F*CK AI MUSIC
I don't get the feeling that AI has been, at least so far, a positive revolution for the world. Like any revolution, it needs time before we accept it. The problem is that it grows at a scale so hard to grasp that not even the people building it know what it will be three months from now. That should alarm us, but it's inevitable.
“Artificial Intelligence” is a perfect name. When it tells you “you're right”, it doesn't believe you're right, it doesn't know whether you're right, and it doesn't know what being right is: it's just the most probable answer to your message. But that artificial “you're right” produces a dopamine hit and a validation in you that are very real.
A tool that builds tools is one thing (as impressive as it is, it already causes enormous anxiety among professionals in every field). A tool with power over human feelings is something very different. That is where my rejection of AI comes from.
In music, AI's first steps were like everywhere else: nowhere near a decent result. Then came a sweet spot of six months to a year where the average listener couldn't tell whether something was AI or human, but professionals noticed instantly. And as with code, images and video, a model came along that passed the Turing test of the most expert producers and engineers. Now we're “through the looking glass” and I keep asking myself the same question: was this necessary? Will I ever find a single reason why generating music with AI makes sense? I seriously doubt it.
If I say F*CK AI MUSIC it's because AI-generated music attacks three pillars that should be sacred to all of us.
Past. The whole evolution of music has been about the process. AI is only about the result. The .wav that lands on Spotify is the end of a very long process of self-discovery by every person who took part, whether one or a thousand. A .wav is souls and life experiences colliding, and that is why music can tell you so much in a language you don't speak, or with no lyrics at all. Music is speaking without speaking. We are putting a fake “you're right” on the same level as entire lives spent exploring human feelings.
Present. Even if the effect when you listen is the same, you're buying a “you're right” that isn't real. It can sound exactly like human music, but it's missing the most important thing: the humans. It doesn't matter if it's a jazz band, 2000s reggaeton or a musical: all music is essentially the same. Love, heartbreak, passion, envy, insecurity, swagger, the urge to rise and to lift others up. Music is made from the most basic human feelings, and a machine has none.
Future. There are hundreds of thousands of people, probably millions, with a musical calling who have given, and will give, their whole lives to working in the shadows helping create art. If we do nothing, the future of art will be in the hands of big corporations and not those people.
OBRA will always be in favor of AI for building tools to make or show art, but we will never support, in any way, AI-generated art.
Write to me at carlos@obra.art if you want to help me build fuckaimusic.org.
Carlos.