Comment by jameslk

AI writing, music, art is still extremely derivative. Unless that changes we will still need humans that provide the interesting aspects. If AI facilitates certain things the way that more powerful DAWs or raster graphics programs do then it's fundamentally no different

Natural beauty doesn't need a person on the other end to be appreciated, as one counterexample.

People generally listen to music because they enjoy it. Is it because somebody is on the other end? I mean it's possible, but I think just liking the song is just as much if not more important.

You pretty regularly see comments by people that say they enjoy a song until they find out it was generated. That tells me it's not about the music but about something they believe about generated music.

Why do you suggest that people generating music aren't listening to it?

I think there's a difference between music that people will cherish for decades to come, and music that will sell in the short-term. This isn't even me being an "old man yelling at cloud," you can look at what was charting in the 80s-90s and recognize some songs, but others just got lost to time. They were fine, but they weren't special.

AI music will fill the gap. The "song of the summer," the latest TikTok trend, and music that plays for department store ads, will be produced and distributed by labels, without the need of a particular artist whose image they have to worry about. How many times have labels, who invested a lot of time and money into artists, had to deal with the artist having an episode or scandal? AI eliminates that risk.

I think trying to avoid AI music will be like trying to avoid auto-tune, or digital instruments, or people mixing tracks in ways that are impossible to replicate with real-world instruments in real-time. It'll be common at first, harder later, and impossible/silly in the future.

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If nothing else, to have a shared experience with other people. A lot of the value for people is derived from the fact that they can talk about the same song with someone else. If it's all individualized you lose that.

Also assumes all AI music will have perfect execution and there is no distinction between any of it outside of personal preference, otherwise there is a reason to pay to listen to something else that is higher quality than what you can make

And, depending on why you listen to music your relationship with AI generated music will probably shift. If it's a quiet day and I want to listen to something deeply I will reject anything AI generated as I want art that someone thought was important... but if I'm just craving background noise while I work then I care a lot less.

We're edging up on a big classical question: "What is art without meaning?"

Much of the world believed in geocentrism for a very long time, yet we've known better for a long time now. Currently, this "Ptolemaic" idea of human intelligence being the center of everything sounds similar. What if human intelligence is not at the center? What if other forms, such as AI, emerge as the new "center"?

That's a very gatekeepy standard for something which has for all of history been a subjective thing. What I think will fall by the wayside are dogmatic takes like these.

If I gen up then curate a bunch of tracks into a concept album, why is that not art?

I think you're conflating two things: fictional characters/personas, and attributing "music" to them.

People go wild for characters all the time, whether they be Batman, Pikachu, Colombo, Dora the Explorer, whatever -- have you ever seen Nyango Star drumming? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UYgORr5Qhg -- not to mention the entire VTuber scene, where people build the same weird parasocial relationships as other YouTubers do, but hiding behing an animated avatar and voice changer.

Hatsune is an odd one in that she's a character whose "voice" is a set of parameters for a vocal VST (Vocaloid) that you can plug into your DAW and have a synthesized singer along with your synthesized piano, drums, guitar, etc. But for whatever reason, the Japanese loved the character, so they rolled with it and you can now make 3D videos with the character as well as having her singing.

More to the point, the Gorillaz are a full touring band of VTubers, even though the people behind the animated masks are themselves pretty famous already. They have fans, including deranged ones that can't seem to separate the fictional cartoon characters from real people and imagine themselves as Murdoc's wife.

This goes back a long way, I was thinking Josie and the Pussycats, but Wikipedia reminds me that Alvin and the Chipmunks is probably the first.

It also makes me think of ABBA and their "ABBA experience", where they've "digitized" themselves. What it really is is wish-fulfilment and nostalgia; their fans, themselves in their 60s/70s, are thinking of their youth 50 years ago, and the actual members of ABBA also look 70 and not 20 anymore. So they've made a virtual replica of themselves from when they were in their prime, and you can go and dance to them if you want, while the real ABBA members water their garden and feed their cats at home.

Agreed, and it matters that even the most vapid pop star isn't just a product of our collective (or individual) desires. They're a real person existing for their own sake, and not just for our sake, no matter how much they cater to us.

Yes but there will be AI personalities in the near future too that I predict will be just as popular as real humans. I don't think people care too much if a personality it carbon based or silicon based. it'll be us old farts that'll be the ones telling the AI to get off our lawns.

I replied earlier to the parent and meant this comment. I don't think people care too much if a personality is AI or not. we'll have pop stars that are AI, there will be actors that are AI with all the same fanbase that humans have today.