Comment by unleaded
3 hours ago
It's easy to apply the same pattern of "people hated it, then liked it" but I think something's different about AI. I think a lot of the kneejerk reactions are subconscious but I don't think that means they're unfounded or invalid, they just haven't articulated the reason yet.
When AI image generation was a thing that hobbyists were messing around with (before it became good sometime in 2023) a lot of the creative-type people that abhor AI today were interested in it. Same thing with LLMs and stuff like AI Dungeon. ( I don't think AI music generation had a similar hobbyist era but not sure. )
I think the main thing that changed was how big and commercial it became. There's nothing counter-cultural about AI anymore, it's become the polar opposite. Nobody was making billions selling synthesizers & convincing investors it would replace 99% of musicians.
FL Studio was absolutely a massive commercial success. I mean, sure, nothing compared to AI, but in the music community bubble, it was enormous - and still is. It did what AI is doing today - it made a very expensive and time consuming process before (buy a thousand dollar guitar or other expensive instrument or synthesizer, rent a studio, get a producer, blah blah, etc) extremely cheap. This then led immediately to complaints - why is it that all music made with FL Studio so lame?
If we are going to say that the knee-jerk reaction to AI is somehow different I'd be curious to know what the difference is.