Ok. I’m going on a rant.
Firstly though, a response to something @pharmax
Hmm… my take on this is that computers (virtual synthesizers and the like) can be just as “human” as the human voice.
This is because you as the human are still in full control over the output, you can tweak and refine as you see fit. The specific skills vary from instrument to instrument, but it still involves skill and creativity (obviously there are exceptions all over the place. It’s totally possible).
I think I see where this line of thinking could lead you to think that something like AI generation and something like a synth or drum machine are comparable. But there is a very large difference to me and i think the devil is in the details here, especially in something you said.
Yes, we tell computers what to do, the same way we tell a guitar what to do, or a piano. It’s the same for a synth, the rules are just blurred a bit. Lets look more at computers though.
In programming, If you give a computer instructions, it does EXACTLY what you tell it to do. It does exactly what you ask, in the way you asked it to be done, nothing more, nothing less. If something breaks, it means you explicitly gave it “bad” instructions. There could be a lot of reasons for this, such as lack of knowledge, or a simple oversight, but at the end of the day if it was still something that you fully controlled.
This is also how synths work. If i want a specific sound. I have to turn all of the knobs and change settings, refine and refine and refine, trial and error, until i get what i want.
Same with Guitar and Piano and other instruments. I have to put in the work to get what i want, through trial and error and struggle and skill and learning.
The point is, that YOU are still in full control of the output, whether its a program, or a painting, or a cello, or a sculpture, or interior design, or woodworking, or martial arts, or Serum 2 or whatever. That is control, and control allows for skill, and skill for creativity, and creativity for art and artistry, and art for expression.
With AI, you are not in control of the output. Sure, you give it instructions, and you can use seeds and values and references to control some of how that works, but the whole point of AI is that it is an independent “entity” of its own. It ultimately has to interpret what you want and it give’s you back “it’s best guess”. You loose out on control, and i think with control, you are also sacrificing things like introspection, expression, artistic integrity, emotion and creativity.
AI will never be able to replicate what YOU can. Not what people in general can, specifically YOU.
Now, can you use AI creativity? Yeah, sure. My thing above more addresses people that lack all creativity. They don’t develop the skills, or really even have a vision. They can just type whatever they want into AI, and let it do the work of “creating a vision and making a piece” (for instance, one could hypothetically use Suno, aggregate a bunch of garbage horseshit fuckery “music” and then flood the market with more nonsense that i ever though possible. They will even use your artist names to try and get momentum that way. Yes, this has happened to me even, a nobody. So now i have to share my Name on apple music, and spotify with this fucking garbage. )
As far as using AI creatively, yeah man, there are lots of ways you could do that. You could use it to make bizarre sounds, and then use them like samples in a way that you see fit. You could get inspiration from it to use in your own work. The list goes on. And i don’t think ALL AI is bad in the creative space. There are some good ethical options for voice models, where the artists who provide the training data get a cut.
That being said, an important consideration is “where did all of this training data come from”? Is it possible that they scraped this data or acquired it in an illegal and unethical way? Would you be comfortable using a tool that you knew had scraped my music without my permission and then used that data to train a model in my likeness, so that you can make sounds like mine, or make a drawing like one of mine? Do you think that’s ethical? Would you feel like that is just as much your vision as what you could make with a synth?
It’s important to remember that these service for the most part are not run and led by creatives and artists with a vision, they are run by Tech bros and investors. They are interested in your data. Period. Why do you think chatGPT is free to use? Same with discord and facebook, instagram and all the others. And speaking of, what do you think happens to your music when you makes posts to these platforms? Hint hint, they collect it as they always have, but now they have begun using it to train models of their own. They don’t care about art and expression. They care about your data, and the information you provide them freely and willingly. Is that a system you want to support as artists? You, a real living breathing thinking and feeling person with a vision, and real human emotions you can use to channel into something special and unique, something wholly you.
There are no wrong or right answers, and i certainly don’t think less of you if you use AI tools, as i think that kind of stance is too reductionist. I would simply ask that you consider some of the things i said, really ask yourself those questions. All love and respect always to my fellow IDMFr’s.
At the end of the day, my take is that, for the most part, AI is degrading artists. I don’t want to use tools developed by fucking rich ass CEOs who don’t give a fuck about me or my peers in any art to make my music, because i don’t like the idea of all of the people that they have ripped off, and even if that weren’t the case, I still want to be in complete control of what i put out there under my name. I want to express MY own voice, and feelings and vision, not what some fucking black box decision tree on server somewhere in the world thinks my vision should be based off of a vague description.
