On AI Music Generators, Grift, and The Generic Apocalypse
The Great Wall of China is built mostly out of stone,
but there are some humans in it.
AI music generators are built mostly out of humans,
but there is some code around the corpses.
As a professional musician/composer with decades of experience, accolades & awards, and a genuine love of music, it’s my opinion that AI music generators (AMG) are NOT the creative prison-break tools they are being sold as, but actually a new prison; one where the food is worse than bland, nothing is special or sacrosanct, the sentence to be served interminable, and instead of valuations on goods/products being tied to the real world, we’re wondering if jerking off the guards or stabbing someone in the shower is a fair price for some cigaraettes or toothpaste.
What’s it built with?
One problem all of AI is grappling with is their “training sets” - the corpus of material they use to train their programmable intelligence engines with, and if it contains copywritten material. [it most definitely does]
Up until now, if I recorded a song that was basically Marvin Gaye, and released it under my own name for sale, I would be called to task by the law (not least by the crowds). The new AMG’s most definitely use stolen copywritten material to build their tools, as is evidenced with manuscript paper receipts on Suno from Ed Newton-Rex in his thread and then full article for Music Biz World.
He cites many examples and it’s worth a dive into it, but it’s safe to say from the evasive non-answering of my and many others persistent questioning to these companies that they are not keen on answering the question. Or they answer in a loose way; the data is “publically available.”
People now have AI tools to create high-quality content that can't help but violate copyright. A new question is; will the AI companies be held liable, or will they shunt off the lawsuits to all the people that generated IP-laden music. If I was running one of these companies, I know who I would like to hold the accountability/illegal-shit bag.
We ALL could've "cut corners" and injected IP through our projects/programs, but didn't, not just because "laws" but respect & acceptance to do the hard work of thinking/dreaming on our own steam. That determination is deflating and the value of the “hard work” of creating music/art/anything is being questioned by the ubiquity of quick-fire AMG tools. Why would I pay someone more to get something that might be slightly better than what I can easily create myself?
Here, the invisible hand of conventional economic wisdom diddles the artisan state, and brings the promise of cost reduction and revenue increase; the only two things that matter. And with it, a new type of limitless supply; the question is, besides companies seeking to reduce costs and increase profit, who is demanding this stuff?
Who’s asking for AMG?
One of the purported missions around these AI-art tools is that it frees all the “regular people” or non-artists, to crank out quality stuff in seconds; just like a real artist without all that artist!
Here there are some interesting contradictions; AI-types decry the elitism in art, getting near a eugenics-style argument mixed with a communist/classist tinge that the proletariat have not been privilieged to have been born with gifts to create.
Now with AI, they can….join the elite, burn it down, give the tools of production to the people, but also, don’t steal THEIR source code or prompts, and pay them money to use the thing they built off stolen shit and build their valuation to investors.
Most bewildering to me is the idea that everyone that listens to music or goes to see live shows are just HANKERING to make music and perform it live.
One of the co-founders of Suno.ai is hoping to bring the level of music fans, of which there are millions, and music creators, of which there are less, to parity.
I don’t doubt that we all dream of being on stage and rocking out; indeed its one dream I had when I was 5 and may have laid the trajectory of pursuing a 30 year career in music/creativity. But to say that this dream is directly transferable to a market-place supply/demand rubric for these tools, and that once everyone can crank out music that’s just as good as any legend in music, they will value music more and want more of it, is stupid.
If everyone can compose/perform hit songs with AI, then why would ANYONE go see live music or buy albums? For real - if the imbalance between musicians and fans finally helps all those fans become musicians themselves, then wtf is special about any of it?
What are we using AGM for?
This whole-song prompt suggestion from Udio, the latest AMG, is ridiculous;
We already have plenty of existing songs that get to this feeling; “Wonderwall” by Oasis, “All-Star” by Smashmouth, “Legend Has It” by Run The Jewels, “Another Brick In The Wall” by Pink Floyd, “Getting Jiggy With It” by Will Smith, “Bad” by Micahel Jackson, “Working 9-5” by Dolly Parton and ANY OTHER SONG that directly/indirectly connects with your experience and first-day feelings could fit right in here; building you up, pumping your ego, hearkening to your memories of the first exposure to the songs and the people you experienced it with, spurning your choices, and sparking your soul.
Saying an AMG song you spit out in seconds, or prompted into glory after minutes of “hard work”, will have the same lasting effect on you is IGNORANT of how memories and music work in our brains and on our bodies.
It’s also a nod to the disposability of these creations; fun for a lark, not fit for life, and definitely not strong enough to support shared collective consciousness/experience. We all know how “Eye of The Tiger” makes us feel, but your custom built AMG song about going to work on spreadsheets for 8 hours lacks the vital velcro that is already merged by pop music and populations that enjoy them as one.
The Generic Apocalypse is Hard-Coded
Classification is a big thing in data science. But what has happened to the classification of music as it’s been democratized through consumer-facing products like Spotify, is that there is a lack of tacit knowledge being applied to the levels of discernment that classify music in all it’s various ways; orchestration, genre, tempos, time sigs, production style. This has a drastic effect on the music community and an indirect adulteration of authenticity for the audiences.
If someone makes a massively popular play list of “Classic Rock” on Spotify, and Pearl Jam or Nirvana (grunge) or Metallica (heavy metal) is in that; everyone now thinks those bands are indicative of classic rock. Classic hip-hop playlist with Eminem (garbage) or Snoop (gangster) on it? A classical playlist with Bach or Vivaldi (both Baroque)? I could go on, but you get the point.
This may not seem like a big deal, but it would be if someone indiscriminately scrapped all these classifications and fed them into their AMG - you wouldn’t be able to prompt your way to anything approaching actual reality. But methinks they don’t really care. But that’s because data & code are interchangeable to data pros.
This tweet from the very smart Mike Taylor gets directly at the indifference in AI/AMG creators; they don’t separate the writing of music from the performance of it, both previously viable pathways to income for artists. This point is reinforced from the brilliant Jill Nephew;
So with this scale of fraud, this indeterminate use cases, the unknown impacts on collective consciousness, and the flattening and commoditization of an art form that is already fighting for proper valuation, it is my thought that AMG is not a revolution but a revolting and disgusting attempt by economic-driven shit birds to extract the best of humanity and then charge us for the gracious access to continue it’s devolution.
Do you want human-composed music for your next project?
Then consider giving some love to your local, friendly, massively creative composers; maybe start with me and the crew at Audio Content Lab; 100% human-generated, no legal ramifications, built with hands meant for ears.