So .. is AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) coming for us Musicians?

[aidan o driscoll]

Interesting times ahead I reckon, as this whole AI thing develops. Could happen sooner than we think. Already in Japan re Manga Comics apparently an AI made a Manga Graphic comic in 6 weeks that would take a human artist 2 years

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/japan-first-ai-generated-manga-art-intl-hnk/index.html

Here is a new AI DAW based on Chatgpt:

https://www.audiocipher.com/post/ai-daw

 

Recently, a whole new OASIS album was released with an AI Liam Gallagher .. called AISIS. Is this just the beginning? 

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/04/20/someones-made-a-new-oasis-album-with-ai-and-liam-gallagher-thinks-it-is-mega

 

Are you a DJ? Well SPOTIFY has got your number it seems:

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/spotifys-new-dj-feature-is-the-first-step-into-the-streamers-ai-powered-future/

"The AI DJ’s voice, meanwhile, was created using technology Spotify acquired from Sonatic last year and is based on that of Spotify’s head of Cultural Partnerships Xavier “X” Jernigan, host of Spotify’s now-defunct morning show podcast, “The Get Up.” Surprisingly, the voice sounds incredibly realistic and not at all robotic."

 

So let the discussion begin

PS - Mmm ... will we have an AI Cakewalk?

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by aidan o driscoll

[Bapu]

Who is this Al everyone is taking about? Al Yankovic?

[aidan o driscoll]

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230507-the-jobs-ai-wont-take-yet

"That doesn’t necessarily mean all jobs that are considered ‘creative’ are safe. In fact, things like graphic design and visual art-related roles may be among the first to go"

https://fox17.com/news/local/nashville-tn-google-news-artificial-intelligence-us-senator-bill-hagerty-pushes-copyright-office-to-protect-singers-songwriters-as-ai-advances#

"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) has requested the U.S. Copyright Office to protect the material of singers and songwriters as the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) poses issues within the music industry."

An opinion - https://soundmatters.tv/ai-and-the-future-of-music-creation/

https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2023/05/the-summer-of-deep-drakes-how-generative-ai-is-creating-new-music

"This technology is already having a profound impact on how music is consumed and created and calls into question how well equipped copyright law is to handle AI's growing impact on the music industry."

 

That chinese proverb "May you live in interesting times" applies?

 

 

Edited May 15, 2023 by aidan o driscoll

[Tony Carpenter]

I feel very safe at this stage.. LOL.

[Esteban Villanova]

AI art is soulless. It's derivative and made by a machine with no consciousness of its own death. The fact that this is a thing shows that modern people don't care about the 'soul' anymore. The end is nigh.

[aidan o driscoll]

4 minutes ago, Esteban Villanova said:

AI art is soulless. It's derivative and made by a machine with no consciousness of its own death. The fact that this is a thing shows that modern people don't care about the 'soul' anymore. The end is nigh.

Yip @Esteban Villanova .. spot on. BUT for big biz in the music and film scenes its all about the bottom line and control. So getting something done faster cheaper and with more control will be the joy they have for AI artists. Add to this the fact that for too long now ( started in 90s with napster ) MUSIC has been devalued so current generations now expect all this for FREE.

We can moan about the soulessness etc but most likely it will be only us creatives that worry about this Im afraid. However I do see AI developing rapidly to in some way sort this

Edited May 15, 2023 by aidan o driscoll

[aidan o driscoll]

31 minutes ago, Tony Carpenter said:

I feel very safe at this stage.. LOL.

[craigb]

Judging by what I've seen of the so-called Popular music lately, AI can't produce songs dumb enough to chart very well...

[Byron Dickens]

 

[Jimbo 88]

I don't need a machine to tell me how to generate a  chord progression or a melody or how to eq.   What i can use is AI vocals to let me hear my compositions ( I am already doing this and loving it).

AI will be great for making suggestions, but not for doing anything original because it can only go back and use what has already been done. I've tried writing songs with AI and if you don't have a great starting point or story it's not going to do you much good.  Again it's great at making suggestions.  AI for songwriting is a glorified thesaurus.

Band in a Box and any drum loop program  do pretty much the same thing already.   We've had AI in different versions for years.

[Esteban Villanova]

1 hour ago, craigb said:

Judging by what I've seen of the so-called Popular music lately, AI can't produce songs dumb enough to chart very well...

That's a great point. AI music comes at a time where culture is so dead anyways that it hardly makes a difference in the output.

[aidan o driscoll]

57 minutes ago, Jimbo 88 said:

I don't need a machine to tell me how to generate a  chord progression or a melody or how to eq.   What i can use is AI vocals to let me hear my compositions ( I am already doing this and loving it).

AI will be great for making suggestions, but not for doing anything original because it can only go back and use what has already been done. I've tried writing songs with AI and if you don't have a great starting point or story it's not going to do you much good.  Again it's great at making suggestions.  AI for songwriting is a glorified thesaurus.

Band in a Box and any drum loop program  do pretty much the same thing already.   We've had AI in different versions for years.

Yes Jim, but TBH it wont stop you or I producing music .. However where it could cause issues is in the employment of musicians/artists in various settings who would normally be producing audio but  now replaced by AI to do same job.

Many here are looking at this AI and saying nope it will have no effect on me in making my music, I will continue. That is correct. But where the effect will be is on jobs in the music and graphics and film  industry where the corporates will see AI as in there control, cheaper and faster so more profit for them. Dont need no pesky troublesome demanding humans no more

Edited May 15, 2023 by aidan o driscoll

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

As mentioned before, AI is very good at shallow knowledge. Once you start getting into stuff humans can do without even thinking about, it trips up and starts making mistakes.

Plus I'm fairly confident it will never sound like the music I do, mostly because it would require someone interested in it enough to train the model using it.

[AndyB01]

I asked ChatGPT to 'write' a song recently - I gave it a brief 'back story' and it produced a couple of verses, chorus and outro. Lots of cliches, a couple of questionable rhymes but I've probably written worse. 🤣

The initial chord progression however was not so impressive, basically a simple C, Am, F and G. So I asked it to add some seventh, diminished and augmented chords. It did - and whilst some of these worked - some were fairly dissonant and not something I'd have used.

Overall I was fairly impressed, not only with what was produced but the speed at which it produced it.

Do I feel threatened by AI - not really - the initial bubble will burst once the hype fades, there will no doubt be a degree of push back before it finds its niche.

It'll certainly be interesting to see how things progress from here.

[Tim Smith]

AI will be a choice. I think it degrades music in general. Not sure if you've ever seen those AI generated pics based on programmed suggestions. While sometimes fairly realistic, it isn't really art made by people.

I guess I wouldn't feel very accomplished knowing I stuffed something AI together, even though it might sound better than what I can actually do.

 

[craigb]

Did any of you check out my friend's last live stream that I posted on here: 

He uses a lot of AI generated video although he plays all the music himself.

 

[RBH]

Real musicians will be the " rare, vintage, boutique " versions of music makers - that  turns down requests for dumb songs.

[Jimbo 88]

5 hours ago, aidan o driscoll said:

Yes Jim, but TBH it wont stop you or I producing music .. However where it could cause issues is in the employment of musicians/artists in various settings who would normally be producing audio but  now replaced by AI to do same job.

Many here are looking at this AI and saying nope it will have no effect on me in making my music, I will continue. That is correct. But where the effect will be is on jobs in the music and graphics and film  industry where the corporates will see AI as in there control, cheaper and faster so more profit for them. Dont need no pesky troublesome demanding humans no more

Point well taken.  But I am way past that.  That already happened to me around 2010 when music libraries sprung up and every band started making there tracks available for film and TV.  There are about 30,000 songs uploaded everyday already.  It already bit me.  Just like how I bit the old guys back in the 1980's when midi was invented and i figured out how to create tracks without a band being recorded in a million dollar studio.

[smallstonefan]

I've been spending a lot of time with OpenAI and MidJourney the last few weeks.

It started as exploration to see how I might use it in my business, and the last thing I thought AI would have an impact on is the creative fields. I have now come to realize that may be the very first area to get hit. MidJourney's ability to generate art is mind-blowing once you wrap your head around creating prompts. I found it a challenge to create prompts at first, so I actually trained ChatGPT to create prompts for MidJourney - yes, I trained an AI to help me get better results from another AI.

For those of you who think it's not good enough and it won't be in the near future - I'm betting on the other side of the transaction. The rate at which these things get better will stun people and catch them totally off guard.

This is future, and it's closer than most people think.

[Jimbo 88]

I heard someone say (while discussing AI generating legal arguments), "AI won't eliminate lawyers, but there will be lawyers who use AI and lawyers who don't".   Same is going to happen in the music field.  The ones using will be more productive.