I’m more optimistic. People love things created by other people - especially artistic things.
AI can already create art to a very high standard, but does anybody care about what it produces? No, because there is no lived experience behind it, it’s not trying to communicate anything, and it was created effortlessly.
I think it’s possible AI will take over some music creation where the music is not the most important thing (music for commercials, TV and film) and also some pop based genres, but a lot of real music will continue to be made.
In terms of rendering , I’m sure it will get enormously better and I really have no idea how that will end up.
You’ve probably missed whats been going on at Twitter/X with the addition of auto-translate. It started with Japanese, suddenly all these Japanese who don’t speak English are mixing with American’s. It blew up into a viral love fest between the people of the two countries. Americans were delighted to find out how much Japanese people love our BBQ culture and Cowboys. And the Japanese were equally delighted to find out that American’s actually adore Japan, and don’t look down on them. The Bable Fish has been invented … seems like a good thing.
I’ve long felt that the problem for the AI developers is copyright. Unlike the visual arts industry, the music industry has done a good (or bad depending on your viewpoint) job of managing copyright. So if you’re going to make an AI, where are you going to get the exabytes of training data? I think this is one reason we haven’t seen anything yet.
AI cannot create art. The American Heritage Dictionary defines art as “The conscious use of the imagination in the production of objects intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful, as in the arrangement of forms, sounds, or words.” (Other dictionaries give similar definitions.) AI is not conscious, has no imagination, has no intentions, cannot contemplate, cannot appreciate, and has no concept of beauty. What Gen AI produces, by definition, is not art.
does anybody care about what it produces? No, because there is no lived experience behind it, it’s not trying to communicate anything, and it was created effortlessly.
Lots of people are claiming to have created things that was actually made by AI, tricking people into caring for AI slop. For example, there was recently a case where someone admitted to publishing hundreds of AI-generated novels under numerous pseudonyms without disclosing that they were AI. Also, lots of companies don’t care if something is real art or not; they will just do whatever will save them the most money without disclosing so.
I think it’s possible AI will take over some music creation where the music is not the most important thing (music for commercials, TV and film) and also some pop based genres, but a lot of real music will continue to be made.
AI albums are already dominating Spotify, where the music is the main point. Even for TV and film, music can be extremely important and shouldn’t be replaced by AI.
Whether you call it art or not, I think you would agree with me that what AI produces is fundamentally not interesting. We’re probably on the same page there.
Yes, there is a vast amount of AI music on Spotify, but that doesn’t defeat my point. There’s a lot of it because it is so easy to produce and unethical people are uploading it in vast quantities. But does that stop people producing good music? I don’t think so - what AI is producing is dull, derivative and generic. In some genres, that can be very successful. But not all.
Your point about people pretending to have created stuff themselves that was actually generated by AI is a good one. One of the reasons I quit Facebook was the relentless flow of AI content that people were pretending was their own. It was so obvious and depressing. I don’t know how many people were fooled.
However, if people know it’s AI generated they don’t react in the same way as if they know it’s human.
There will come a time when you won’t be able to tell the difference between AI and human. Bank on it. A lot of human produced music is already dull, derivative, and generic now (e.g. all of country music, in my opinion) and AI imitates it quite well already.
Will it reach Mozart levels? We’ll see.
No one can predict how far advanced it will be in 50 years (and I work in an adjacent field) so don’t be so quick to pass judgement.
Like it or not, it’s here and it’s not going away.
Of course, but it’s also an interesting statement on the future of the arts. In nearly every movie involving the future, directors almost universally shun depicting music of the time. It’s like they already know artists will someday be supplanted, and the populace will grow bored of the pablum generated by AI, leaving a society devoid of the beautiful.
