First it came for the writers, then it came for the artists, and now it has come for the musicians. The time has come to discuss AI generated music on Fresh on the Net (FOTN).
You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve been thinking about this a lot; I’m not just knee-jerking my fists into a keyboard and hitting ‘publish’. What I hope follows is a balanced assessment of our current situation, and a philosophical discussion of where we go from here. What I would like is for you to try your best to understand the perspectives of others, and to submit your thoughts in the comments below.
“There is always something people fear musically…DJs who felt unless it was vinyl then the art of DJing would be lost and now…the scene is flourishing… I think with the right parameters in place this could be an exciting time” DIRTY FREUD (artist and FOTN Eclectic Picks curator)
We’ve had AI generated music submitted to the FOTN inbox for a while now. It has even made the Listening Post several times. For all I know, loads of the music in our FOTN inbox is AI generated, and I only notice glaring examples.
To be clear, I’m not talking about AI mastered music, or music incorporating ideas taken from AI tools – I’ve previously submitted a track to FOTN which uses a recording of Google Bard verbalising a silly answer to a simple question. I am talking about WHOLE tracks generated by AI.
“If [AI] is used as a tool to enhance someone’s practice, that’s the part that excites me” DIRTY FREUD
Is it a problem if submissions to Fresh on the Net are AI generated? If it sounds enough like music that most people can’t tell, it must be music, right?
Personally, I don’t want to spend my time listening to and reviewing AI music when there are plenty of musicians creating music that might never get heard. Part of the problem is that I am yet to hear any that comes anywhere close to sounding good. Also, why are humans assessing the creative work of AI? We don’t use AI to review the music (yet).
It would take over 570 years to listen to everything on Spotify. So why does anyone produce new music at all? For me, it’s the human compulsion to create. I love the act of producing music and experimenting with sound. As I tinker away, I put something of me into the process, and when I’m listening to the music of others, I am listening for something of them in their music. That’s the magic of it all: music as a personal coded message of genuine human experience that can’t be articulated through any other means. My question would be: why ask AI to generate a song when we have too many to listen to already?
Do music fans want to listen to something artificial? I suppose there will definitely be people out there who don’t care, who just want some sound on.
“I think people will buy AI slop and the slop won’t be worse than other forms of manufactured music. Music has always been a dirty business, with flashes of soul-trembling beauty scattered mostly around the periphery.” ANDY CARVELL (author of Brave New Digital World and formerly of startup era Soundcloud)
I would suggest that Fresh on the Net has never been here to serve people slop, and we’re here to cut through the “dirty business”. I spoke to some very pleasant Gen Z folk at a ramshackle electronic jazz event in Bristol – essentially a semi-planned open mic jam session for electronic artists. There were young artists combining modern synthesisers with vintage reed organs, cassette tapes and basically anything to make their music sound distinct from what is being mass produced today (bravo). They told me that AI music wasn’t yet good enough to stand up against music made by humans. When I told them about my experience with the FOTN inbox, they were surprised and a bit disappointed.
“I think it’s inevitable that AI will play an increasing role in music production… It feels like resistance to AI in music is no different fundamentally to resistance to sampling…there’s now also the opportunity to just have it produce the whole thing and call it art.” ANDY CARVELL
Inevitable, for sure. The mainstream is going to become saturated with music generated by AI. As a business model, it makes perfect sense. I’ll let you investigate Spotify’s curated playlists mysteriously populated by artists making boring generic repetitive music, who have no online footprint, and who all came into existence in the last two years.
“I think the biggest danger of AI music is for streaming platforms to make their own songs from fake bands and suggest it to their audience. Sadly, I feel that AI will very soon have the power to replace background music or multiple mood playlists.” MARK McG (You Call That Radio/ Girobabies/ FOTN loyalist)
If I was a business that had captured most of the world’s music-listening humans, and was yet to turn a profit, I would look at ways of playing them music that I didn’t have to pay any royalties on. If business is doing business well, then community should be doing community well.
“Corporate greed could make it harder for us to reach normal people as the platforms don’t have to pay robots. Neither does film or television. It puts further financial pressure on struggling artists” MARK McG
I will resist the urge to expand this argument into the existential threat of musicians in the music industry, and focus on FOTN. However, I would point out the arrival of AI in creative professions like copywriting and illustration has led to fewer jobs and a decline in quality.
“The use of AI should be to aid us in tasks that would normally be hard, boring or repetitive etc. I think if the whole track is made with AI, it has no place in music world.” – LUCAS GIL (Supernova Radio Show/ artist & FOTN regular)
I would argue that some people find making music hard, boring and repetitive. Historically, those people wouldn’t make music, as they are not musicians. We’re now in the true era of democracy where people who can’t write are writers, people who can’t paint are painters, people who can’t articulate themselves are on TV and have YouTube channels, and people who don’t seem to benefit from any redeeming qualities are political leaders. A big part of the problem I have now is that I can’t listen to any new music (which I do a lot) without wondering if it was made by AI. Sure enough, the world is changing very quickly online and nothing can be taken at face value. I am scrutinising everything I read, and any new image I am looking at.
A positive could be, as people realise how open to manipulation and degradation of quality the internet is, they’ll stop using it so much and go out to play outside instead. Maybe they’ll go out to more gigs with actual musicians performing.
“It could be a tipping point for people to once again engage in real life experiences with real bands and real songs which make us shout, cry and dance” MARK McG
The value of genuine experiences (and those who can provide them) will go up, and the value of watching/ listening to content tainted with doubt online will go down. This has basis in Dead Internet Theory, and I personally find some solace in the concept. Perhaps it’s in our interests, as a music community, to embrace AI generated content online, and increase the likelihood of live music and local music communities having a resurgent role in people’s lives. Or, having already seen the “enshittification of the internet“, and other forms of media, should we shield FOTN from it, at least through our intentions?
“I believe that there is no place in music or the creative arts in general for AI. I think it’s signalling the death knell of the human creative consciousness. If I could ban it, I would” Roz C (Dirge Magazine/ Machine Music)
If we decide we don’t want AI generated music, how would we stop it? How could we, a team of volunteers, police our submissions process? I can’t sit next to the submit button and bark when the AI music comes through the door. Eventually, as it becomes more advanced and has better sound quality, I won’t even be able to tell anymore. One option is that we ask very nicely on the submission page that people do not submit music that has been generated by AI. This would require people to read the submission rules, which they often don’t, but it would leave the rule enforcement up to the community. We don’t want to take the fun out of FOTN, or to exclude anyone, but I do think we need to have a discussion about how we engage with a technology that asks us what the hell we’re making music for.
Do we accept the integration of our community with AI generated music, or try to create something of a wildlife reserve for musicians? Please furnish us with your thoughts, and any suggestions for how the Fresh on the Net team should respond.
I don’t have the time to properly dive into the subject, but for me there’s no other reason for AI music being created other than a futile attempt to make money through streaming etc, or in fringe cases to make some sort of statement or joke in a way that makes the music a sort of redundant shell and the statement/joke itself half-hearted and lazy at best, which in turn reduces the act of the “creating” of said music down to a soulless, empty and redundant endeavour that at its core is the complete antithesis of the spirit of the concept of this website and of music in general. Get rid.
Great article Will. It all depends on how many true music fans will fight against AI slop and support the independent artists they enjoy .
Hey Will, thanks for this article and for raising this important topic.
This is how I see it: imagine a friend comes up to you and suggests, “Hey, you should write a rock song about a desert road trip, and you should mention me in it, and it should be something you can move to,” and you then go and write that song. Does your friend then get to say they wrote it?
—Of course not, because coming up with an idea isn’t the same as implementing it. When you write an AI prompt for any piece of AI art, you are a conceptualizer. Conceptualizing is necessary for creation, but it isn’t the same as creation. Creating is always doing.
Thinking of an idea for a painting doesn’t make me a painter.
Beyond that, humans celebrate overcoming hardship through vision, desire, and the discipline to follow through. It’s important to us. Successfully executing an idea is so much harder, and much more impressive than just thinking of it. If it wasn’t, then we would all be getting Grammys and Brit Awards for our ‘concepts of songs,’ and you would be writing blog posts about the best song ideas you received that week. And, if you reviewed an AI-generated track, that would, in a way, be what you were doing.
FOTN is for artists/musicians, and to be an artist, you have to create. So yeah, you should absolutely have a rule in place against songs that are entirely or mostly AI-generated.
Submithub has an AI music checker to help with this: https://www.submithub.com/story/ai-song-checker
There are additional things you’d have to consider (margin of error, etc.) but it’s a potential start. Saying this as someone who actually likes a lot of things about AI. 🙂
Cheers
Vanessa
A very interesting piece for sure. When artists started to use samplers way back when, there was a certain outrage claiming you’re just using other people’s music and manipulating it; through the varying parameters that AKAI and Roland offered, true? Yes. It was the manipulation, either serendipitous or the genius minds that actually understood the parameters they could manipulate that created sounds the sounds and effects that people danced too. Was it real? I don’t know, it was original and very enjoyable. AI generated music, for me is a firm NO. Not least because there’s no process, skill or spiritual enjoyment in the process. Just prompts. Maybe some might think writing prompts is a process and that in a world hell-bent to streamline every process, seek value for money in many areas of the services we receive, AI music is an artefact that was born out of a race to the bottom. I like listening to artists consciousness or unconscious sound. The organic equivalent to AI. Let’s remain our own musical prompts and continue to share the mysterious and wonderful human condition through music. A big thanks to ChatGPT for planning my summer holiday. Peace out.
Just some thoughts that I will return to.
I’m not against the use of AI in moderation. To police this would take a LOT of work – Even submithub’s technology to check AI is not absolute, and Jason even says that it’s not perfect – he actually says not to use it to make accusations and I can see that if this gets used as a tool that’s where we’d be headed. I’ve seen artists complain about this, and I’m not going to see that happen here. I will not let that happen here.
We get up to 200 submissions a week who’s going to be the judge and jury and say hey that person’s using AI? Where’s the human element in that part? Or are we going to rely on technology that says this is AI because that’s kind of ironic that we are using tech to check tech.
There’s also the part that could be considered that might be that you simply don’t like the songs or what they stand for. If you don’t then it’s your given right not to choose it.
On Arpraxis’s point about sampling, I watched an interview with Omar Hakim about how drummers were put out because of the use of drum machines, this was at the beginning of the 80s, he simply adapted and learned how to use a drum machine. He was already an in demand drummer but that took his skill set to another level.
Do we judge Herbie Hancock from using acoustic pianos to buying a fairlight?
Where does it stop when we start limiting what gets submitted? I’ve had some suggestions including limiting it to genre specific weeks. That’s a firm no on that. The variety submitted here is what keeps FOTN what it is.
I have never used AI to produce music, but I have used it for artwork. I cannot draw at all, and didn’t want to pay an artist, so I went to ChatGPT and told it precisely what I wanted for my song artwork. In three seconds, it gave me exactly what I wanted.
Am I now the artist? No. All I did was precisely tell a machine what I wanted, and it did the rest. It took very little skill, knowledge or effort on my part. I used the artwork as my cover.
I’ve had ChatGPT help me get started with lyrics for the same song. I used bits and pieces of it, very little verbatim. I was also amazed at the speed it could create. In seconds, it gave me several verses, two choruses, and an intro and outro. I used perhaps 20% of what it gave me, so I had to do some creating and editing.
BUT, to allow AI to create an entire song from start to finish and put your name on it as the “composer”, when you have composed nothing, is just wrong. In your excellent article, you mentioned that DJ’s did not want to touch anything that wasn’t vinyl when it began to become obsolete. This new technology goes way beyond replacing an obsolete technology-it replaces the artist himself.
The real danger is that AI will become more and more intelligent until it is self-aware. Then, it can and will create music when it wants to, and according to its “mood” or “inspiration”. Then, we are all doomed on this planet.
Hey, just some responses here to Del’s comment:
– Definitely agree that the Submithub AI checker shouldn’t just blindly be followed—it’s in beta (this is why I mentioned margin of error). I think if FOTN does decide to go that route (and obviously that’s a big if), other tools should also be considered
– Totally agree checking all 200 wouldn’t be feasible—but I would imagine if a song isn’t up to quality standard, it wouldn’t need to be checked anyway.
– If you do decide to make a rule against AI, personally I think an honor system instead of an AI checker would be best, unless you’re continually getting lots of exquisite AI tracks that you love
– I agree: there’s nothing wrong with AI being used as a tool on songs or with portions of a song being AI—I don’t see much of a creative difference between an AI beat and drum samples (potentially an ethical one in terms of less jobs, but not a creative one), and drum samples are used literally everywhere at this point—my issue is with tracks that are exclusively or mostly AI. Of course, that also runs into logistical issues like knowing how much AI is being used etc.
– For me there is some difference in the Herbie Hancock example in that the Fairlight wasn’t generating new notes for Herbie (except for maybe a preset with sequenced notes? Can’t remember if it included that in its preset library). Exclusively or mostly AI-generated feels more like me asking you to create a song for me and then me submitting it here.
Ok, I’ve given my 2 cents now
Great article!
Probably no surprise given the name of my last single but I definitely think the use of AI should be heavily discouraged, even though I don’t think there’s a way to police that.
I think it’s unethical to use AI for a number of reasons, particularly its ginormous carbon footprint. There’s simply no excuse to incur that environmental cost to bypass the process of creating art. It will also exacerbate the problems musicians already face in being fairly remunerated for their art (as you said, see Spotify’s practice of filling their own playlists with slop to avoid paying artists fairly).
I also think that, currently, AI (at least, generative AI, although look at Apple’s disastrous roll out of its AI news summary as well) is extremely poor in quality. Maybe that will change, but why would someone want to rely on that? Makes no sense to me.
There’s an AI thread on the Drowned in Sound forum where a user argued very eloquently about why AI is unlikely to surpass genuine human creative capability or recreate the emotional and social heart of what it is to create art https://community.drownedinsound.com/t/all-purpose-artificial-intelligence-ai-ethics-discussion-thread-rolling/73031/542?u=tvdenimchap
You won’t be able to stop people submitting music generated either wholly or partly by AI, but you can explain to people why it’s a bad thing.
As a point of comparison – Ampwall (new Bandcamp alternative) also have implemented a policy of banning AI artwork on their platform. I’m not sure it’s mentioned specifically in their mission but there is some mention of AI there as well: https://ampwall.com/mission. I think that’s a great thing to do.
Ai music for Ai listeners. Ai reviews for Ai music. Always remember Vengaboys is easy to imitate. If Ai can create a new Vengaboys album we are fucked. The Vengabus is coming.
“The Vengabus is coming
And everybody’s jumping
New York to San Francisco
An intercity disco
The wheels of steel are turning
And traffic lights are burning
So if you like to party
Get on and move your body”
Aside from the above I use Ai to create or find strange people talking. They end up in my music.
I made an album with AI (https://alienalarms.bandcamp.com/album/android-dreams) in the short window when it didn’t quite work to capture that moment when it was coming up with weird new sounds that I couldn’t get anywhere else. It was a creative tool and by the time the tracks were complete I had made 100s of production decisions and added enough music I had programmed and played that I had no problem calling it my music: I was using AI as a generator of weird and new samples.
Now that AI can make complete, reasonable music I think there’s still a place for it in music which adds ideas, comedy or a human message. The John Shuttleworth backing track for the 21st century. I’m currently working on a track which ends with a fully AI generated final section to ask the question is this where we want music to end?
Ultimately I think well made generic AI music challenges humans to be more creative and more expressive which is a good think. The only people who should be worrying are people trying to make generic mainstream music or jump on bandwagons: AI will soon be going that better and faster than people.
AI will not replace me. I am irreplaceable. It will not take my job making music, because making music is not my job. Luckily for me, making music has always been a cathartic, individual process of primarily self gratification. My job, when I had one, was as a graphic designer. I used to love being a graphic designer until it was my job. It is no longer my job, and I love being a graphic designer once more. AI IS taking jobs, creative jobs, design, fashion, producers, editors, writers. I wish it wasn’t. On an industrial and commercial level, yes, quicker, cheaper, of course AI is welcomed by those competing to make a profit. It’s nothing personal (precisely).
I naively think that if something sounds like it might be AI generated, I would not be attracted to it (I fear I am underestimating AI here). If you are using AI to fill the gaps between your talents, that is on you, but if it makes you happy, who am I to criticise? Is it cheating and what does that even mean, I don’t know, or really care. I already think the majority of commercial music is “sub optimal” to my ears.
In terms of FOTN submissions, I have always very much appreciated the democratic approach eschewing the usual popularity factors. I have had some recognition here, but like everyone, I get frustrated that I have been “unsuccessful” recently. Despite this, the richness and depth of creativity and originality presented week after week is almost (almost) overwhelming.
Did I mention I have a new album out? 🤓
Hey Will and the community!
Interesting article Will, thanks. We should have a real discussion in the real world!
I think that AI music cat is now out of the bag and it will do its thing regardless. We can just watch it with curiosity and I believe, as some other people already mentioned, that true art and connection will prevail eventually.
You wrote: “People who can’t write are writers, people who can’t paint are painters, people who can’t articulate themselves are on TV and have YouTube channels” – that’s a good thing I’d say as art in all its forms is the most beautiful ways of expression for us humans and a way to deal with our mortality.
Everyone should write, paint and make music…I get that for us who make a living from it it muddies the waters but you either find ways or you don’t to make it work. It always was hard and it always will be.
Peace to ya all!
Great article Will
I’m no sort of expert on technology generally nor AI more-specifically BUT…
As you stated Will, creating music (& other art) is a defining human characteristic. There is zero value in AI-generated art, whether or not it is good enough to pass unnoticed.
This agenda is driven by tech companies whose ONLY interest is profit. This technology will not be used primarily to improve human lives (though in some instances it may well do so – but NOT in artistic endeavours). We are constantly told that technology will free humans from mundane & repetitive tasks allowing them to develop their interests & skills as creative beings. If AI is also going to create (cheap) art/music, what is the point of being human? To stare at AI-generated content on screens?
Finally, WHY would anyone submit AI-generated music to FotN? If you haven’t created it, what do you really gain from having it selected/praised? The value comes from the time & the effort spent, the personality that we put into that, in some way, makes it ours, makes it different to what someone else does. Nobody (directly) gains financially from FotN, though I suppose it can lead to exposure & on, perhaps, to financial rewards down the line. But if that is the aim, it only reinforces the emptiness of the “art”.
FotN is a great resource for musicians & music creators which is wholly debased by people submitting work that is not their own creation. I suppose all you can do is make it very clear that AI-generated music is not acceptable & that where such submissions are identified (or even strongly suspected) the artists will be banned from submitting in future, unless they can prove suspicions to be incorrect.
same argument from the work perspective… people at work are always asking me to use Copilot which Microsoft is pretty much giving away as a standard part of the toolkit… it makes everything seem “the same” and rather dull. Sentences and paragraphs appear tedious and bereft of interest. Hey, give me a mistake sometime people! Anyway… yes this does need consideration and there isn’t an easy answer to it.
That is what I wrote… here is CoPilots version: yawn.
I hope this message finds you well. I’ve noticed that there has been a lot of buzz around using Copilot lately, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter. It seems that Microsoft is generously including Copilot as a standard part of their toolkit, and everyone is eager to jump on the bandwagon. While I appreciate the convenience it offers, I can’t help but feel that it tends to make everything seem a bit too uniform and, dare I say, dull.
Sentences and paragraphs crafted with Copilot often come across as tedious and lacking in interest. Sometimes, the charm of a little mistake or a unique twist is what makes our work stand out and keeps things engaging. Don’t get me wrong, I do see the value in using such tools, but I believe we need to strike a balance to maintain the creativity and originality in our work.
I understand that this is a complex issue and there isn’t a straightforward answer. However, I think it’s worth considering and discussing further. Let’s keep an open mind and explore how we can best integrate Copilot into our toolkit while preserving the individuality and flair that make our work truly exceptional.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
Thanks for raising all this Will is such an interesting debate.
I think what it important is for humans not to lose the ability to create and with it what that creation brings and represents.
Use technology but don’t get used by it.
Can all DJs beat match these days and does it matter?
It used to.
If AI is taking money away from hard working creatives then the laws should be created to protect the creators and not the other way round.
If we want a society who cannot think for themselves, have no sense of direction and free thought then embrace AI in all aspects of life.
If we want to have free thought and think for ourselves then reject it where you can.
Technology has already ruined most streams if revenue from music and it will continue to do so.
It’s important that we, humans continue to create with or without the assistance of AI whether alongside or as a competitor.
Peace and Love,
Marble Stars ⭐️🌞🎵
Hey Will, great article!
We need to speak about this more, as, sadly, AI is here to stay.
I need to admit though, I don’t ‘understand’ AI generated music.
I don’t get why make it and why listen to it.
‘It would take over 570 years to listen to everything on Spotify. So why does anyone produce new music at all? For me, it’s the human compulsion to create. I love the act of producing music and experimenting with sound.’ – that’s it! People create because hey feel the urge to; because there’s an idea in them that wants to get out; because they’re enjoying playing around with noises and seeing what comes out of their experiments.
This is very different from writing a prompt.
Who takes joy from writing a prompt?!
On the other side we’ve got the listener and I don’t get them either. AI-generated music is not good and it probably will not be good for a long time. It lacks that human aspect.
But then I say it as someone who doesn’t enjoy a lot of electronic music because it doesn’t sit well with me that there isn’t a drummer who needs to physically stay in time so I guess it all depends on how old school your appreciation for music is – everyone draws the line somewhere else and I fear that for many people the AI slop may be on the right side of that line.
Sadly, I can’t just cover my face with my hands, scream ‘I don’t understand it, it’s not real!’ and hope it’s enough to keep AI-generated music out of my life. I don’t have any solutions though! Asking people politely is a good start… but it does rely on people reading the rules (eh…) and following said rules.
I think tools recognising AI-generated music already exist (the same kind of thing as what Google uses to recognise AI-generated text) but I don’t imagine they will be available to end users any time soon… and also not sure how they’d apply in this case. Perhaps what we need right now is for SoundCloud to adopt such tools and clearly mark all AI-generated content as such?
Great article Will.
Yes. AI generated music should not be allowed to sit next to human music on platforms IMO.
Ai as a creative tool can be acceptable, but anyone using AI to create musical compositions entirely, really needs to take a long hard look at themselves!
Time poor, poor poor and constantly fire fighting societal and intersectional bias I haven’t had much time or energy to contemplate AI tbh… The game has always been rigged and when I had more skin in it it always seemed like the actual real life artist was a bit of a nuisance to the money men… So I guess it makes sense if they have something which can get rid of what was difficult for them; the humanity of artists then they’re probably gonna take it… I’ve seen Black Mirror and human greed and laziness to exploit a tool which can do anything for you probably ain’t gonna end well for anyone… Then again I am partial to a bit of wonky AI digitally produced sound if it can be harnessed in the right way…
“there’s now also the opportunity to just have it produce the whole thing and call it art” – this is where I draw the line. I think AI can be an interesting tool, you could use it to turn an instrument into another, resample it and create something entirely new.
But I’ve been apart of a lot music sharing groups where people are submitting songs they have done nothing but give a prompt to. A bit scary. But I honestly think the next step is a rise in live sounding music with raw delivery, notable mistakes and such. I still love the sound of ‘produced’ music but that’s where I think it’s going. A quote from a friend at a party I’ve had stuck in my head since was ‘Make music that AI can’t’. Make decisions that flip the idea of what we think music is on its head. That seems like the only way.
An interesting premise,
I’m a semi-professional musician, and songwriter of nearly thirty years, I’m surprisingly not worried about AI. I think it’s almost a certainty that we’ll see AI generated music in the charts at some point, because let’s be honest, the people who care about the charts are mostly unconcerned with art or expression, they don’t care that Beyonce isn’t writing her own songs, that she has a team of people writing her albums, for her, why would they care if an algorithm did it for her instead? They won’t. It’s their girl Bey, and that’s all that matters. And truth be told, I couldn’t give a shit about Beyonce or any of the other chart botherers either, they can crack on.
So as always it’s a case of art over content. Everyone will have the ability to create AI generated music, but will those with a flair for artistic expression be able to achieve mastery of the tool? If they do, are they artists?
Giving someone a 10k guitar won’t make them a better guitarist, nor will owning a Leica make you a better photographer, although with the latter your images will have better quality than a cheaper camera, understanding why the photos aren’t ‘good’ (composition, light, weighting, balance, colour) is learned through practice over time.
I guess my point is, everyone will have the ability to make Ai generated music but there will be differences in the quality of outcome based on, skill and understanding of the form. Some (most) of it is going to be really shit, some of it might be wonderful.
I believe there is room for AI music to be artful, it’ll depend on the user I guess.
And if it does take over, pockets of resistance will remain. Analogue for life!
there is no possibility rn that AI could make music as badly as I do, would require a level of complex stupidity that just isn’t there yet. HMU when it does and I’ll up my game
:#
Many folks think that they have done something creative once they interact with an AI prompt, and that device has created some piece of work.
I don’t agree.
I’ve studied the instruments that I use in my music, mastered them, played and interacted with real human musicians for a very long time.
Perhaps you won’t like my music, but I will never employ a robotic artificial intelligence to touch my music in any way whatsoever. It is my creation, and I do my level best to be a real genuine human artist, and every instrument is either played by me, or another human musician who I am closely associated with.
I believe that so long as we allow AI to produce visual and audial compositions, we should mandate that such output be digitally “stamped” with markers that certify the AI that produced it, and date of production. . .
Personally, I would prefer that “kit kiddies”, (those human beings who piddle around with their pseudo AI penises to produce images, motion pictures, and music,) cease and desist. . .
But that is merely my preference, and I realize that my desires have no influence on them, or society. . . Do as you will, then, and I’ll do the same.
AI needs to be clearly marked as such. People should be aware of ‘copies’, ‘clones’ or ‘dupes’. Music included. Human creations are unique, whatever the media, and I, for one, don’t appreciate being fobbed off with a fake.
The world is now based on a money spinning, popularity race, full of fakes, across the board.
I need to feel something from the music I listen to, memories are provoked, emotions re-lived, energies revived or calmed. AI just doesn’t cut the mustard. If it must exist, then name it, brand it, give people the choice. Stop conning us.
It’s here to stay and it can’t be stopped I think, and I don’t think we should try, because in the same way that people tend to value hand crafted things over factory built, so to will true music fans want to know that the music they are listening to was created be a human mind rather than churned out of some automated machine learning process. And if AI gets so good it’s indistinguishable then so be it, some may want to listen, many will not, but it won’t be stoppable I fear so it will just have to be live with tbh.
Sometimes i want to be served musical slop, almost white noise while i work. I do not really value or need to know a human made it. If AI and spotify can curate a sloppy playlist to help me work better, that’s okay by me.
obviously full AI tracks that are there to invoke something, to be appreciated, critiqued or engaged with is a big turn off and should be resisted, although i am not smart enough to have a solution beyond anything already discussed.
As far as FOTN is concerned, you can only do so much. To second guess all the music you’re being sent subtracts from potential joy of listening to genuinely good music. Until we’re able to actually identify AI music (if we’re ever able to) I think we just need to back ourselves in identifying music that moves us and let it do that.
Slop is slop. Unfortunately many people will consume slop knowingly or unknowingly. I’d hope there are enough people looking at who artists are, how the music has been created, and educating themselves to protect the real art of making genuine, innovative music. Similar to other forms of art: there is always someone looking to fast track its creation to make a fast buck but those fast bucks tend to flood the market and become worthless while the real artistry will always shine through. You do wonder who will have the financial support to keep making true art, but hasn’t this always been the case?
Interesting topic—I don’t think you can put the smoke back in the box now.
AI is here, and it’s going to change everything.
Digital music didn’t exist until we invented the technology to create it, and AI is following a similar trajectory.
I see AI as a powerful tool that can empower people to explore their passions in more depth and more efficiently.
Hopefully, these technological breakthroughs will lead to fresh and exciting music, without suffocating what it means to be creative and ultimately, human.
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Thanks for the timely article Will. Like you I’ve never been tempted to make an AI tune (or rather ask an AI to write a tune for me) because the act of creating music is a large part of what I enjoy. I did get quite into using Dall-E to create digital art last year though. To begin with it was the grim fascination that, from seemingly nowhere, AI was competing with human intellect in ways that I had never imagined. It was a useful tool to convey something on my cover art that I could never hope to achieve with my own cack-handed artistic skill or even less afford to commission an artist to do for me. Any sense of satisfaction I found shortlived though. The AI had done the difficult bit albeit based on the wealth of human artistic endeavour on which it was built.
I guess there are situations where AI could be used to create music that communicates a message, adverts, for example. But in the same way that I wouldn’t visit a gallery to view AI-generated images, I’d really rather not spend my leisure time listening to an AI interpretation of a text prompt.
Having said that, the technology is moving so rapidly, who knows what AI will be capable of in the near future.
For me, the issue with AI-generated music is plagarism. AI collects data from multpipe sources online so not only is the music never 100% original, but worst of all, it is stolen from somebody who may not even realise it. And, as somebody who spends A LOT OF TIME on her music, and visuals, and her art, it is infuriating to know that I am now competing against something that has (probably not) had the same amount of time and effort put into it, yet may get chosen over my own.
Obviously there’s nothing wrong with enjoying AI generated music, and I don’t necessarily have a problem with it being shared, either: I just think there needs to be a VERY CLEAR disclaimer when something is AI.
Personally, I’m really sick of AI being absolutely everywhere. I think of it like bitcoin: the latest craze that tech bros love to use, but don’t really understand.
My instinct – flawed as it may be – is that I do not feel overly threatened by AI generated music, because it will not stop me from doing what I’m doing musically in the very specific and human way that I’m doing it – though perhaps I’m worryingly naive. I can only speak about how I feel in my current state of blissful ignorance… Happy to be pointed in the direction of stuff that proves me wrong, so I can upgrade my thinking. But surely, people who would have liked what our band does are still going to like it, regardless of what else is out there.
Humans are drawn to humans, and the things that other humans do to express themselves alight in your organs and live inside you, making you feel understood as a fellow human. By far my favourite point made in this discussion is that it could drive more people back to witnessing music being made and performed live. In the same way that Donald being a dick has meant that Europe is pulling together again and gathering strength – the opposite effect that, say, Vlad would have been hoping for – so AI music being the dick in the music sphere could well have the push-back effect of bringing real music fans closer to real artists again. I can think of no more perfect result.
What has bothered me for a while now is the blanket term ‘AI’ being used online as something to revile universally, when there are people I love involved in studying and using it for all manner of extremely positive things in technological and medical fields that will greatly benefit humankind. I’m grateful to see here that we are referring to ‘AI generated music’ specifically. I urge everyone to be specific when discussing it. That has not been my experience on social media.
I sympathise with the FOTN team having to navigate through possible AI generated content as they assess submissions week after week. I suppose that does demonstrate that we real musicians could potentially be crowded out here and there, as such stuff clogs the arteries of this and other admirable enterprises that celebrate human music.
Hi, this is Manuel from Falso Gurú
Well I really love AI, i can do so many things with it. For example, I’m currently working on a music app, just as a personal side thing, don’t know exactly where it will lead me. The thing is that I don’t know much about coding, I have very basic html css skills and with claude I can basically create a simple app to automate some bothersome stuff in less than an hour. On python. If that’s not amazing then you tell me. I don’t need a professor, I can learn while doing, I don’t get stuck on my self teaching process, I don’t need to hire a software developer.
I don’t see a conflict between my job as an artist and the AI boom. I do music because I love to play and write my own songs, will AI take my job? I never had one to begin with.
Musicianship and most stuff related to art has been historically something to do as a side thing, not something that enables you to earn money.
Artists who already make money with art will notice no difference in their earnings. Aspiring professional artists in any art field will still remain as wannabes until money proves otherwise. AI might help you get rich in the worst of the cases.
I hear there are plans to normalize the use of AIs as a subscription service tho. That can become a problem. Because then the people with more money will have more and better tools to work with. As it always have been, that’s why I don’t own a 50s Gibson or a Bugatti.
Thanks for this Will, I don’t envy your position of having to sift through what must now be coming through your inboxes. Almost every new tech advancement that comes along seems at first to provide speed and shortcuts, but somehow makes more ugly work for somebody somewhere along the line.
A lot of my thoughts have been covered/echoed in other comments here.
Anyone truly interested in music and creativity will love being involved in, and appreciate, the creative process, whatever the ‘product’ might wind up being.
Always good for a quote, Brian Eno said this: “I’m not trying to say I’m not fascinated by it. I am. But in my experience, the times it works are when people are very careful about what goes in and very critical about what comes out.”
Old MacDonald ‘wrote’ a ‘song’
AI AI
Oh……..it’s a bit generic and uninspired, isn’t it?
Sadly, most of the people, most of the time, don’t really care about art: they are not that fussed. Van Gogh, Jackson C Frank, etc, etc in their lifetime… and for every (rightly revered) David Lynch there will be a Peter Greenaway (hardly unknown; but try finding his films: the sparsity of ‘supply’ echoes the lack of ‘demand’)… and for every Peter Greenaway there will be a whole host of unknown filmmakers who actually have something to say. But… bookstores are filled with generic irrelevance, TV schedules are filled with crap, Major Awards ceremonies have the same products and people cropping up over and over and over again. Do Festival line-ups look exciting and vibrant? Or does it seem like some depressing Groundhog Day that’s been repeating for years? Well-known iconic venues struggle to stay in business: but below this level most pubs that still put music on can only make it break-even with cover bands. And it is this context that makes AI a serious existentialist threat to art and the depressing ‘culture-less’ future that would be the consequence.
A team of songwriters working on a massive (275 billion streams on Spotify, and counting) Pop Hit that does ‘all the things a Pop Song should’; or an AI generated pastiche of that same uninspired, ‘landfill’ commodity: ‘the public get what the public want’ & the shareholders of the streaming services and owners of Social Media watch the revenue flood in. I’m not sure there is that much difference between humans creating product by following rules or AI creating product by aping the same over-repeated formulae. Art that survives the test of time is that which disdains compliance. Indeed, the antonym of ‘Creativity’ should be ‘Compliance’!
I like Will’s simultaneous points about the ‘real world’: we are all being conditioned to act like automata plugged into Social Media 24/7: we are like twigs swirling around in the vortex of how these companies operate (the repellent current owner of Twitter buys that company to ensure the destruction of democracy in the US and ensures the atrocities that will occur because of that; and then – if looking to maintain an online presence – the alternative choices: Facebook, Masterdon, Tik Tok , BlueSky, Instagram, Threads, MySpace ReUnited, etc: All of them? Some of them? Will these change or be sold? Will these end up appeasing the Orange-Faced Tyrant? Free to use, but at the COST of your time, life and soul!) Spotify: the same few SuperStarSuperFamousMultiBillionStreamingArtists generating a fortune for the company, and then all else pretty much legalised theft (or extortion) … and any investment back from those profits are more likely to go to Barcelona Football Club than back to the music industry. Bandcamp, Soundcloud, etc are always at risk of being sold, and staff cut, and conditions for artists changed at any point. I would never criticise anyone using any of these services or putting in time and effort using them: these ‘effective monopolies’ ensure that we are NOT given any other VIABLE options: but acknowledging that we are forced to run around like serfs is not something to be complacent about!
Paraphrasing something I’ve seen: “I’m looking forward to being freed by AI from a lifetime of drudgery creating art, so that I can use this free time to drive a delivery van for Amazon until such time as they can replace me with driverless vehicles and delivery drones.”
FOTN is one of those rare corners of the CyberWorld where people who do care about music participate. So keeping this space safe from AI product is essential.
Brilliant article Will !!! … and brilliant comments too!!!
Leo Slayer (loathsome guitar strangler for Junkyard of Silenced Poets)
Great discussion folks. I hope to see you all on the listening post tomorrow!
I am not a pro on the subject but I do believe that music made entirely by AI takes away the unique part of music and is just a cash grab
Great article, Will, and some very interesting replies. Whilst I find the whole subject of AI fascinating (and frightening) I haven’t so far been impressed AI generated music. True, it seems to be very adept at copying something that is already bland, but can it create something with soul and passion and inventiveness and basically everything we love about music?
Of course, the technology will improve, but to what extent? Will we one day hear Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony, or the music Eddie Cochran or Buddy Holly would have gone on to make?
Like I said, fascinating and frightening.
Awesome article
so many interesting points
Very good, could discuss this with an ai or a human
AI is here to stay, but nothing will ever beat the REAL thing.
Nice article Will, and great insights!
We’ll be alright!
P.S. Not a bad idea to bark at incoming AI submissions. Maybe an AI program could do it for you guys 👀
AI’s good enough to be acceptable, or passable – witness all the horrible ”comedy” songs getting shared around – but not so good (or sophisticated) that much of real interest can be created with it… yet. When it becomes subtle and plastic enough that it can be harnessed to create something with depth, richness and resonance – that’ll be interesting. At present, a lot of what I’ve heard has this uncanny valley feel that manages to be weird but boring – a neat, if dull, trick; there’s no unconscious there. Even if it does become a more refined and sensitive instrument, it needs someone to feed it the right prompts; it still needs human filth, weakness and onion breath.
Otherwise humans will carry on making music on the jazz museum reservation, while AI engulfs the world with lo fi binaural trip hop beats to study to, or bland ten second chunkable backdrops for internet twats, and other lukewarm diarrhoea.
(Full disclosure: I’ve used AI to co-write a few lyrics by feeding stuff in and then heavily editing or rewriting the end result; as a prompt or a starting-point it can be pretty useful. But I wouldn’t want to ask it to whip me up a rock opera.)
I’m a semi-professional musician of some 40 years experience now… music is an interactive experience, a dialogue between an audience and the artist. The art of performance is responding to other humans in real time. AI will never be able to do this, unless it gains consciousness and feels emotion. If it does happen that’s incredibly scary and humans might have to merge with AI to survive in Darwinian terms… most machine learning experts think that machines could become conscious between 2035-2060 when the ‘singularity’ is born..
For now, the danger is that AI music production is monetised, and that’s where I think Starmer is coming from in league with Silicon Valley and the US. I think that for example when McCartney and Ringo are gone that the Beatles catalogue will be raided, the voices and instruments isolated, new songs written and generated and a ‘new’ Beatles album – it will be a novelty at first and will make someone a lot of money. However, it will lack the synergy that humans use to make music. Even when I’m making music by myself and multi-tracking, the best songs just seem to flow and the tracking all connects with the emotion in the playing. It just has that ‘specialness’, that indefinable magic… and as artists that’s what we’re all trying to capture. It’s the imperfections that are as important as the slick bits. I don’t think that machines can do this yet.
I think that ‘real music’ will prevail, but we need to fight the political battles to stop desperate politicians who are trying to make a ‘short term buck’ out of AI generated music. Music in this country is in danger because of the pubs/folk clubs/grass roots venues dying out because people are staying in watching Netflix or just going to watch the ‘famous bands’, we need more of that Ticketmaster money to trickle down too. We need to invest in our young humans and their creativity to help beat this impending AI storm. I’ll be starting a music club for grassroots artists when I give up the day job…
Very interesting reading what everyone’s written. Long live homosapiens!!
Dear Will and Del,
Thank you for all the meaningful work that you do. I see Will’s emails come in early in the morning in Osaka, Japan, which means that he’s been up late again on the other side of the world. I hope you know how appreciated all your hard work is.
I read this article with great interest. “The ai-lephant in the room!” I love this title! And as you and MARK McG say, hopefully more people will seek out real experiences, go to gigs in person and look for connections with other beings outside of virtual spaces. Thanks for everything you do and for bringing this conversation to our attention.
Great article Will/Del and good to hear all the views on this subject.
My feeling is playing live is going to become vital. AI cannot chat to you at an event at the bar/sign a CD or vinyl with a personalised message/draw you in as part of their community and give you that intimate/personal experience that a live event provides. So playing live and building a music community etc. becomes all the more important.
However, AI has it’s uses, as people have pointed out, and it can also be used to find live events near you by artists you like but also those who you may like but have not yet heard (I know someone working on this currently and it could really benefit lesser known artists, especially if the software is able to pick up things like open mics and the harder to find gigs).
Using AI to find gigs and help produce music or bios is one thing, but AI artists is another. FOTN was set up to help humans. So with respect to the inbox I was wondering if people submitting could be required to provide information/links that evidences that they play live. For example, to provide a link to when and where they last performed and or had future live events planned. And/or which ticketing site they use.
If something/someone submits to FOTN looks suspicious to one of the mods then it should be possible to check if they are a live act or not (ironically using AI to do so). And just asking the question may confuse the bots….. I know not everyone performs live, but if people don’t then they will in future inevitably find it hard to compete with the AI artists.
You fight like an AI Dairy Farmer
If you trained AI in 1969 on the data available at that time it wouldn’t have imagined punk, hip hop, metal, acid house, grunge, industrial, shoegaze, trip-hop, glitch….
I work in the creative industries, and we see a lot of benefit of using AI tools; from special effects for visuals to having a really good coding buddy. As a technologist, it’s crucial for me to say ahead on this stuff.
As we’ve dabbled in this area for the last couple of years I became interested in what the music AI tool Suno was doing – mostly because we found out that it could create ‘songs’ in the Welsh language.
I’m not a vocalist, and I was exploring the idea of generating vocals to use in my electronic music. With a view to getting a real person to sing it rather than using the crap AI voice!
6 months ago the results were okay; but there was definitely an easily detectable AI sound. Something in the compression that made it sonically obvious that it was AI. Similarly the vocals were all very samey – it definitely had a “voice” – male and female.
Indeed, my wife even spotted an AI generated song being played on BBC Radio Cymru. It was so obvious after I’d shown her what was possible with Suno. The song is called Hapus – even the lyrics sound like they’ve been written by AI (which Suno will do for you).
Roll onto present day and version 4 of Suno is crazy. You can type in your own lyrics or use it’s own engine to generate AI nonsense (although that’s getting better too). Musically it’s pretty good with the nasty washing machine like artefacts gone and overall fidelity pretty good. Song structure is natural; but you can guide that in your prompting (eg verse, chorus, bridge). You can extend tracks and replace sections. If you want, you can even upload your own tracks as ‘personas’ to create similar music (now, this is the feature that has me most concerned).
Through playing with it and doing lots of generations of tracks I would say it definitely still has ’tells’ that can be detected by human ears – though I suspect these probably change radically between genres.
If you aren’t a musician and want to make music, then Suno is now a powerful tool.
But it’s also a terrible soul-less thing. Using it – even just to see what it does – left me in a crisis. It’s so easy and limitless. The trajectory is obvious and we should be very worried.
A friend who is not a musician released an album through Distrokid with music he made with Suno. He did quite a bit of social media work to try and build an audience. Since releasing the AI gen’d album in January 2025 he’s had over 40,000 Spotify plays. Which is a lot more plays than I’ve had in the many many years of making music with hardware.
Since starting my experimentation I find myself questioning almost every piece of new music I hear. But it’s making me want to make real music more than ever. I may even pickup a guitar again instead of just using synths!
AI should be used to liberate the worker to create not take the job of human creativity.
I am not going to get into the ethical debate as so much has already been said but I will make two points. Firstly, the problem here has been the failure of governments to agree an international legislative framework that would prevent tech companies moving product manfacture around and would have imposed clear rules about the extenf to which AI could be used in commercial recordings, providing backing tracks, creating sync material etc. Governments themselves have either been too slow and naive or simply have not cared anough to act and a lot of the umbrella bodies who represent composers and songwriters have also not acted early enough to bring pressure on governments to act. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle now and we are left trying to deal with the consequences.
This brings me to the point about AI not being able to take on a human persona in a live arena. I hosted a session for one of my BA classes at ICMP last year at which a spearker from a well-known music tech and entertainment company expleined how easy it already is to have holograms of artists appearing to be live on stage and even interacting with audience members when really they are just playing their songs in another country and watching the audience on a screen. So, when you’re paying hundreds of pounds for a seat in Row 143 at the next Wembley show by one of your favourite megastars, can you be certain they are even in the country, let alone the building?!
I supervised a fascinating final project by a super bright MA student about the challenges of AI in music in 2023 and she wrote very objectively and, with the benefit of properly researched evidence, on the subject and pointed out that there are many potential benefits for musicians of being able to utilise AI. But it is all about who has control and the extent of AI’s role. She also concluded, as I had done, that we needed an international framework agreed by all the leading nations for there to be any prospect of maintaining sufficient control. Sadly, it is probably too late and is as unlikely as it has ever been given the current leaderships in America, Russia, China etc.
Even then, it should still be an aspiration.
Hi Neil….
The EU are rolling out an AI Act. It could end up being the Gold Standard just like the GDPR. Various things in there about transparency so you always know if you are talking to an AI bot, listening to an AI artist etc. Transparency also about training AI tools on copyrighted material. So the EU have gone for a red tape regulatory approach balanced against innovation. Various concerns that Big Tech are too involved in the process for all the Codes of Conduct being drafted.
In the UK, the government have done sweet FA so far. But the indication is they are going for a “liberal, pro innovation” approach to support the tech boom industry – aligning with USA as we both have skin in the game. Also an interesting copyright dispute with Getty Images suing an AI company going through the courts – whether training on copyrighted images or audio – concepts are the same.
Spectre
Yeah, I think I like the use of AI to generate quick convenient jokes.
Mark
Thanks Mark! Unfortunately, the majority seem to be content with slop. It’s the same people who pay £5 for a cup of crap coffee and ruin the market for everyone else.
Vanessa Van Ness
Maybe people should conceptualise their AI content and then not bother actually making it, save the electricity.
I think people should just make music and art even if they think they’re no good at it. Not knowing how to do something can lead to happy mistakes and learning adventures. I think if more people experimented, it would move music forward in a more positive way than asking AI to make a song like something else you’ve heard. Thank you for your excellent comment.
Arpraxis
Thanks Arp. My opinion of people using sample packs is only slightly higher than people using an AI prompt and saying they made music. Making new noises is the best bit!
Del/@platinummind
I think the variety will diminish once the woodchucks work out how much wood they can chuck. The answer is probably for humans to make music that AI can’t come close to making. The answer to our prayers would be for Soundcloud to be forced to flag AI generated content with a little AI logo. Let’s put it on them.
Tim McInnes
Tim, if you can do all of those things with AI, the I find it hard to believe that you can’t take a nice photo with your smart phone and make it square shaped. Or take an awful photo and zoom in until it is abstract, and put some writing on it. Cover art is really easy to create and looks much better than AI generated stuff. Unless you do loads of work making the AI stuff not look like AI stuff, but then you might as well have done the photo thing. Photos use a lot less electricity too…
Vanessa Van Ness
FOTN won’t be getting AI checking software, but definitely should have quality control. I agree with an honour system, I’d just like a polite sign. Your contribution has been excellent.
Adventsong
Thanks! Yeah, the carbon footprint is huge and I left it out of my article because I could rant about that for days. I think we should all assume we’re not in it to make money anyway. It’s just a kick in the face when you see how much money the slop-mongers are making!
“but you can explain to people why it’s a bad thing” Precisely, but I suspect they are the kind of people who will justify it to themselves. I hate bad AI artwork, and I prejudge music based on it.
Cumsleg Borenail
I love your modified AI artwork. Vengaboys just means Comeboys, si?
Alien Alarms
If it wasn’t for the horrific carbon footprint, I’d be interested in using AI to make noises I’ve never heard before and use those as the basis for synth I could play. I’m not prepared to do that at the expense of the planet, though.
Jim Pearson
Did I mention I have a new album out? You have now! You’re making music for the right reason, so it will be frustrating when your music isn’t picked. I’d be sore on your behalf if AI music was picked over yours.
Stergin
Hello, and thank you. Yes, I’d love to have this conversation in the real world – can you organise it?
Hey Will and the community! I more meant that we are living in an age when people who don’t demonstrate any aptitude for these things are finding fame and fortune. If people who are shit at things are becoming the inspiration for a new generation of artists, I can’t imagine what the future content will be.
jamie corcoran
Thanks!
Stephen Lewis/Exposed Brick
“zero value in AI-generated art” – I agree. Capitalism has given us many great advancements, but now they’re all being monetised to the extent that healthcare and sanitation hardly seem worth it, let alone blapping out £60 for a gig ticket because you need to have one security guard for every retired individual who can afford a ticket. “WHY would anyone submit AI-generated music to FotN?” Maybe someone will tell us… It would be great to do this and not have to be mean to people.
John Joseph Blackburn
A friend of mine wrote last week: “A computer isn’t better at writing than I am” if a computer can make music better than you can, maybe don’t make music. Or, get really good at making music until that isn’t true.
Marble Stars
It IS an interesting debate, isn’t it? “Can all DJs beat match these days and does it matter?” No they can’t, and they seem too embarrassed to use the auto sync function and so submit their audience to a succession of trainwrecks. You want people looking at you whilst you jump around to music – just own it and let people have good time.
Nina
Thank you! “It lacks that human aspect” It is plausible that this is what appeals to some people. “Perhaps what we need right now is for SoundCloud to adopt such tools and clearly mark all AI-generated content as such?” Yes, I think this is exactly what we need.
PRZDNT
Thanks! One chart for humans, and one for machines? We can’t do it here, but I bet that is where the industry is heading.
Louise Quinn
I approve of your dystopian tone!
Shredddie·
“you could use it to turn an instrument into another, resample it and create something entirely new” You could do that before AI, Shreddd, and with only a fraction of the energy consumption! ‘Make music that AI can’t’ – I love this, and I think it is the answer.
Damien Sayell
Coming in here with your considered & carefully constructed arguments.. “pockets of resistance will remain” and at some point a mysterious assassin will be sent back in time to try and make sure you caught covid.
Lazenbleep
I know, but it is really nice that they let you have a go on the computer to read the article and comment. Think back to Out of the Void in 2003, who’d have thought that we’d be discussing AI generated music online one day?
Charles
“I do my level best to be a real genuine human artist” – it will make you stand out.
“we should mandate that such output be digitally “stamped” with markers that certify the AI that produced it, and date of production” – I agree. “Do as you will, then, and I’ll do the same” Will will.
Esme
“If it must exist, then name it, brand it, give people the choice. Stop conning us.” Love it.
James
Sounds like you don’t mind as long as it is labelled as AI music?
Jonty Rodflop
You should listen to White Noise with a French Accent Vol 3. I haven’t released it yet, though. Interesting points, I’m sure you probably are clever enough to think up some solutions.
Mike Barnard
“You do wonder who will have the financial support to keep making true art, but hasn’t this always been the case?” I mean, it is getting harder and harder each year. Playing an acoustic guitar doesn’t cost anything, but if you use software – the subscription fees keep going up. Although, the barrier to entry as a musician has never been lower – so I have probably contradicted myself.
LethalFrizzle
I really like your positive take, here’s hoping!
Parky
A seriously large amount of wood, they are crazy for it. Unfortunately, the act of chucking wood uses a lot of electricity and that wood has got to come from somewhere, probably deforestation.
Lost Signal
“I guess there are situations where AI could be used to create music that communicates a message, adverts, for example” – That’s a great idea, I can’t imagine people like making music for adverts. I hate adverts so much. Although, I imagine there are artists for whom that is their only revenue stream…
Eeade
“AI collects data from multiple sources online so the music never 100% original” – I’d argue that this is what musicians do accidentally already by being influenced by things they’ve heard, but that’s just the nature of culture as opposed to something that has been designed to steal. Good point, why ask AI to learn how to make music from existing music? What’s the point in that? I want to hear something totally new, not regurgitated. “I’m really sick of AI being absolutely everywhere” – Me too, it’s even used when the thing being described isn’t even AI.
Unit – of Combover Beethoven
“I’m grateful to see here that we are referring to ‘AI generated music’ specifically. I urge everyone to be specific when discussing it.” – yes, I consider this very important. I would love to see the development of an AI that can analyse incoming and outgoing communication and flag up when you or someone might have a personality disorder! Thank you for your sympathy, and I definitely don’t want to be clogged up by anything other than you, Tank x
Manuel
I really like your stance. I also can’t code, and like using AI when I need to do something like this quickly. Maybe that appals coders, like I’m appalled by AI music. Also a good point about AI not taking your job if making music isn’t your job. Unfortunately, it is a job for some people, and a job they enjoy.
Thomas Truax
Well, even the human music isn’t always enjoyable… Like Eno, I’m often critical of what comes out.
Leo Slayer
Thank you for your compliments and great response! Let’s pause for a moment to remember David Lynch and look up Peter Greenaway. Festival Line-ups are a pet peeve, for sure. “FOTN is one of those rare corners of the CyberWorld where people who do care about music participate. So keeping this space safe from AI product is essential.” – Yes, this is why I felt compelled to write the article.
Del/@platinummind
I haven’t checked, but I don’t imagine a lot of them have voted in the Listening Post.. If you’re reading this, please vote in the Listening Post every Friday, if you care about the good music coming out on top!
Elliot farr
Unfortunately, son, the world has turned into a massive cash grab. The only thing we can do is recognise the fact, and demonstrate better behaviour wherever we have the opportunity to do so x
Kid Scaramouche
Thank you. Maybe AI will complete music, and the most moving peace of music will be agreed on by all. We can’t rely on Bill and Ted to do it.
HW
Thank you, I hope this is what you are looking for.
BLAISE MC
AI will never bark as well as me.
Matt Finucane
“humans will carry on making music on the jazz museum reservation” I’d like that job. “AI engulfs the world with lo fi binaural trip hop beats to study to, or bland ten second chunkable backdrops for internet twats, and other lukewarm diarrhoea.” That would lead people to put down their magic rectangles, I hope.
Andy Smythe
“The art of performance is responding to other humans in real time. AI will never be able to do this” Unfortunately, it will definitely be able to do this and it will be able to do it very well. The nature of AI and the trajectory of its development is that, technically, there are infinite possibilities for what it can do. The homo sapiens need to take their heads out of the sand and resist the urge to make quick bucks.
Kaori (Superboo)
Aaaah I love being appreciated, it’s the only payment I receive, thank you! I’m glad you found it interesting and informative.
Sue
Thanks Sue, I agree real life excellence and community is vital to success. AI itself isn’t on trial here, just AI generated music. People can promote lesser known artists just as well as AI, but they have to be exposed to the music in the first place. We have to battle the existing bias in the industry to play the same things over and over and over… The problem with checking to see if someone is a live act to test their human status is that not everyone performs live. Some people can’t get shows, because venues can’t afford to take chances on unknown acts. I also work with plenty of artists who have no desire to perform live, can’t due to illness, and some who can’t for reasons of neuro diversity.
Parky
“You fight like an AI Dairy Farmer” A googlewhack.
Parky
It’s a good argument, but it may have prevented Indie Landfill from ever happening…
Derick | Particle Drift
Your friend makes me feel sick, but I like the sound of your wife. Does she want a job on the door with me? You have one of the most informed and useful viewpoints of the issues discussed here, so thanks for joining in. There is nothing wrong with crap human voices, Happy Mondays was one of my first record purchases. I have young friends studying music production who are pissed off that everything they’ve been learning can now be done by a kid with a subscription. There will probably be a wider impact on people who teach music and all sorts of wider professions. We will be happy to guide you through this crisis, put the guitar down.
Lex
Agreed
NEIL MARCH
It would be good to have your ethical opinion, even if it has already been stated elsewhere in the discussion. I have no doubt that AI solutions for live events are well on their way, and the people who will attend these events are not the people I have any interest in spending time with. I’m interested in people who feel strongly enough about things to draw lines in the sand, and find hills to die on.
Parky
I have no faith in the political system of the UK. I am bored of having this opinion and would like to feel optimism again.
Great discussion.
There are a couple of things I’d like to point out.
I’m not going to change the rules about what is submitted. The job of having to police two major rules is bad enough – no remixes of previous submissions, and no soliciting votes from your friends fans and family. That last one carries an immediate and permanent ban – we are not the kind of site that is elite to say we will only take music that’s produced in one particular way, if we did it would alienate pretty much all of the submissions. This is a haven for artists to come and get their music heard without fear of someone piping up and saying your music is crap. If we were to deep delve into rejections in one form or another each of us will have a trauma related story about that. If you want to affect what ends up on the listening post every week, here’s my challenge to you – become a moderator. I’m currently onboarding guest moderators with a view to adding permanent ones going into the summer break. If you can commit yourself to listening to up to 200 songs a week, and helping shape the listening post drop me an email.
I wish I’d come up with this:
“Why should I bother to listen to music you couldn’t be bothered to make?”
Great article, valid points , relevant to all of us.
I agree with Dirty Freud that we should embrace technological advancements and understand them before passing judgment.
As a graphic designer, I started with old-school methods, working on film posters that were hand-drawn. The process involved airbrushing by talented artists who had been in the game for years. These posters requiring a team of at least 10 people and months of work. When we got our first Apple computer, I saw it as a chance to embrance new technology, gaining an edge over older colleagues who did teach me everything I know, but I sensed an opportunity. Over time, the old methods phased out, and Photoshop became the standard tool. I’m open to using AI in design as a tool to enhance creativity, if it makes the job easier and the results still good, then why wouldn’t you?
The point is, technology moves forward, and we have to adapt to it—or we become obsolete. This doesn’t mean I’m think AI music is any good, as I haven’t heard anything good either. But here’s the dilemma: do younger listeners, who consume music through phone speakers (Phone Twats), even care if it’s made by a human with emotion or AI? They no longer listen to full albums like we did. My mates’ kids don’t have favourite songs; they have favourite parts of songs, influenced by TikTok which has no doubt killed the immersive listening experience.
The debate around AI in music is an important one for sure. The future could be exciting or depressing. Going back to design, if you look at a lot of early 90’s film posters you will see how poorly designed they were. The Apple Computer and Photoshop are only a tool.
Let’s also be honest, sampling isn’t really creating, especially if someone is just literally rapping over someone else’s tune. Sampling hasn’t replace music, its enhanced it. So AIG wont replace music, at this stage it isnt really enhancing it, but I haven’t really used it or understand it.
I think we may seem two different categories emerging, which would probably make a lot of sense, where AI generated music has its own name and own charts, at least we can just let the kids get down with that and let everyone else keep it real.
Slightly off topic, but this music documentary is brilliant. The phrase ‘living in the moment’ clearly evident throughout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thr8PUAQuag
Great article Will! I feel like using AI to create music is like trying to get someone else to do therapy for you. What’s the point? You won’t learn anything new about yourself or connect to people in any meaningful way.
Grifters will grift and try and make money from the emergence of AI and they are free to make their slop but I don’t think they have a right to call themselves artists.
Will: most of the carbon cost is in training models rather than using them (inference) which is why I shied away from training and only used existing models to generate sounds when it was cold and I needed to heat the house anyway!
I’m a big fan of “joyriding technology” (Goldie’s phrase) to make new sounds by using technology in unintended ways. Once they are designed intentionally to make music it becomes much less interesting.
There’s just too much to say about AI in the creative arts right now! But thinking about submissions to Fresh On The Net…
I think (at least part) of the core values are all about innovation – which is exactly what AI cannot help with. At its best AI can help with the ‘getting it right’ but is hopeless in terms of the ‘getting it good’. fundamentally the technology cannot innovate and so its unlikely that FOTN output will be taken over by AI content; its all just too ‘seen it before’ boring content generation.
The content you get might well be full of AI-supported mixing and mastering, but stuff heavy with AI-generation just isn’t going to stand out.
The real problem might lie in a surge in (sub-par AI generated) submissions and keeping up with submissions could become an issue. Perhaps stronger limits on the frequency of submissions mmight be needed and not too bad. I mean people can’t generate good content every single week, so if sumission were limited to say, once per month that wouldn’t be too bad and could help control the inbox.
There is an argumment that Genrative-AI helps to democratise the creative process, and that is to be embraced. If you can’t tell AND it passes the innovation test then why not?
The only danger, in my opinion, is that easilly generated tosh could block genuinly innovative submissions (however the personmanaged to make it)…
Sorry this is brief, but I thought something rather than nothing was best!!!!
I’ve not made enough effort recently to listen to music completely made using AI, so I don’t know how good/bad it is right now, although I’m sure however good/bad it is, it will improve. But can it be better than the things it imitates? I’m not convinced.
Seems to my way of thinking, that it will become common for it to get used for adverts, jingles and the like at some point. And that feels like the right place for it.
Using it as a tool within a creative process also feels pretty acceptable to me.
I’ve tried making my own AI model using code on GitHub, it only output midi and it actually was an interesting experiment to do. There are options in how it’s coded and how you go about training it. I hoped there would be something useful to come out of it, but I’ve never used any of its output and have lost interest/time commitments since. But then midi isn’t the actual sounds… I maybe need to try other code and give it another go.?
From one perspective new music sometimes comes out of new technology. And that’s quite exciting, being at the beginning of something new. We don’t know what impact it will have had 10 years from now.
As for choosing songs for FotN – my feeling is that if the music resonates with the pickers, then go for it. If one turns out to be AI, then well done AI. When it comes to feeding musicians through the music factory then the ones using purely AI will eventually be found out.
If the pickers are constantly just picking AI generated content, then that says something, whatever that may be…
But I don’t expect FotN to be a wildlife sanctuary for musicians. For me, I look for a bubbling pot of fresh ideas that are constantly shifting, sparking inspiration, and pushing creativity forward. Using all the available tools.
I guess that’s my hill – hehehe