If this was an actual person performing, I would have smiled all the way to the end. Since this is AI-generated, I feel no emotion towards this, and just listened for a few seconds. It's technically interesting.
Seriously, the "creatives are screwed" narrative has fallen apart for me because the stuff made in AI has proven to be worthless.
Why is it worthless? Because the point of art was to communicate or convey something with other people and the AI has no idea because its not human.
A few words or a sequence of sounds can be enough to transfer great deal of feeling and meaning because we run about the same software and as a result we can generate the same output with a little bit of input. This is all done by looking inside and externalise it, that is someone feels something and makes a song from it and that song can be used to regenerate feelings in other people.
The current AI tech doesn't have a way to do that because doesn't have a way to look inside. At best, it can imitate things within some context but the output doesn't have any meaning at all. The most successful AI content was maybe the "Pope wearing Balenciaga" image but that wasn't because the AI thought it mean something but because someone looked inside and thought this can be interesting.
So no, AI isn't taking over the creative process. AI is taking over the mechanical part of it only, that is the part where the artist traditionally had to master a method of production or an instrument.
The AI evangelists keep pushing short videos or drawings that look "professional" and claiming that Hollywood is done, artists are screwed etc but those are worthless outside of the context that AI made it. No one is interested in paying or even spending time to consume this content, its extremely dull.
Get a room in any hotel run by one of the large chains - Accor, Hilton, IHG...
On the wall, you will find an Obligatory Art. Sometimes it's just a canvas with 3-4 stripes of paint: you can imagine a purely mechanical process for churning these out; a conveyor belt with brushes hanging over it, perhaps. Other times it's a little more creative. Each room is slightly different. You can also sometimes see these in cheap home decor shops. It may not be much, but it does the job - it really does make the space more pleasant than just blank walls would be.
There are a lot of rooms to fill. Someone has to make all these. It may not be all that creative, but it sure beats working in, say, a produce packing plant. Meanwhile, it's hard to make a living in art - some are wildly successful, yes, but the tip of that pyramid is very small and getting there takes as much luck as skill; and there are a lot of people further down the pyramid who also need to eat while waiting for their big break.
Those are the jobs at risk from generative AI in its current state.
I fully agree, but that’s not what all music is.
Most commercial music is pure craft created by expensive professionals that the music corporations would be very happy to swap with expendables and cheap AI models.
It boils down to the economic model and the financial and political choices like in every creative industry.
Regarding potential displacement, I would apply the stock photography theory to any creative industry.
Ask yourself: is what I do in my creative endeavor the equivalent of stock content for the visual imaging industry?
If the answer is yes, you might want to future proof your craft.
If the answer is no (as in, your art is more than a simple soulless piece of easily digested and quantity-oriented content) then you will be fine in the long run after the current unsustainable hype cycle dies out.
> Because the point of art was to communicate or convey something with other people and the AI has no idea because its not human.
This is mixing up art with the art industry. Artists will struggle just like copywriters are struggling after the arrival of LLMs. Not everything in the art industry is trying to break new artistic ground or communicate some deep emotion to the listsener. For much of the industry, "good enough" will suffice if it's 10x cheaper.
It will depend on the person, but I think generally speaking, a song is but one aspect of an artist / the art of music; if you're a mass consumer that just has something playing in the background, it probably doesn't make a jot of difference (consider also "muzak" / elevator music), but if you're more of an active listener you may look into and enjoy the story behind the music and the artist as well.
Personally I think knowing the story behind music makes it better. The music isn't to everyone's taste, but for example Devin Townsend's wiki page / story is a trip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devin_Townsend
I think we kind of already have the answer to this one. Commercial music that use computers to enhance the song or singer is already prevalent. Even straight AI assisted track generation probably already happens. People don't use to mind it for as long as they don't know. Once they do, many still don't care but some feel betrayed and think honesty and humanity is part of the art. I haven't heard of a single person who refuse to enjoy songs they don't know how they were produced, though, and I strongly doubt the parent would too.
Would you refuse to enjoy food if it didn't come from a reputable source? Of course you would. You don't just eat shit at random.
If a friend recited a poem, would it matter to do if they read it off the Internet or composed it themselves? Of course it would.
If someone tells you they love you, does it matter if they are a robot or an honest human or a con-artist human catfishing you? YES, THAT MATTERS TO YOU. Yes you "refuse to enjoy" things that have suspicious sources.
That's a poignant question, but with an easy answer: If I didn't know, I'd probably enjoy it up to its imperfections. But I'd feel defrauded once I discovered.
Like so many people felt defrauded when they discovered that the Milli Vanilli leads didn't actually sing, and that wasn't even AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli
Edit: I might add that I already suspect any illustration that even superficially looks it might have been generated by AI. This has ruined the enjoyment of so many people's artwork whose style has been co-opted by AI.
This is the thing. Live performance is always gonna be different than something from pre-recorded or AI generated. That's why music lovers like to go to live concerts and performances.
Because the cause of a person singing is their mental states (desire, emotion, intention, etc.) and the cause of this generation of audio is that the words are associated with some backcatalogue of previous music.
Listening to songs, as speaking with people, is in large part about enjoying the causes of the song rather than the mere variations in pitch.
Beethoven's 5th even, purely instrumental, is enjoyable because of how the composer is clearly playing with you.
To generate pitch variations identical to beethovens fifth makes this an illusion, one hard to sustain if you know its an illusion. It isnt an illusion in the case of the 5th itself: beethoven really had those desires.
For me all art I enjoy has some aspect of connection to someone that's sharing my human experience.
If we get AGI, I could imagine feeling something towards the art such an entity creates, since a big part of the human experience that we would probably share with an AGI is inescapable death.
But for today's "AI" generated music, I feel the same towards it as I would towards the random step function output of a given tool in Ableton - sounds cool, now what can we do with that to make it into music?
Art is primarily a means for one human to convey emotions to another human, but for something to be art, the artist must also have invested some skill/effort into the artwork(1).
AI-generated art may have a bit of the former (assuming the human had enough control over the details of the final output), but has practically none of the latter.
Hence, AI-generated output is not art. But art can be produced using AI tools somewhere in the process.
(1) When I look at art produced by one of those "artists" that commission the actual work to someone else, it's similar (I don't recognize the "artist" as the human I'm connecting to, ideas are a dime a dozen). However, it's still art because I can connect with the anonymous human which actually implemented it.
In reality it will not be exploited like that by the big players. It will be used to create hits for even cheaper and then the labels will be looking for a puppet singer that will perform for the audience.
At first it will be kept secret, and then as it spread more and more among the industry, it will be more or less stated, but by that point people will be already accustomed.
While I find the current pervasiveness of AI articles¹, artwork, & code³, irritating, especially when it claims to be something else², that is different because they often try to appear not AI generated, or are presented by others as not being.
This states from the outset that it is using AI tools, at which point I become more understanding. Someone had an idea, but lacked the singing voice or a friend with a singing voice & free time, so used a tool to fill the gap. This is better, at very least more honest, use of tech as a tool than, for instance, autotune on studio albums, IMO.
If you _really_ want it with a real human voice, perhaps contact some of the many performers on social media to suggest it might be an amusing way to generate some content to monetise. Or, of course, sing it yourself!
--
[1] I've gone from clicking very few of facebook's “recommend for you” articles to clicking absolutely none of them – the number that are, or are indistinguishable from, hallucinations from an LLM that doesn't understand what is actually being written about, already dwarfs things that are worth reading. SciFi TV/film/book reviews and essays seem to be particularly affected, with “local” news links not far behind.
[2] “you won't believe this isn't AI generated!” — no, I won't, because it quite obviously is. I don't know whether to be insulted that you think just saying that will convince me otherwise or sad for the state of humanity that many do seem fooled.
[3] Too many people seem to think that slapping code out of copilot into a stackoverflow answer without nothing to check it for correctness in any way is acceptable, and before that was possible there was already too much bad (sometimes working but blatantly insecure) code out there that people were blindly copying. And that is before the potential licensing & moral issues that mean I have not yet been convinced to use anything like copilot myself, but I'm getting far off-topic here…
Art is like a lossy compression algorithm. If there is a soul of any form the only reason you think you're observing it in human-produced art is because your decompression algorithm is adding it.
While I don't disagree there's a "human touch" to art, I'm not convinced it can't be synthesized to some degree. It may not be innovative, but I think since AI is extrapolating from learned data, it can at least mimic the current pop culture.
mrtksn|1 year ago
Why is it worthless? Because the point of art was to communicate or convey something with other people and the AI has no idea because its not human.
A few words or a sequence of sounds can be enough to transfer great deal of feeling and meaning because we run about the same software and as a result we can generate the same output with a little bit of input. This is all done by looking inside and externalise it, that is someone feels something and makes a song from it and that song can be used to regenerate feelings in other people.
The current AI tech doesn't have a way to do that because doesn't have a way to look inside. At best, it can imitate things within some context but the output doesn't have any meaning at all. The most successful AI content was maybe the "Pope wearing Balenciaga" image but that wasn't because the AI thought it mean something but because someone looked inside and thought this can be interesting.
So no, AI isn't taking over the creative process. AI is taking over the mechanical part of it only, that is the part where the artist traditionally had to master a method of production or an instrument.
The AI evangelists keep pushing short videos or drawings that look "professional" and claiming that Hollywood is done, artists are screwed etc but those are worthless outside of the context that AI made it. No one is interested in paying or even spending time to consume this content, its extremely dull.
tsukikage|1 year ago
On the wall, you will find an Obligatory Art. Sometimes it's just a canvas with 3-4 stripes of paint: you can imagine a purely mechanical process for churning these out; a conveyor belt with brushes hanging over it, perhaps. Other times it's a little more creative. Each room is slightly different. You can also sometimes see these in cheap home decor shops. It may not be much, but it does the job - it really does make the space more pleasant than just blank walls would be.
There are a lot of rooms to fill. Someone has to make all these. It may not be all that creative, but it sure beats working in, say, a produce packing plant. Meanwhile, it's hard to make a living in art - some are wildly successful, yes, but the tip of that pyramid is very small and getting there takes as much luck as skill; and there are a lot of people further down the pyramid who also need to eat while waiting for their big break.
Those are the jobs at risk from generative AI in its current state.
camillomiller|1 year ago
It boils down to the economic model and the financial and political choices like in every creative industry.
Regarding potential displacement, I would apply the stock photography theory to any creative industry. Ask yourself: is what I do in my creative endeavor the equivalent of stock content for the visual imaging industry? If the answer is yes, you might want to future proof your craft. If the answer is no (as in, your art is more than a simple soulless piece of easily digested and quantity-oriented content) then you will be fine in the long run after the current unsustainable hype cycle dies out.
hackerlight|1 year ago
This is mixing up art with the art industry. Artists will struggle just like copywriters are struggling after the arrival of LLMs. Not everything in the art industry is trying to break new artistic ground or communicate some deep emotion to the listsener. For much of the industry, "good enough" will suffice if it's 10x cheaper.
tux1968|1 year ago
Cthulhu_|1 year ago
Personally I think knowing the story behind music makes it better. The music isn't to everyone's taste, but for example Devin Townsend's wiki page / story is a trip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devin_Townsend
jug|1 year ago
satisfice|1 year ago
If a friend recited a poem, would it matter to do if they read it off the Internet or composed it themselves? Of course it would.
If someone tells you they love you, does it matter if they are a robot or an honest human or a con-artist human catfishing you? YES, THAT MATTERS TO YOU. Yes you "refuse to enjoy" things that have suspicious sources.
CrLf|1 year ago
Like so many people felt defrauded when they discovered that the Milli Vanilli leads didn't actually sing, and that wasn't even AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli
Edit: I might add that I already suspect any illustration that even superficially looks it might have been generated by AI. This has ruined the enjoyment of so many people's artwork whose style has been co-opted by AI.
vmfunction|1 year ago
im3w1l|1 year ago
comboy|1 year ago
Shrezzing|1 year ago
This song sounds like a disturbing uncanny-valley rendition of a slow Phoebe Bridges song performed by Taylor Swift using a broken auto tuner.
While I think it's technically impressive that this exists at all, I think this tune is still at the stage of "Pope in a puffer jacket".
weregiraffe|1 year ago
matsemann|1 year ago
Someone making a "proper" song where they just sang these words would be quite boring, then I'd rather spend my time checking out other music.
jnsaff2|1 year ago
Why does this being computer generated ruin it for you?
Auto-tune has been around since 1997 so it's not like computers have not been a big part of a lot of music we hear every day.
mjburgess|1 year ago
Listening to songs, as speaking with people, is in large part about enjoying the causes of the song rather than the mere variations in pitch.
Beethoven's 5th even, purely instrumental, is enjoyable because of how the composer is clearly playing with you.
To generate pitch variations identical to beethovens fifth makes this an illusion, one hard to sustain if you know its an illusion. It isnt an illusion in the case of the 5th itself: beethoven really had those desires.
komali2|1 year ago
If we get AGI, I could imagine feeling something towards the art such an entity creates, since a big part of the human experience that we would probably share with an AGI is inescapable death.
But for today's "AI" generated music, I feel the same towards it as I would towards the random step function output of a given tool in Ableton - sounds cool, now what can we do with that to make it into music?
CrLf|1 year ago
AI-generated art may have a bit of the former (assuming the human had enough control over the details of the final output), but has practically none of the latter.
Hence, AI-generated output is not art. But art can be produced using AI tools somewhere in the process.
(1) When I look at art produced by one of those "artists" that commission the actual work to someone else, it's similar (I don't recognize the "artist" as the human I'm connecting to, ideas are a dime a dozen). However, it's still art because I can connect with the anonymous human which actually implemented it.
KolmogorovComp|1 year ago
At first it will be kept secret, and then as it spread more and more among the industry, it will be more or less stated, but by that point people will be already accustomed.
dspillett|1 year ago
This states from the outset that it is using AI tools, at which point I become more understanding. Someone had an idea, but lacked the singing voice or a friend with a singing voice & free time, so used a tool to fill the gap. This is better, at very least more honest, use of tech as a tool than, for instance, autotune on studio albums, IMO.
If you _really_ want it with a real human voice, perhaps contact some of the many performers on social media to suggest it might be an amusing way to generate some content to monetise. Or, of course, sing it yourself!
--
[1] I've gone from clicking very few of facebook's “recommend for you” articles to clicking absolutely none of them – the number that are, or are indistinguishable from, hallucinations from an LLM that doesn't understand what is actually being written about, already dwarfs things that are worth reading. SciFi TV/film/book reviews and essays seem to be particularly affected, with “local” news links not far behind.
[2] “you won't believe this isn't AI generated!” — no, I won't, because it quite obviously is. I don't know whether to be insulted that you think just saying that will convince me otherwise or sad for the state of humanity that many do seem fooled.
[3] Too many people seem to think that slapping code out of copilot into a stackoverflow answer without nothing to check it for correctness in any way is acceptable, and before that was possible there was already too much bad (sometimes working but blatantly insecure) code out there that people were blindly copying. And that is before the potential licensing & moral issues that mean I have not yet been convinced to use anything like copilot myself, but I'm getting far off-topic here…
HeartStrings|1 year ago
rootlocus|1 year ago
While I don't disagree there's a "human touch" to art, I'm not convinced it can't be synthesized to some degree. It may not be innovative, but I think since AI is extrapolating from learned data, it can at least mimic the current pop culture.