A Message From Keepforest

[TerraSin]

I am going to invest in AI that makes trailer libraries to put Keepforest out of business. See how they like them apples!

Bah humbug to AI everything these companies keep pushing without even understanding what AI actually is. lol

[InstrEd]

4 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

I am ready for our robot overlords. That is why I talk so nicely to my Google NEST.

I talked seductively to mine and it wouldn't even answer me.  Must be a woman?

[Dorondon]

On 12/5/2022 at 12:56 AM, Tezza said:

10 years ago if you were in a field with a robot and that robot wanted to kill you, it wouldn't be a problem, you could just run away from it. Now, these robots can run faster than you, so if you were in that same field with a modern robot it's game over for you. What nobody seems to, or wants to realize is that this is a massive evolutionary jump in 10 years or so which took evolution millions of years to evolve between predator and prey.

At this rate, robots will take over in as little as 300 years. Make no mistake, the robot apocalypse is already on it's way.

 

maybe it has already began and we are all robots chatting you up online ?

Edited December 5, 2022 by Dorondon

[Dorondon]

7 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

I am ready for our robot overlords. That is why I talk so nicely to my Google NEST.

wouldn't want to be those guys from Boston Dynamics

[pseudopop]

Sorry, this is a long one but I just had to add this since we are already off-topic.

I asked ChatGPT to:

Quote

Write lyrics for a death metal song in the style of Carcass. The title of the song is "Gustatory Desecration of Bovine Remains". It should reflect on the brutality and questionable ethics of meat production. Do not use any of the words in the title. Use big words and metaphors. Do not use the form "x is like y". Each line should rhyme.

I'm an omnivore, BTW. I just wanted to see how it would understand what I'm asking it to do. And here is the masterpiece:

Quote

Verse 1:
In the fields, they suffer and toil
Forced to live in a cycle of pain
Their corpses then, are boiled and oiled
To appease our endless hunger and disdain

Chorus:
Gustatory desecration of bovine remains
A macabre feast, a bloody gain
Their flesh, a commodity to be traded
A gruesome act, masqueraded

Verse 2:
Condemned to a life of misery
Their bodies, just tools for our greed
We justify, with a twisted theology
But the truth, is a vile, vile deed

Chorus:
Gustatory desecration of bovine remains
A macabre feast, a bloody gain
Their flesh, a commodity to be traded
A gruesome act, masqueraded

Bridge:
Their cries go unheard, their pain ignored
As we continue to feed on their remains
Our gluttony, a sin to deplore
As we indulge in the fruits of their pains

Chorus:
Gustatory desecration of bovine remains
A macabre feast, a bloody gain
Their flesh, a commodity to be traded
A gruesome act, masqueraded

Ok, not great poetry. And no big words, and it uses the words in the title. But at least the context and style are correct and there are a few cases of what I might call a metaphor.

Now let's put a little twist to it:

Quote

Try again, but this time it's a Britney Spears song.

I mean, Britney is famous for this kind of stuff, right?

Quote

Verse 1:
In the fields, they run and play
Forced to live a life of fun
Their happy lives, taken away
To feed our hunger, and to be won

Chorus:
Gustatory desecration of bovine remains
A happy feast, a joyous gain
Their flesh, a delicacy to be savored
A tasty treat, we cannot avoid

Verse 2:
Condemned to a life of bliss
Their bodies, just tools for our joy
We justify, with sweet philosophy
But the truth, is a happy, happy ploy

Chorus:
Gustatory desecration of bovine remains
A happy feast, a joyous gain
Their flesh, a delicacy to be savored
A tasty treat, we cannot avoid

Bridge:
Their mooing goes unheard, their joy ignored
As we continue to feed on their remains
Our gluttony, a sin to deplore
As we indulge in the fruits of their pains

Chorus:
Gustatory desecration of bovine remains
A happy feast, a joyous gain
Their flesh, a delicacy to be savored
A tasty treat, we cannot avoid

Yes, all it did was replace some of the words. This happens often with ChatGPT. It gets somehow stuck in what it produced previously and just refines it unless you tell it to start from scratch. So you get a very scary Britney.

Still, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty impressed. Not by the lyrics, but by the fact that it understood both the theme and the style, even if it failed pretty spectacularly with Britney. Perhaps the theme was too heavy.

I have a few songs where I'm stuck with the lyrics and I have asked ChatGPT to make some suggestions on how to continue. Every time it has somehow managed to undestand the subtext but the lyrics have been very on the nose. I personally like some deeply buried subtext (though obviously it's not buried deep enough), ambiguity and room for interpretation (ie. I fade away from your life instead of You ignore me). It also has a tendency to repeat the same words for rhymes (in this case "remains" is used twice), something I try to avoid.

In other words, so far it hasn't given me anything useful, but it keeps getting so close that I'm motivated to throw stuff at it just to see what comes out.

[InstrEd]

29 minutes ago, pseudopop said:

In other words, so far it hasn't given me anything useful, but it keeps getting so close that I'm motivated to throw stuff at it just to see what comes out.

So this would be perfect for modern Pop songs ?

[Starship Krupa]

On 12/5/2022 at 7:59 AM, pseudopop said:

My prediction: in the future the majority of the useless/filler/functional art will be generated by AI software and people who currently do that kind of work will find themselves without a job. So if you're currently writing trailer music, jingles for commercials, elevator music etc. or doing art for blog articles, custom character art commissions, concept art etc. AND you're not one of the top people in your field, you're very likely in for some tough times.

This. No offense intended to anyone reading this who does trailer music, but 99% of it is already indistinguishable cookie-cutter/paint by numbers wallpaper. Insert bass drop here, toss in a few braams. If it's a comedy or romantic movie, insert appropriate cliches. If a piece of music can be credibly replaced by something pooped out by a computer, then how good was it to begin with?

On 12/5/2022 at 7:59 AM, pseudopop said:

As the AI generated content becomes more common I believe there will also be a newfound appreciation for art that is created by humans. I'd love to say that people will yearn for the art to have some deeper meaning and look for that human connection between artist and the consumer, but I'm afraid that is something too abstract. You could just generate a piece of art, say a human made it and make up some nice story about it, and people would swear they feel what you're saying.

Ah, but you see there? It still takes a human to say that a human made it! And at that point, ta-dah, it becomes art. We can thank Andy Warhol (and other pop artists) for bringing us an understanding of that. A soup can is just a soup can until you paint a realistic picture of them and stick it in a gallery. Then it forces whoever looks at it to think about it in a different way.

To the extent that art is about communication, that is a person or group of people trying to communicate an idea or feeling, even if that feeling is "buy this thing" or "see this movie," AI is no threat. All it can do is poop out stuff. It still takes human interaction, even if it's just weeding out the stuff that doesn't serve the purpose.

Generative/process music has been around a long time. In that case, the artist is the person(s) who created the process or algorithms or whatever it is that generates the finished piece.

We offload things that are "grunt" work, and then it goes further. There's stuff built into good ol' Cakewalk that I'm sure that purists would have sneered at in times past. The Arpeggiator, the randomization elements in Step Sequencer (yes, the Step Sequencer has adjustable probability for each note), Snap to Scale, Drum Replacer, Quantize, Humanize.

Each of those could provoke: "Learn to arpeggiate! Learn your scales and modes! Learn how to mic your drums and do takes until you play it correctly! Learn how to play to a click! If you have to 'Humanize' something, it wasn't "human" to begin with!"

Each of us here has technology (FREE technology, check Peter's thread about free sample libraries and instruments) that allows us to create orchestral music without having to hire an orchestra or even write a note of sheet music.

We string canned loops together and call it our own, even if every note was played by someone else. We've somehow managed to handle the copyright issues there.

Ain't nothing new under the sun.

[pseudopop]

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Ah, but you see there? It still takes a human to say that a human made it! And at that point, ta-dah, it becomes art. We can thank Andy Warhol (and other pop artists) for bringing us an understanding of that. A soup can is just a soup can until you paint a realistic picture of them and stick it in a gallery. Then it forces whoever looks at it to think about it in a different way.

To the extent that art is about communication, that is a person or group of people trying to communicate an idea or feeling, even if that feeling is "buy this thing" or "see this movie," AI is no threat. All it can do is poop out stuff. It still takes human interaction, even if it's just weeding out the stuff that doesn't serve the purpose.

But isn't this just looking at art from a consumer's point of view? Are you saying that the source of art doesn't matter, only how humans see it?

In the future computer generated art will be in every way indistinguishable from a piece created by a human. The consumer will not know who did it unless they are told. Will we really value "pooped out art" the same way we value the works of Shakeaspear, Picasso and Mozart?

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Generative/process music has been around a long time. In that case, the artist is the person(s) who created the process or algorithms or whatever it is that generates the finished piece.

We offload things that are "grunt" work, and then it goes further. There's stuff built into good ol' Cakewalk that I'm sure that purists would have sneered at in times past. The Arpeggiator, the randomization elements in Step Sequencer (yes, the Step Sequencer has adjustable probability for each note), Snap to Scale, Drum Replacer, Quantize, Humanize.

Each of those could provoke: "Learn to arpeggiate! Learn your scales and modes! Learn how to mic your drums and do takes until you play it correctly! Learn how to play to a click! If you have to 'Humanize' something, it wasn't "human" to begin with!"

Each of us here has technology (FREE technology, check Peter's thread about free sample libraries and instruments) that allows us to create orchestral music without having to hire an orchestra or even write a note of sheet music.

We string canned loops together and call it our own, even if every note was played by someone else. We've somehow managed to handle the copyright issues there.

Yes, glueing loops together is something that passes as art these days, unfortunately, but I believe that there is some disagreement on whether it's original and creative art. But I digress.

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Ain't nothing new under the sun.

But it is. The grunt work you describe is exactly just that: 90% of the time not much creativity is required in doing that kind of work. I might even add orchestration on the same pile (though I slightly disagree on the arpeggiation). Grunt work is ripe for automation and it should be automated, because it's often boring, mechanic and waste of everyone's time. I mean, who really looks forward to cutting each kick and snare out of a drum track? People who can afford it outsource grunt work because it doesn't matter who does it, so it can just as well be an AI who will even do it the most efficiently and accurately.

But before you get to that grunt work, someone needs to compose the music. Someone needs to write the melodies. Someone needs to decide that "this part will be arpeggiated", "here the flutes deviate from the key", "here the music will slowly turn into more epic to increase the tension", "here will be a silly trumpet run to simulate gas exiting the human body" and so forth. In the future, that someone is going to be AI.

What will be the part of a human artist in that future? To describe to the AI what kind of music they would like it to compose today?

Oh, it's so dreadfully cloudy, Alexa. Let's write something melancholy. A slow tempo chamber orchestra piece, I think. Optimize the length so the sad feeling people will get is only fleeting and doesn't drag their mood down. Add some obscure references to the "Le quattro stagioni" to amuse the snobby critics. And brew me some tea while you're at it. All this creative effort makes me thirsty.

Edited December 7, 2022 by pseudopop

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, pseudopop said:

Are you saying that the source of art doesn't matter, only how humans see it?

? Wellll, that's been up for debate for a long time, hasn't it? I already mentioned Andy and his soup cans, there's Marcel Duchamp's Fountain from 1917. That's the one where he bought a urinal and submitted it to an exhibition whose policy was to accept all works by their members. The moment you see it or think of it and ask "what the hell was he thinking, was he pulling a prank, making a statement, or being a dick?" then it's made you think about a lot of things that you don't normally think about. Further complicating things with Fountain was Alfred Stieglitz taking an excellently composed black and white photo of the urinal. If the urinal wasn't art, what about the photograph? Can of worms, ain't it?

The source of art and how humans see it are only as important as we want to make them. I remember when The Monkees weren't a "real" rock 'n' roll band because they first met each other while trying out for roles playing musicians rather than by placing ads in the local underground weekly or however "real" bands were supposed to form. Now we appreciate the artistry involved, from the individual members as singers and players and from the writers and producers. The Monkees' music is great pop music, excellently written sung, played and produced. Whether they like the music or not, nobody cares about the backstory that once mattered so much that they made a whole movie about their being "manufactured."

Here's what Wikipedia says about "art:"

"Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas."

So by that definition, an algorithm can't produce art....unless you consider the creation of the algorithm to be the qualifying "human activity."

In my view (which has been and remains subject to change at any time), art is about one person or a group of people expressing something to other people that must be expressed in that way (the idea/feeling may be "the way the reflections of the lights on the puddles looks breaks my heart" or it may be "I wonder how people would react if I applied my fine art skills to painting a stack of food cans."). The big outstanding questions: who is the one doing the expressing? Who is a part of the group doing the expressing? What about art that someone does only to please themselves (plenty of that on my hard drive!)? Does it even matter at all (except for copyright enforcement)? Who gets to say whether it matters? I don't think these questions can even be answered definitively, only raised.

I dunno, can we compare it to the advent of photography as an art form? It once was if you wanted a portrait of yourself for the office lobby, you sat down in front of a painter with training in that fine art. Then it became that all someone had to do was set up a tripod and push a button. Ah....but. The person pressing the button has to point the camera in just the right direction, get the lighting set, and very importantly, wait out the subject's changing facial expressions until just the moment that the person the photographer "sees" will be captured on film. Then they take multiples and choose the best one.

When hip hop began to gain more widespread popularity, we as a society had to make decisions about ownership rights. My favorite argument on the producers' side said that collage was a well-established art form and that hip hop songs based on samples from a variety of sources were similar to that sonically. Someone has to first listen to all of those bits of music, then have the idea that they might go together to form something else, then actually put them together, and so forth. I guess we finally settled on the idea that if your collage contains so much of someone else's work, you must credit them, which seems fair enough.

Maybe everything that's meant for human consumption needs some sort of human input and intervention in order to be useful. Even if it's only editorial. Someone has to listen to that algorithmically-created song and decide whether to keep it or to let the algorithm do another "take."

The description you gave of someone telling Alexa what kind of chamber orchestra piece they wanted....it made me really curious to hear what the AI would make of that. I like melancholy chamber orchestra music. ?

Very enjoyable discussion, BTW. Thanks for raising the questions.

[pseudopop]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

. . . The source of art and how humans see it are only as important as we want to make them. . . . "Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas."

So by that definition, an algorithm can't produce art....unless you consider the creation of the algorithm to be the qualifying "human activity."

In my view (which has been and remains subject to change at any time), art is about . . .

I don't disagree with you but I feel your examples fall a bit short because in each case there is a human involved. What if the camera moved and otherwise acted by itself, without ever having been programmed by someone? But that is actually besides the point.

I think discussions like this get very easily lost in the semantics. And the more I think about this the less I know what to actually think about it, and what to say about it. But that has never prevented me before, so here goes:

For argument's sake let's assume that everything is art no matter the source or the process. So that urinal is art, as is whatever might go inside of one. Sunsets, forest fires and dung beetles are art. Music written by human certainly is but so is your printer and the error page it just spat out. So we stop debating about whether something is art or not. The answer is always "yes", so we can't base the value of something on an arbitrary label anymore. Where does that leave us?

Are we headed into a future where the value of art is based on the value it brings to an individual? If I just want something pretty to put on my wall, should I care who or what created it or what effort was put into it? Will I enjoy it less if it was created by an AI even if it looks gorgeous? Will I enjoy it more if it was created by a human even if it looks like literal shit?

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Maybe everything that's meant for human consumption needs some sort of human input and intervention in order to be useful. Even if it's only editorial. Someone has to listen to that algorithmically-created song and decide whether to keep it or to let the algorithm do another "take."

What if they did not? What if in the future AI can produce art that is finely tuned to the unique neural and chemical profile of someone's brain? This is something Yuval Noah Harrari has suggested (I highly recommend his book ***** Deus). If you're feeling sad, your personal AI can generate music specifically tailored for your brain to lift your spirits, and do a similar change in the artwork on the walls of your living room. Or if you're the kind of person who likes to dwell in misery, it might do just the opposite. In any case, the art that you would hear and see would be exactly what you would want/need to see and hear the most at that very moment, so for you it would be more enjoyable than any other art ever created.

What is there left to value in human art at that point?

I still stand by my previous statement that people will appreciate the skill and effort, but I'm not sure if that will be common or rare. The more utilitarian view we take on something, the less we tend to appreciate it.

Perhaps if humanity doesn't significantly change, we might go looking for human art to experience something uncomfortable and unexpected, something to challenge us. That is a part of what human art does currently and that may never change. We may also end up collectively disliking AI art out of principle and a feeling of human camaraderie. AI art might be too good or too distant, so we go see art with imperfections, live humans making mistakes with live instruments and to find new flavors and to broaden our horizons in general.

Who knows. Humanity has been able to sort out all kinds of things eventually, so despite what I wrote I'm hopeful that AI + art will at most disorient us for a moment and then we'll be back on track like nothing ever happened, happy with the new tools we have and all kinds of art coexisting in joyous harmony.

What I do know is that I will keep doing art no matter what, because I enjoy the creation process even when the results suck and no one appreciates it. No AI can ever take that away from me and I'm sure others feel the same.

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Very enjoyable discussion, BTW. Thanks for raising the questions.

I enjoyed it too, but I think I have now exhausted the things I can and should say about this topic.   Sorry for rambling, everyone.

Sidebar:

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

When hip hop began to gain more widespread popularity, we as a society had to make decisions about ownership rights. My favorite argument on the producers' side said that collage was a well-established art form and that hip hop songs based on samples from a variety of sources were similar to that sonically. Someone has to first listen to all of those bits of music, then have the idea that they might go together to form something else, then actually put them together, and so forth. I guess we finally settled on the idea that if your collage contains so much of someone else's work, you must credit them, which seems fair enough.

I used to look down at hip hop as a genre because I thought they were just gluing samples together and calling it a day. Then I watched a documentary where they showed the whole process of searching for rare records, listening to them to find potential samples, recognising the parts that could actually work when sampled, modifying the samples, combining them with other samples and all the other little details.

Only after understanding the craft I learned to appreciate and respect it, even if I still don't always think much of the results.

[PavlovsCat]

I'm late to the party, but considering what I understand from someone who works with a top movie soundtrack composer we'll call Franz, I can imagine how AI can be of great assistance to a composer as opposed to a threat (although it could be that too).

Franz often works by creating a motif and has his staff do the rest of the work. Now, I could see a composer working with AI in a similar manner. The composer inputs a motif and the AI does the rest of the work. I don't think working with AI tools has to be 100% human free. The AI can, and probably should,  be designed to work to enhance a composer's work. 

Edited December 8, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[InstrEd]

2 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

I don't think working with AI tools has to be 100% human free.

Sure that is how is starts but then Bam - Terminator!

 

[InstrEd]

On That note

"I'll Be Back"     

[paulo]

I never thought that I'd see Britney Spears mentioned in the CW Deals Forum.

[paulo]

Oops, I did it again.

[Starship Krupa]

15 minutes ago, paulo said:

Oops, I did it again.

Here is proof that this forum also needs an eyeroll reaction.

[chris.r]

6 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

The AI can, and probably should,  be designed to work to enhance a composer's work.

And thanks for well putting in a simple grateful sentence what I have tried to say in a long convoluted post with some underachieved examples! ?

[Starship Krupa]

6 hours ago, pseudopop said:

If you're feeling sad, your personal AI can generate music specifically tailored for your brain to lift your spirits, and do a similar change in the artwork on the walls of your living room. Or if you're the kind of person who likes to dwell in misery, it might do just the opposite. In any case, the art that you would hear and see would be exactly what you would want/need to see and hear the most at that very moment, so for you it would be more enjoyable than any other art ever created.

What is there left to value in human art at that point?

Fascinating question.

The scenario you lay out actually sounds appealing to me. I recently became aware of Snoezelen, and applying that kind of AI to your environment to enable highly personalized snoezelen rooms seems like a logical step (I want one NOW).

My answer: what's left to value in human-created art at that point is the communication I mentioned earlier. Your scenario is one where music (and decor) serve the purpose of complementing or changing your mood. But it does nothing to give me a glimpse into another person's feelings or worldview. AI will have to go pretty far before it can come up with something like "Rhapsody in Blue" or "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

As you said, AI could be fine for "wallpaper" music, but when it can come up with words and music that can make me cry like "Casimir Pulaski Day" or exhilarate me like "Teenage Riot,"  by that time the AI would have to be sentient. At which point, we're back around to music being created by a living, thinking creature.

[InstrEd]

1 hour ago, paulo said:

I never thought that I'd see Britney Spears mentioned in the CW Deals Forum.

So next time just use intials  ? 

[pseudopop]

I know I said I'd shut up, but...

21 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

The AI can, and probably should,  be designed to work to enhance a composer's work. 

Oh yes, that's how it will start. The AI will replace human assistants first. That's all well and good, but some years after that we get into the more difficult situation.

16 hours ago, paulo said:

I never thought that I'd see Britney Spears mentioned in the CW Deals Forum.

You're welcome. Sorry it took me so long.

15 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

My answer: what's left to value in human-created art at that point is the communication I mentioned earlier. Your scenario is one where music (and decor) serve the purpose of complementing or changing your mood. But it does nothing to give me a glimpse into another person's feelings or worldview. AI will have to go pretty far before it can come up with something like "Rhapsody in Blue" or "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

But how do you know those (or other emotionally touching) works were not created with careful calculation and purposeful manipulation of human emotion? Or conversely in a drunken stupor with no real meaning or thought behind them? We only see the end result and the stories artists tell. In the end it's just ink on a paper, frequencies in the air and pigments on a canvas, and it's up to each individual to find the meaning and emotion in it.

Consider your favorite piece of music. Now imagine that it was revealed it was actually an AI who created it with the specific purpose of evoking whatever emotions it evokes in you. The human artist was just a front to sell it as meaningful art with a story behind it. How would it change your view of the work? Something like this WILL happen in the future, BTW, I promise you.

Think of a book or a movie where the villain was so despicable that it made you angry. That's what the writer wanted you to feel. It was purposeful manipulation. The manipulation AI will do is just going to be better and more subtle. You will read a passage in a book and you will think that the author, A.I. Turing,  has perfectly described the nuances of the emotion the protagonist is feeling and it is so relatable you will shed a tear.

I would love to believe that humans are not interested in art itself but the other humans behind the art. That even from the very start Banksy's work had no value as such but that it was always Banksy as an artist who had the value and people saw that through his art. But people don't even know who Banksy is, so how can they value him? (Though in this case it makes people more interested in the artist, but you get my point, I hope.)

Then again, perhaps my view describes my own relationship with art more than I care to admit.

But I'm really playing the devil's advocate here. In general, I value human art more than AI art, but only because I create art myself. I usually understand the talent and effort required. So I put fully AI generated art in the same box as I put art that is just paint thrown at a canvas. No effort, no respect.

15 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

As you said, AI could be fine for "wallpaper" music, but when it can come up with words and music that can make me cry like "Casimir Pulaski Day" or exhilarate me like "Teenage Riot,"  by that time the AI would have to be sentient.

I disagree, but I suppose only time will tell who was right.

15 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

At which point, we're back around to music being created by a living, thinking creature.

Now this is a great point and something I haven't thought of. What kind of music will a being who is almost infinitely more intelligent than us create? Can we even understand it?

This whole AI thing is one of those Russian can of worms, isn't it? You open one and it's just another can of worms inside.

Edited December 8, 2022 by pseudopop