industry of the 1990s.
I agree. Being a fellow audiophile, have you seen Dave Grohl's Sound City documentary? I feel that music having a premium recording quality in terms of using analog audio equipment is already past its heyday. But somehow with music, I don't see it as a completely bad thing. It allows for more democratization for smaller music creators.
AI films feel fundamentally different for some reason. Maybe its because I view films as a collaboration of hundreds of people whereas I see music as almost the sole output of a few individuals.
Andy, I sorta agree, but analog sweetness still amazes. Basically, it appears that when people record AAA, they put more skill into it than easy digital. As a result, the recordings are better. For example, Kevin Gray's work on Cohearent Records. Also, at far too high a price, 60 k$ turntables playing through 200 k$ of electronics can outperform digital recordings/playback. THIS IS RARE.
Paul & Friends... Thank you! Brilliant! And so sad it has to be a thing.
I belong to a couple of different find jobs sites relating to music composition, and one of the recurring jobs is where you create music, and submit so AI can evaluate it and use it to learn.
How stupid is that? You're teaching something to replace yourself in the future. Makes me shiver and shudder. I wonder if AI will ever learn fear. Maybe it will become fearful of the Creators. Perhaps James Cameron nailed it so many years ago.
Could be the case. Maybe we'll have a whole bunch of unexpected hybrid artists combining AI and real performers. If the big money is in production and writing, maybe the studios produce and write everything with AI and then use real musicians to make it more saleable.
Let us hope that people "hear" what McCartney is telling us. Unfortunately, the US has fallen under a tyranny that believes in "de-regulation" as a matter of religious faith. I am very much afraid that without a leash and muzzle, AI will make that bull in the china shop look like a positive development.
McCartney et al. are wrong. First of all, isn't he infringing John Cage's copyright on 4'33"? So who's lacking creativity here?
Second, these artists have an inflated sense of their own creativity. None of them would have been anything without the artists who came before them. If AI "steals the work of others," then humans do the same thing, in the same ways. Things influence and inspire us; they worm their way into our brains; we can't help but think of them and even pay homage to them deliberately when creating our own things. The creative process has always worked like this.
What's more, AI doesn't work apart from humans. It is still humans imagining what we want, thinking about how to get AI to represent that, and changing and refining it until we get it right. David Deutsch has spoken about how the artist's most important creative tool is the wastepaper basket. Artistry is not just about getting something down on paper but tossing the mistakes until reaching the idea they were striving for and knew was there to be found. Right now AI gushes with beautiful ideas, but it's still humans managing the wastepaper basket and directing it to get what we want.
You might be right when it comes to the Big Picture, but I’m unconvinced about how it will work out. I’m also only half convinced by Ted’s argument. However, as Joe Strummer said, “the future is unwritten.” I think it near impossible that AI will ever produce a Joe Strummer or a John Lennon or any other sort of original creative genius, even while acknowledging that they had their influences. We’ll just have more and more regurgitated slop - which is about the situation we’re already in. We’ll live in a world of utter boredom if you know your history and culture. This may even be the impetus for AI. Keep the masses incapacitated, moronic and satiated! Which of course is what a lot of mainstream media has done for decades. No doubt about it, most of us around here are outsiders. Once I was called “a chronic, caustic malcontent.” This was in the punk days. I took it as a compliment. I aim to stay that way.
This argument is absurd. Art requires artistry. Interpolation (shout out to Luxxury) and drawing upon the past are real things, for sure, but there is nothing skilful or even remotely comparable about writing a prompt and pressing a button. It may feel liberating and wonderful to people who aren't artists to see a full "song" reveal itself from a typed whim in under 5 minutes, but it is brazen, obnoxious, credit-stealing theft nonetheless.
I don't fault AI cultists for fighting their corner. But copywright law has always been utilitarian; it's not handed down from the heavens. Tech has outpaced the law, so now we have to push back -- HARD -- for the same of humankind. I'm sorry if newfound "artists" who are delighting in the outputs of machines trained on unfair use get their feelings hurt. That is nothing compared to people whose hard-won livelihoods are being yanked away by corpo swine who monetize and take credit whereit is not due.
Many strong statements made in your comment, but no actual reasoning supplied in support of them, nor any acknowledgment that I'd already preemptively answered some of them in my comment. But your claims do not even make sense on their own terms. If using AI to create a song to one's desired specifications is brazen credit-stealing theft, then who is properly entitled to the credit? If you can't even name somebody discrete and identifiable and your complaint boils down to the idea that every song previously recorded occupies 0.000000000000000000000000001% of the corpus of the AI's knowledge that it may or may not draw upon in any particular instance, then you have not established anybody entitled to "credit" nor described anything different from what humans do.
You disparage "artists" using AI to create things they like, but I urge you to listen to the slop created by humans up and down the popular charts and defend the majority of it as having any greater merit. Most of it has less.
Then you change the subject to issues of law and assume without defending that AIs are engaged in "unfair use." Nothing about it would qualify as unfair use under any traditional understanding of copyright law, which requires evidence that something original and protectible was actually copied, not merely used as an inspiration among trillions of other things. The copyright trolls who are trying to bend the law to their will on this point are basically just exploiting the technical cluelessness of the judiciary to do so. But you are correct that copyright law is not handed down from the heavens and can say whatever we want it to say. I cannot see a justification for changing it to say a work that infringes no copyright had it been created by a human would become a copyright infringement solely because it is not created by a human.
Most people don't know they're listening to "AI music". It's not new, either. "Drum machine". But if you show them music that's organic, "That doesn't sound right" is the response. https://youtu.be/CHxKeUzLtjM
I laugh now - the One song I actually got played on stations back in the 2010's (well ,a bit with a few others but it was my nicest song I think). I guess it might have been labeled 'Smooth Jazz' . I used a Drum machine. Sounded good ,worked well ,but an Agent/Label guy told me "Oh ,you can't use Drum machines in Jazz" /etc. "Oh Really"? What a laugh. Take a look now Mr. Expert ...
I suspect most people don’t care whether something is AI-generated as long as it entertains them. AI is all over social media. It's all over Substack, too. I see writers on Substack using AI-generated images for their stories. Other writers talk about using ChatGPT. I see YouTube ads with musicians promoting the use of AI to finish their tracks. No musicians or talent required. AI is replacing artists in every form of digital art.
Live music is the last refuge for musicians. Once hologram concerts become acceptable, real musicians will be a novelty. And as AI improves, it is likely no one will be able to tell what is real or fake. These are sad times for artists.
Damn right about the use of apparently AI-generated images on Substack!
"Once hologram concerts become acceptable ..." Ya, thanks Abba for pioneering on that wonderful development. The absolute Hunger & Lust for more Marches on
I heard KISS was planning it also. It is definitely coming.
And the local acts will be bringing portable screens and projectors with a human being the emcee.
Music Hologram DJs. The next big thing.
Well, they disappeared the thousands upon thousands of gigs out there for working musicians years ago so its only fair they are gonna lose their gigs too
AI is coming for us all.
Sad times for humanity!
Indeed.
You yourself have reported that AI company stocks have gone into the toilet. Don't you think the Hollywood executives would notice that, or are they still drunk and stoned like they always are?
AI stocks aren't actually in the toilet, as much as Ted and myself wish that were the case. These companies aren't betting on getting rich. They're betting on controlling the future.
Sure- but they can't do it if whoever financing them says, "That's it!", and pulls their money out from under them...
Love that you write this. And. A favorite? Please 🙏 remove the last sentence about 12year olds: “… Maybe a few twelve year olds and fools, …”. I have raised 6 children. They were not fools at 12 years old. I taught 12 year-olds and they were the opposite of gullible fools. I, myself as a 12year old, convinced our principal to make the shop teacher stop hitting us with his 12” ruler that he called the “rule of education”. Thank you!!
From an actual 15 year old “ you can’t use AI to make cover art for your music EP, it’s using stolen creativity to promote a creative work”. The kids are more switched on than the hundreds of wanna-be AI grifters who post on places like LinkedIn about how they used gen AI to replace creative workers
Boomer execs use chatgpt to write emails and docs and then complain that students are using it in college
Let the silence be deafening! Sing it out: AI has NO place in the arts. None. Let humans be inspired by humans, not data to be culled. The unions are trying, but personal experience suggests they won't be enough. The hope? Because AI is coming for everyone, the action that didn't happen for working musicians, extras, dancers, and VO's etc, will now.
It has no place anywhere!
Yes … it does have its uses in medicine, programming, research etc but must at least be kept out of the arts. It’s digital plagiarism. Human inspiration is the rarest of gifts and not meant to be denigrated by cost effective digital slop.
VMark, I take issue about AI's use in research: you have no way to assess the research AI calls upon to generate its answers. It may well be genuine research, but you don't know. Are you going to take a bot's word for it?
“AI” usage removes humans from their historically lived experiences.
There are no short cuts. There is only one way and it is the hard way.
It doesn't matter who makes it. Consumers of art have never cared who the artists are. They only care about how the art makes them feel. You and me, as perceptive consumers of art, are going to be unsatisfied by AI slop. The masses probably won't give a shit, and that's what these fuckin companies are banking on.
And in that respect are the consumers wrong? Or perhaps being so enamored with our feelings isnt such a good thing?
Idk, but you brought up a good point that im going to sit with for awhile
Yup. As long as there is a Beat & Pad droning & pounding disco 4/4 somewhere in the background ,the Lemmings won't care. It'll be just too darn "Uncomfortable" for them to even think or Talk about
Protest music exists… here’s something. Just happens to be played with real instruments by a bunch of nobodies…
https://youtu.be/LfZrvytsACg
oh i want to push this thread ahead.
best protest album for the modern era:
https://tpbl.bandcamp.com/album/americas-game
the whole album is gold... or at least with the blood of a union organizer in coal country.
This is really good. I have a deep affection for drums and electric guitars, but the measure of whether you have something or not is revealed by simply playing the song. These songs are wonderful. Thanks for sharing.
i agree to all of this, and you said it so well! pass it on :)
Wow. It’s just more and more powerful 🙏
I’m a musician. Unfortunately I see AI “product” improving by leaps and bounds (just my opinion and we all know the old saying). I think the general public will like the fake stuff and I don’t think they’ll hold the fakeness against it. I don’t know where this will end up. It’s a race to the bottom. I think at some point we may be absolutely delighted. We shall see.
I'm married to a musician and only an appreciator of the arts. A lot of what passes for music these days is just created noise on a loop, or stolen hooks. It's soulless. It all sounds the same, droning female voices or autotune.I think of all the live shows I've seen in my life from the 70's till now and it breaks my heart that young people don't experience that anymore. When I go to a live show there's a small contingent of younger ones but it's mostly older people. I hope the beauty and excitement of those days doesn't die with all of the older musicians and their fans. ( I am speaking of Rock and Pop, maybe it's different for other genres I don't follow?)
I fear you are 💯 correct.
I agree that the gatekeepers of media promote crap. But I live in Austin Texas and see a lot of unknown live bands and trust me there’s awesome new music and young and old musicians out there. I forget the statistic but there’s a jillion new songs every day so it would make sense.
Why absolutely delighted?
I have been making songs and co-creating with AI for about nine months so far. I have also been making playlists of AI songs for myself to listen to. My playlists include some of my AI created songs and some songs from other folks who have created songs using AI. I enjoy multiple genres of music so my playlist are quite varied. One particular playlist that I have made, I have called “Blown Away”. I named that playlist “Blown Away” for one particular reason - the songs are so good that I have been “blown away” by how good they actually are. Certainly, some AI songs are “slop“ but I would like to let you know that some AI songs are absolutely fabulous. Additionally, I have noticed that AI generated songs are getting better and better day by day and month by month. This is the future. Get used to it. If you are an artist, I suggest you jump in full steam ahead.
Why would I want to spend my hard earned money on music that someone didn't even compose, or a book that someone didn't write, or a painting (i'm a visual artist) that someone didn't spend any time learning to create? I know there are plenty of people (including you it seems) who don't see the problem in this tech.
I am not anti tech, and not even anti ai - as long as it's used for something useful (like it is able to detect cancer before humans can from scans for example). Art (be that writing, music or visual) isn't about the end product, it's about the process. Yes, the consumer of the product doesn't much care about how the end product got there necessarily, but as an artist what is even the point in making something if you hand over your voice (i mean creative voice/style) to a machine? Utterly empty and pointless.
Aside from the total soullessness of it, the fact a machine can't feel, or experience anything - doesn't the massive impact on the environment cause you to pause at all? Or do you not care as long as you get to have a bit of fun in the short term?
https://futurism.com/ai-data-center-water
Oh i never get used to the future. Im still listening to cds i bought 30 years ago, and have no intention of getting into streaming. Thats one example, but as a general rule i avoid the future.
But i think youre not wrong. It is what it is. I think music and movies are the least of our worries, and these arts will be unfortunate casualties.
Maybe ai music would blow me away. But im still being blown away by music from the past. Bc being blown away by music, for me anyway, is something like having a day that blows me away. Its a confluence of elements, none of which are new, and my brain is a part of this process. Gibberish ik, but it plays out over and over in my life. Being blown away is as much a mood, a state of my being, as it is the result of some other persons efforts.
After phones and social media ive come to realize people are shit, and they really do just want the easiest ways to feel good for a moment. Like monkeys jerking off in a cage.. yeah they enjoy themselves, but they cant see themselves, and they dont care anyway. So, let them jerk off, its none of my business. If thats what people want out of their lives, thats what theyll get.
I agree that AI has made some great stuff and is getting better very quickly. I do think artists though do need to think about being outsourced. Maybe become a plumber or whatnot that can’t be taken over by AI.
I think there will always be a market for human made music. Music comes from within us, and that wont go away. Maybe musicians wont be the gods they were in the last century, and thats probably a good thing. Now if we could knock doctors and lawyers(and actors!) down to size as well, we'd be getting somewhere.
Why absolutely delighted? Because we don’t know what might happen. Maybe AI can produce a highly credible and even better “new” Beatles album. Maybe it can invent or spur humans to create new genres. Maybe it can set up a new business paradigm that works for artists. I don’t think it will be good for artists because of who owns it, but in theory it could be. There’s just so much we don’t know.
Well i like your optimism, even if i dont share it. I cant remember the last time something new we do has delighted me.
But i might be a bit of a curmudgeon, idk
I doubt delight will be felt!😊
It's not just musicians and writers who are affected. Photographer's images are being scraped from the web and used to train AI image generation platforms, creating a huge amount of AI slop images and (for the most part) not compensating photographers, while doing so.
One facet of all this to consider is people’s love for celebrities. It isn’t just the music or movies that the audience responds to, it’s also the humans behind them—who they’re dating, what they’re wearing, the feuds they’re involved in, the way they interact with their fans.
I have to believe that Tilly Norwood will never be as interesting to people as Blake Lively or Olivia Wilde, and music fans will pick Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift over AI music-generators every time. As weird as it sounds, maybe parasocial relationships will be the thing that saves us all.
But . . . One day there may be feuds and affairs between the AI characters that will entrance the easily entertained.
No doubt. If they entrance the masses, we’re screwed.
Not to be elitist about it, but when it comes to entrancing the masses I think we’ve been screwed for a long, long time. I’m just wondering why “they” think “they” need AI to do it. The old stuff has been working pretty well.
I think it’s mainly money and control. Much cheaper to make and corporations will pay them to steer things in certain directions.
I pick a bone with "easily entertained". They could easily have writers just as good as we have now.
I was referring to the ease of being entertained, not the ease of the writing, or the ease of finding good writers. Those last two are relatively difficult. Some people are more than ready to be entertained by any damn thing. An arborist falling out of a tree for example - and landing on his still running chainsaw. My apologies to female arborists; I have known one who was quite excellent. Wasn’t going to fall out of any tree.
Record Labels could always put human faces to AI content so that they can market it. Meanwhile in the background they lay off all songwriters, producers, audio engineers, graphic designers, live musicians, etc etc because they use AI to do all that work
Very true.
Idk i feel like peoples obsession with celebrities is already declining. Its all just about influencers and politicians now. I rarely hear people mention actors or musicians anymore
"Its all just about influencers and politicians now."
Same thing. What is the difference now from Celebrities ?
Celebrities, at least musicians and actors, actually make something for us to enjoy, something more reuseable than an insipid one time consumed video or post, repeated ad nauseum.
The difference really comes down to the "feed". That feed is the home of grifters and charlatans, and the death of music and movies as we knew them. Great actors and musicians will certainly exist, but their products wont live in this new ecosystem.
And while i never cared much for celebrity obsession, i did like what they made. That will be missed. An endless stream of crappy "content" is a paltry substitute.
We can hope - but no doubt you use hearing protection in your line of work.
I think there’s still a lot of interest there, but you may be right that it’s waning.
As an audiophile, I have $$$ in my LPs, but I stream 80-90% of the time.
I would expect that AI films will dominate at 80-90% or more in 10-20 years, if not sooner. Human films will be for connoisseurs who watch as I listen to LPs now.
For children’s fables perhaps - but otherwise? No.
You're only talking about the medium here and equivocating it with the creators. Streaming is still streaming human music right now(mostly). You can't compare streaming vs LPs to AI films vs human films.
Andy, you hit the problem with analogies. They are imperfect. You have the right not to accept them.
Human films will likely have "special" funding; similar to how orchestras are funded perhaps. The issue implied concerns LOGISTICS. AI films don't need locations, etc. Hollywood EXTENDED will lose the ability to scout locations, contract with food providers, etc. Only a few "artistic" producers will remain or small logistical regions dedicated to human films. The analogy here would be the British high-performance auto industry of the 1990s.
I agree. Being a fellow audiophile, have you seen Dave Grohl's Sound City documentary? I feel that music having a premium recording quality in terms of using analog audio equipment is already past its heyday. But somehow with music, I don't see it as a completely bad thing. It allows for more democratization for smaller music creators.
AI films feel fundamentally different for some reason. Maybe its because I view films as a collaboration of hundreds of people whereas I see music as almost the sole output of a few individuals.
Andy, I sorta agree, but analog sweetness still amazes. Basically, it appears that when people record AAA, they put more skill into it than easy digital. As a result, the recordings are better. For example, Kevin Gray's work on Cohearent Records. Also, at far too high a price, 60 k$ turntables playing through 200 k$ of electronics can outperform digital recordings/playback. THIS IS RARE.
Paul & Friends... Thank you! Brilliant! And so sad it has to be a thing.
I belong to a couple of different find jobs sites relating to music composition, and one of the recurring jobs is where you create music, and submit so AI can evaluate it and use it to learn.
How stupid is that? You're teaching something to replace yourself in the future. Makes me shiver and shudder. I wonder if AI will ever learn fear. Maybe it will become fearful of the Creators. Perhaps James Cameron nailed it so many years ago.
Peace!
My sad bet is on the bots. So many people don't listen to music, they just have it on the background. I'm a musician, but that's what I see.
The people following Ted are the outliers. Sure there will be small studious and indies making cool stuff, but it will be hard to find.
but it will be hard to find
And so much better for that
Could be the case. Maybe we'll have a whole bunch of unexpected hybrid artists combining AI and real performers. If the big money is in production and writing, maybe the studios produce and write everything with AI and then use real musicians to make it more saleable.
Thomas Kinkade is the equivalent of AI. A lot of people like Thomas Kinkade. But MOMA and the Guggenhiem aren't threatened.
Let us hope that people "hear" what McCartney is telling us. Unfortunately, the US has fallen under a tyranny that believes in "de-regulation" as a matter of religious faith. I am very much afraid that without a leash and muzzle, AI will make that bull in the china shop look like a positive development.
McCartney et al. are wrong. First of all, isn't he infringing John Cage's copyright on 4'33"? So who's lacking creativity here?
Second, these artists have an inflated sense of their own creativity. None of them would have been anything without the artists who came before them. If AI "steals the work of others," then humans do the same thing, in the same ways. Things influence and inspire us; they worm their way into our brains; we can't help but think of them and even pay homage to them deliberately when creating our own things. The creative process has always worked like this.
What's more, AI doesn't work apart from humans. It is still humans imagining what we want, thinking about how to get AI to represent that, and changing and refining it until we get it right. David Deutsch has spoken about how the artist's most important creative tool is the wastepaper basket. Artistry is not just about getting something down on paper but tossing the mistakes until reaching the idea they were striving for and knew was there to be found. Right now AI gushes with beautiful ideas, but it's still humans managing the wastepaper basket and directing it to get what we want.
You might be right when it comes to the Big Picture, but I’m unconvinced about how it will work out. I’m also only half convinced by Ted’s argument. However, as Joe Strummer said, “the future is unwritten.” I think it near impossible that AI will ever produce a Joe Strummer or a John Lennon or any other sort of original creative genius, even while acknowledging that they had their influences. We’ll just have more and more regurgitated slop - which is about the situation we’re already in. We’ll live in a world of utter boredom if you know your history and culture. This may even be the impetus for AI. Keep the masses incapacitated, moronic and satiated! Which of course is what a lot of mainstream media has done for decades. No doubt about it, most of us around here are outsiders. Once I was called “a chronic, caustic malcontent.” This was in the punk days. I took it as a compliment. I aim to stay that way.
This argument is absurd. Art requires artistry. Interpolation (shout out to Luxxury) and drawing upon the past are real things, for sure, but there is nothing skilful or even remotely comparable about writing a prompt and pressing a button. It may feel liberating and wonderful to people who aren't artists to see a full "song" reveal itself from a typed whim in under 5 minutes, but it is brazen, obnoxious, credit-stealing theft nonetheless.
I don't fault AI cultists for fighting their corner. But copywright law has always been utilitarian; it's not handed down from the heavens. Tech has outpaced the law, so now we have to push back -- HARD -- for the same of humankind. I'm sorry if newfound "artists" who are delighting in the outputs of machines trained on unfair use get their feelings hurt. That is nothing compared to people whose hard-won livelihoods are being yanked away by corpo swine who monetize and take credit whereit is not due.
Many strong statements made in your comment, but no actual reasoning supplied in support of them, nor any acknowledgment that I'd already preemptively answered some of them in my comment. But your claims do not even make sense on their own terms. If using AI to create a song to one's desired specifications is brazen credit-stealing theft, then who is properly entitled to the credit? If you can't even name somebody discrete and identifiable and your complaint boils down to the idea that every song previously recorded occupies 0.000000000000000000000000001% of the corpus of the AI's knowledge that it may or may not draw upon in any particular instance, then you have not established anybody entitled to "credit" nor described anything different from what humans do.
You disparage "artists" using AI to create things they like, but I urge you to listen to the slop created by humans up and down the popular charts and defend the majority of it as having any greater merit. Most of it has less.
Then you change the subject to issues of law and assume without defending that AIs are engaged in "unfair use." Nothing about it would qualify as unfair use under any traditional understanding of copyright law, which requires evidence that something original and protectible was actually copied, not merely used as an inspiration among trillions of other things. The copyright trolls who are trying to bend the law to their will on this point are basically just exploiting the technical cluelessness of the judiciary to do so. But you are correct that copyright law is not handed down from the heavens and can say whatever we want it to say. I cannot see a justification for changing it to say a work that infringes no copyright had it been created by a human would become a copyright infringement solely because it is not created by a human.
Once again, you got that right KL.
I think your statement “merely used as an inspiration” is the crux of the matter. I emphatically disagree. This is not how the tech works.
You got that right KL.
Well it's true that Macca is not entirely innocent of plagiarism.
He blatantly ripped of Spinal Tap's 'Cups and Cakes' for his 2005 song 'English Tea'.
(Mind you, judging by their collaboration in the latest Tap film, the boys have obviously forgiven and forgotten about that).
You got that right KL.
If AI "steals the work of others," then humans do the same thing, in the same ways
A point artists love to ignore. Hard to find something *truly* original
There is no democracy in art. Joni Mitchell is not Joe Bloggs.
Most people don't know they're listening to "AI music". It's not new, either. "Drum machine". But if you show them music that's organic, "That doesn't sound right" is the response. https://youtu.be/CHxKeUzLtjM
I laugh now - the One song I actually got played on stations back in the 2010's (well ,a bit with a few others but it was my nicest song I think). I guess it might have been labeled 'Smooth Jazz' . I used a Drum machine. Sounded good ,worked well ,but an Agent/Label guy told me "Oh ,you can't use Drum machines in Jazz" /etc. "Oh Really"? What a laugh. Take a look now Mr. Expert ...