The final devaluation of music ? Learn about Suno,Udio and exactly what A.I. is up to - scary stuff.........

[musicbassman]

In this video from ColdFusion, the inexorable and rapid rise of AI generated music is carefully explained, including history, ethics and copyright.

Grab a coffee and get up to speed with what's going on. You might be amazed and possibly a bit frightened. I know I was.  😳

 

 

[Marky L]

Not had a chance to watch this yet, but certainly will.

 

As I understand, right at the moment, AI is churning out derivative, cheesy nonsense that has no depth or staying power.. but isn't that what "the kids" are happy to absorb these days? But then, pop has always been a bit throw away, except there are a lot of classic "bangers" we still love from the wonderful charts of the 60's, 70's and 80's. Will there be any AI future classics?

[BigRedX]

Given that it appears to be more click-bait from Rick Beato I'm tempted not to watch it. IMO he comes across as a sad old man railing against modern technology when that boat has very much sailed, producing videos that deliberately mis-use and mis-represent the technology he's against in order to pander to his core audience of equally sad old men. Either that or he really is very stupid and hasn't understood how the technology should be used creatively.

 

All the AI generated music I've heard so far has either been very poor (both technically and creatively), or has required so much input and intervention by people who actually understand music and audio production, that really it would have been just as quick to make the tracks without using any AI.

 

I'm sure the day will come when this is no longer the case, but until AI starts spontaneously producing interesting and original new music without any user intervention or prompting, but simply because it NEEDS to, much like human song writers and composers, the truly creative won't have anything to worry about.

 

I work in graphic design where AI has been in use for quite a long time and even though many of the features are there IMO for the artistically challenged, some can definitely help speed up the design process. Last year my band used AI generated graphics to produce the cover art for our "Christmas" single. The cover for our previous single which I created based on ideas supplied by our singer took two weeks (working off and on) and 8 iterations before everyone was happy with the results, and this time around we needed it doing quicker. Even so it took several hours of one of the band members supplying prompts and refining parameters before we got something that was sufficiently good and close to what we wanted. I think that had I had the time to do it myself the "old fashioned" way it wouldn't have taken me much longer and the result would have been 100% what I wanted at least, circumstances were against me then.

[Burns-bass]

21 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Given that it appears to be more click-bait from Rick Beato I'm tempted not to watch it. IMO he comes across as a sad old man railing against modern technology when that boat has very much sailed, producing videos that deliberately mis-use and mis-represent the technology he's against in order to pander to his core audience of equally sad old men. Either that or he really is very stupid and hasn't understood how the technology should be used creatively.

 

All the AI generated music I've heard so far has either been very poor (both technically and creatively), or has required so much input and intervention by people who actually understand music and audio production, that really it would have been just as quick to make the tracks without using any AI.

 

I'm sure the day will come when this is no longer the case, but until AI starts spontaneously producing interesting and original new music without any user intervention or prompting, but simply because it NEEDS to, much like human song writers and composers, the truly creative won't have anything to worry about.

 

I work in graphic design where AI has been in use for quite a long time and even though many of the features are there IMO for the artistically challenged, some can definitely help speed up the design process. Last year my band used AI generated graphics to produce the cover art for our "Christmas" single. The cover for our previous single which I created based on ideas supplied by our singer took two weeks (working off and on) and 8 iterations before everyone was happy with the results, and this time around we needed it doing quicker. Even so it took several hours of one of the band members supplying prompts and refining parameters before we got something that was sufficiently good and close to what we wanted. I think that had I had the time to do it myself the "old fashioned" way it wouldn't have taken me much longer and the result would have been 100% what I wanted at least, circumstances were against me then.

 

100% agree with this. 

 

What we're likely to see if the increasing importance of live performance and human interaction. We're seeing people losing trust (and faith) in digital media. When you can't be certain what you're reading, seeing and hearing is true, you'll look to validate it through your own experience. 

 

Current iterations of AI are useless for stuff like content generation. (I know because I work with it and see it every day.) But in a few years time, it'll likely be indistinguishable from human-generated content, at which point the value of that will disappear completely. My business, for example, won't exist in 5 years time in the way it does now. That's not scaremongering, it's true – and it will be the same for many other roles, professions and entire sectors.

 

We can chose to embrace AI and allow it to perform transactional roles and socialising the benefits. Or we can let it be owned by billionaires who cream off the profits while the rest of us suffer.

 

I have a hunch what will happen...

 

 

 

 

[musicbassman]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

Given that it appears to be more click-bait from Rick Beato I'm tempted not to watch it. IMO he comes across as a sad old man railing against modern technology

 

I respectfully suggest you watch the video before passing comment. And it's not a Beato video. He's just briefly interviewed in part of this.

[BigRedX]

18 minutes ago, musicbassman said:

I respectfully suggest you watch the video before passing comment. And it's not a Beato video. He's just briefly interviewed in part of this.

 

I'm going to. However the fact that he's mentioned in the title says to me a lot about the sort of audience it's going to be aimed at. 

[Alexx]

Adam Neeley did a good video on this recently. He sort of accepts that musical output is perfectly manageable for AI, but draws a distinction between that and the 'Turing test' of performing music, which he reckons is not plausible (albeit partly because 'hands'). It's interesting to reflect that all this may ultimately lead to a re-evaluation of the value of music as a live performance medium as opposed to a  commercial output medium which is pretty much what it became over the course of the twentieth century. But that's just my speculation and clearly some way off. 

 

https://youtu.be/N8NyEjB_XeA?si=7f1mgnkIQbZFTrrZ

 

Edit: I haven't yet watched the OP video, but will do. 

Edited May 10 by Alexx

[NHM]

I've just watched the video and learned a lot. I can see AI could threaten the livelihood of some professional musicians, especially those desk-based composers. I think people will always want to be entertained by live musicians whether it is in the concert hall or the local pub, and thus some people might engage with making AI compositions while others will still have the desire to play an instrument or create a score. Perhaps in a few years time AI will write symphonies greater than Mahler did; Beato's comment on the difference between hearing and listening is important, as once we talked about 'elevator music' or 'bubble gum' to define music that fills a space but provides little other stimulation. We will need to reappraise the state of play when the consensus is that AI can make better music than humans can, which in itself might well be a wonder to behold.

[MacDaddy]

Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter about Chat GPT and human creativity.

 

 

 

 

 

[BigRedX]

Right, I've watched the video and for me the most surprising thing was Rick Beato's generally positive comments. Other than that there was nothing new.

 

The sky still isn't falling.

 

From everything I have seen AI composition is still very much at the stage most of us were at when we were writing our first few songs, with our primary influences still very obviously on show, and the problem isn't that AI is taking away from musicians and composers, but more that it is likely to be sued for plagiarism. This for me is why AI music in the way that it is currently being marketed is not ready for public consumption and should not really be in the public domain. Even the very derivative output still requires a lot of well thought out user input to get anything close to original. That part was conveniently glossed over in the video. 

 

Admittedly as musicians and composers we're going to be more critical than the average listener and sometimes we forget that music isn't as important to a lot of people and definitely nowhere near as important these days as it was when most of us were teenagers in the 50s, 60s 70s and 80s. So the output of AI music generation systems may well be acceptable for those for whom music is simply there because the alternative would be unpalatable silence. However these people are not our audience and never will be our audience.

 

There's a far more realistic video about trying to compose just using AI tools that I saw recently. The biggest thing I took away from that is just how far AI still has to go before it comes remotely close to being able to make the artistic and technical decisions that composers and sound engineers make all, the time without really being aware of them. IIRC the only AI components that made the final cut were some of the lyric generation and a voice replacer to make the vocals sound like Dua Lipa and even then the composer had to input a real singer who already sounded close before they got acceptable results. Everything else was discarded in favour of human generated content.

 

Where AI music is going to have an impact soon is "library music" and if I was a composer in this area I'd be looking at repositioning myself as an "AI Wrangler". In the same way that many keyboard players and producers in the 70s and 80s had people behind the scenes to program synth sounds, and understand and work all that new technology in the studio and at gigs, there will be new opportunities for those who have the skills to come up with usable and appropriate AI music output in the quickest possible time.

 

For the rest of us the sky still isn't failing.

[MacDaddy]

There's much scaremongering about AI at the moment. AI is actually a misnomer as there's no intelligence involved. It's computer programs giving responses on the basis of probabilities.

AI at the moment is not creative, as it can not surpass it's data set and do anything original. For example if you programmed the relevant AI with The Beatles Red Album, it would not be able to come up with anything from The Blue Album. 

[neepheid]

End of the world predicted!

 

[ezbass]

The rise of synths was heralded as the end of the requirement for musicians beyond keyboard players and drum programmers. Yet, here we still are. There will be a place for this new threat to our very existence, but I imagine folk will still be plucking, bowing, striking whatever instrument takes their fancy and railing against the electronic upstart de jour.

[diskwave]

When AI can write an original piece on par with any of the Bach cello suites or, as bitingly original as say Cavatina from The Deer Hunter, then just maybe that will be the moment humanities creative force will be over. What a miserable thought.

Edited May 10 by diskwave

[miles'tone]

I haven't watched it yet (I will, thanks for posting) but what I think before I do is that in music, there's room for everyone. Including AI. 

It's down to the individual what they choose to engage with.

I'll always play music and I'll always listen to good music that speaks to me wherever it comes from.

I have no desire to make a living from music so I understand that it's easy for me to say that.

I'll watch it tomorrow night, thanks.

[Paolo85]

When I listen to (good) examples of AI tracks I think "wow, sounds almost human, but not actually good and not worth my time". But then I think the same thing when I hear Oasis or Taylor Swift, so it's difficult for me to form an opinion

[gjones]

We're heading to a soulless future. The sad thing is that most people (consumers) won't give a f*ck. The guy's voice and the script on this video is probably computer generated as well. 

[neepheid]

Ach, we had no electricity or bin collections in the seventies, the eighties were made of plastic, the nineties were a pompous, arrogant "no jeans, no trainers" social disaster, the naughties we're all supposed to have turned into robots or something.  I'm still digesting the 2010s.  I've lived through all this doom and gloom and i'm still here.

[Bassybert]

4 hours ago, ezbass said:

The rise of synths was heralded as the end of the requirement for musicians beyond keyboard players and drum programmers. Yet, here we still are. There will be a place for this new threat to our very existence, but I imagine folk will still be plucking, bowing, striking whatever instrument takes their fancy and railing against the electronic upstart de jour.

I can see what you’re saying, but there’s huge difference in a synth replicating instruments but still being played by a human versus a computer generating the entirety of the music. 

[Munurmunuh]

I'm not convinced that most the posts on this thread weren't produced by AI

[3below]

2 minutes ago, Munurmunuh said:

I'm not convinced that most the posts on this thread weren't produced by AI

AI, that would be Absent Intelligence....  (apologies folks that was too easy a target to refuse).

[moley6knipe]

It’s already here… the forthcoming version of Logic for iPad Pro has some REALLY good AI bass playing built in. Their drum algos are already great, so with some machine learning they’ll only get better.

[tauzero]

3 hours ago, Munurmunuh said:

I'm not convinced that most the posts on this thread weren't produced by AI

 

Why are you not convinced that most of the posts on this thread weren't produced by AI? And how does it make you feel about your mother?

[nige1968]

I don't think it's the end of the world, but ... wasn't the IT revolution supposed to free us all from sh*t work so we could spend more time on rewarding stuff. So how comes they're trying to solve the problem of interesting work, while robot garbage collections seem as far away as ever?

[tauzero]

Just watched Eurovision, and now I know what a world of AI music will be like.