Cat’s out the bag now, just making a thread to document some of these before they get deleted because I find them #fascinating
Some are better than others obviously
Is @barleysugar AI all along??
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Far too many Kanye and Michael Jackson ones when searching.
This, though
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Need a cover of You Can Call Me Al and then the job’s done, IMO.
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I love that in the comments that there are accusations of plagiarism.
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saw this on the Beach Boys reddit the other day, someone did some sort of AI process to make a new version of Smile, I think using the later years Brian Wilson version but changing his vocals to be young Brian. Anyway the fans seemed to be into it. Given all the myths and nonsense with this album over the years, seems fair enough
Saw this on YouTube yesterday, didn’t think it sounded like Liam much at all really. Wouldn’t surprised if it’s bollocks and there’s no AI involved at all
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Probably not the thread for it - but do we see any way this technology won’t decimate/cheapen the work of artists even further? Or is that an old man reaction?
No tbh
Reckon initially though it’ll be used for patching up any rough sounding vocals for live albums (do they still exist?)
Think the Aisis album’s brilliant, personally. If you like scrappy sounding early Oasis then it’s a treat. It’s basically a lad rock band who’ve pasted his vocals over the top of their tunes but sounds really, really good in places. “Forever” would be an amazing comeback single
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Well, if you agree with Mark Fisher on art then we’ve already effectively been living in the regurgitated world of AI-based art for decades with people just bringing back old stuff and the capitalist world rewarding it, so that even Oasis were themselves already effectively AIsis.
I don’t really agree. I think music particularly (but also film and TV) has always gone through waves clearly very influenced by stuff that was 20-30 years previous and reworking it. I think we are instinctively in fear of AI but really you have to ask yourself how would Stranger Things be if it were a pure AI-generated concept?
Probably not right. Uncanny valley exists in all things, I reckon. Yes, Stranger Things is HUGELY made up of homages and throwbacks but it’s still very aware of ‘now’, very keenly designed around now.
What makes one piece of art a killer and another just a shallow attempt is something subtle but it’s about originality in some way or another, something AIs might come up with but probably not intuitively.
I’ve no doubt we’ll get more stuff based on AI ideas but the bits that will stick will be where the humans came back and refined it. I seem to recall in the 80s there were echoes of this in the way people in the music industry would react to drum machines and synths. It’s been decades and there isn’t a drum machine out there that can’t do exactly what a human drummer can do…and yet there are still an awful lot of human drummers.
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Fucking hell
You also wonder how quickly AI will be producing better work than people. Like particularly with electronic music. How long before it’s easier AI to spit out a decent track that sounds completely new and innovative and exciting than for someone to conceive of it? Particularly when it has access to near every bit of music ever recorded. I’d say it’s something that will arrive very quickly. We’re right on the cusp of technology that will change everything.
Like it or not a huge amount of human activity is about to become pretty obsolete, in particular, to the wealthy who have access and control of the machines. I’d always thought of AI meaning unemployed accountants etc. and, in an ideal world, a change that might free humans to do more creative things with their time. But this type of thing is showing that probably a lot of human art is going to become borderline obsolete too… though I imagine we’ll continue value art by humans on a somewhat different level.
It’s kind of terrifying, but I guess ripe with potential, and arrives at a time we’re screwed anyway. Beyond the impact on music, perhaps throwing in the AI chaos element can’t really harm things the way we’re going.
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Think also authenticity has become a huge thing in pop music in the last 15-20 years, if you look at the starts of today vs the hit factory productions of the 80s and 90s its so markedly different. Maybe that will go away again, but would you ever see the kind of Taylor Swift stanning for an AI? I’m not sure.
Would fear more if I was a film or TV composer to be honest, that feels like something ripe to be automated.
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As a writer - I typically work on projects that take one - two years to complete. The thought that AI will be able to scan works I’ve done before and then emulate them with new topics makes me feel sick. Of course, I’d like to think an artist’s own idiosyncrasies would mean they can always add something unpredictable to the mix (as well as the mistakes that computers probably wouldn’t make) - but very soon, artists will be competing with machines - and likely the ones who don’t embrace the technology on some level will get left behind.
And although that AI-generated picture that won that German photography competition recently looked immediately fake to me - clearly it didn’t to the judges. If you Google that Drake - Weeknd AI song and look at the YouTube comments, every one is gleefully saying how great it is/that it’ll replace Drake/artists overnight. You’d be a fool to ignore that knee jerk reaction I guess, but it just feels like a route to even more derivative work/a way of the industry completely eliminating artists from the equation. I want to tell myself that’s reactionary, but not bury my head in the sand…
Edit: and of course I don’t discount how fun it is for covers and mash ups etc too!
The idea that within - at the current pace things are moving - maybe a year or so are looking at a full on existential and capitalist re-evaluation of art and artists themselves is honestly… terrifying.
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Although I can imagine having fun or vibing to AI generated works on some level - I definitely agree with Nick Cave’s recent old man rant that a work of art is about human connection. I just think as with my Drake example above, many consumers simply won’t care.
On another level, I totally accept this might be hilariously navel gazing ‘Dylan’s gone electric!’ baseless fear mongering with hindsight.
But - taking that Taylor example: what if she started using it to write her albums? What if they were better? And she could make them faster? Then it’s an arms race and other artists would do the same to compete, with maybe the odd ‘human only’ album every few years in the same way song writers occasionally do an acoustic back to basics type thing. And of course the collaborations might even make ‘better’ or more appealing art on some level. But still - something would be lost.
Anyway - I’ve grumbled and worried and derailed this thread enough…
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Seriously why are there so many Kanye West ones of these
The idea in lots of discussion on this that artists will just have to embrace AI as another tool and innovate alongside it just seems to me to ignore the pace of change that appears to be coming. Also a lot of people who were able to scrape a living doing “merely” good or even really good work just won’t be able to in a few years.
Edit - my badly worded post already looks like shonky AI, the sky is falling