Comment by giancarlostoro
18 hours ago
"Slob" / "slop" is thrown around so much I don't take anyone seriously who drops that word unless the output matches the commentary. There's definitely a lot of trash AI stuff out there don't get me wrong, but there's also insanely high quality AI generated things out there. Hell, I've sent people songs made in Suno, and they were surprised to learn that those were AI generated. If you open suno and type in "90s jazz song" then yeah, you're likely going to get a bit of generic AI slop. If you get into specifics, voice style, instrument types, how they're played, which chords, etc. You can get some insanely high quality music. Not only that but Suno has a whole DAW style extension to it they call Suno Studio which is very powerful, you can get AI stems, you can add your own voice.
Someone could get studio quality tracks for $10 a month, and add their own vocals and have a high quality sounding song. Is it slop if you pour hours of work into it tweaking every detail? At that point using a DAW is slop then (which I'm sure some people hate music made that way, but a lot of music is made this way).
Thing is, did it take effort and creativity to make it? I suppose you could argue that fine-tuning a prompt takes effort, creativity and knowledge, but I argue against that that it's only a fraction of what it takes to make real music.
If it didn't take effort to make it, if you can repeat it a hundred times in a week, it's slop. It's a good descriptor, even if to an untrained ear it's convincing.
I've also seen people using the term "slop" for low quality human-generated content (lowbrow movies etc)
It's a cultural affectation like attaching -maxxing to any adjective.
I smile when I come across the term 'qualityslop', which is an oxymoronic term to indicate very good human content.
https://i.redd.it/uvgtw725asfg1.jpeg
I don't mind it, because there already was a lot of slop before AI, which a lot of people seem to forget. But that's also because they weren't the consumers / target audience so it's off their radar.
This is my other problem, people calling things that aren't even AI as "AI slop" which cracks me up but is also concerning.
Now that AI is here, why read Hacker News comments? I bet you can generate quality content with AI! Do we even need to write anymore?
I’ve been thinking the same thing about AI artwork (as opposed to “chat pls make me a funny picture” and seeing what comes out, although there’s some increasingly interesting things coming out of that approach). There’s often an insane amount of work going into the guts of the image generation pipeline. Sure, it’s not pencil-on-paper drawing things but to me, art is about creating and exploring. All the same vitriol was directed toward cameras, audio synthesisers, 3D rendering, Photoshop, digital cameras, etc. The hate is not about the technique, it’s about someone else getting the same results “easier” with a different workflow.
What? Those things were absolutely not criticized in the same way. Most of the time they weren't criticized at all lol.
The problem isn't about it being "easier", it's about people who want the praise and attention of being a maker but don't want to put any thought or effort into it. They have no thoughts and nothing to say and what they generate reflects that.
I just don't get it. Music isn't just what comes out of the speaker. There are artists, with lives and influences behind the music. There is personal expression in the lyrics. Even when the artist chooses to remain anonymous, or they choose to not have lyrics at all, there is still something personal behind it. A DAW is just a tool, and it's a tool that can be used badly, for example, over produced metal with quantized and sample replaced drums. Sure, AI can be a tool for music production just like a DAW can, but when it crosses the line into, lets call it "vibe-produced" music, it is indeed slop, and deserves to be referred to as such.
Yeah this is how I feel. People who like AI music seem to be a same people who would just throw on random "deep work" or "lofi" youtube playlists and let them run all day. That has never appealed to me. I like to learn about the artists and history.
> There is personal expression in the lyrics.
Sometimes there is. Sometimes it's just made up shit with no real backing in the same way a lot of stories told in comedy routines are. Not all of it is genuine expression.
I love music and I frequently go to live shows, so the bar for me has kind of become "Can I go see this artist live, OR is it so good that I don't care that I can't?" If it passes that, I'll listen. I've found one AI generated song that has made it onto my top 100 favorite songs I've ever heard.
The thing that really shits me with AI music is when it outputs default ChatGPT sounding lyrics. There's certain tells and boy do they give me the ick.
> outputs default ChatGPT sounding lyrics
Aren’t you curious how a modern solar panel works so well with no moving parts?
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> Sometimes there is. Sometimes it's just made up shit with no real backing in the same way a lot of stories told in comedy routines are. Not all of it is genuine expression.
I don't necessarily agree. Read the lyrics to the "irony is a dead scene" EP by the Dillinger Escape Plan and Mike Patton. It's nonsense. Still genuine expression.
Most Carpenter Brut songs don't even have lyrics and there is endless expression there. I know that I consume music in a very different way than most people, and that's probably why I have such a strong opinion here.