[bambinella]

Well, I create and know a fair bit about the history of music technology. Self playing pianos, for instance, allowed composers to write pieces with new complexities that would be physically impossible to play. Drum machines opened up for new types of music in the 1980s that would have been very unnatural for a physical drummer. In general, innovations in music come as consequences of technological advances and you cannot predict in advance how composers/musicians utilize these tools. The same is true for folk and classical music. The tempered scale, piano, various types of viola-like folk instruments etc etc. AI-generators is just a new tool.

I have used Music AI for what you describe, by uploading a track I have made myself and use diffusion on it with various genres, although I don't think that is the most interesting use case for Music AI.

Fusion is the most interesting use case IMHO.

[cowboylowrez]

I think many folks making the "music technology" argument tend to blur things so that human composition is reduced to "just another dial, just another new tech aid for music", "get off my lawn" etc. But its interesting to note that generative AI is unique in that it needs massive amounts of music that has already been produced to train on. Its a very unique development with some interesting questions once you sharpen the picture a bit.

[bambinella]

Let's not forget that extraordinary musical talent tends to be the result of MASSIVE exposure to music as a toddler. It isn't entirely a question of DNA or effort. They start by emulating what they hear, over time they might evolve their own style, or they may not. In other words, you are less likely to become an extraordinary musical talent if you weren't saturated with music before you started going to school. Nobody finds it problematic when a musical star is performing way beyond their age, even though he/she essentially is engaging in deliberate mimicry to a much larger extent than an AI usually would be.

Are you saying that it is wrong for a machine to learn? Even if it was, it is the massive amount it is based on that makes it less problematic, as that makes room for building abstracted knowledge.