Is this AI music? Does it matter?
In a conversation with Squirt’s Grandpa recently we were talking about the muddiness of AI and copyright and creativity. I have read multiple hundreds of speculative fiction books over the decades. If I were to write my own book there would naturally be a number of things that would smell derivative. No book is written in a vacuum. But, inherently, it’s frequently considered “better” than an AI written book.
Mechanically this is true, especially for long fiction. But for shorter fiction the gap is narrowing very fast and there was a fascinating conversation about it on reddit about a month ago.
As a writer, I have been “trained” by all my experience and everything I’ve read. An AI writer has had the exact same experience. But at this point in time anything I write would generally be considered “superior” from a creativity standpoint. I am inclined to say this is a true statement but I cannot think of a way to prove that it’s true.
When I exercise I tend to listen to “new” music - this is how keep my music playlist fresh. I love Spotify’s Discovery playlist, the Release Radar, and their AI DJ because I don’t have to go hunting for stuff. I just listen to music and either vibe with it or reject it…and I mostly reject.
Today I got this song on my Discovery playlist.
And I liked it quite a bit. It is the type of funky stuff I find interesting. And the lyrics are a whole science fiction mood with two moons, swamp beasts, and neon alien skies. So as I was adding it to my “Liked” songs I did what I usually do and glanced at the name of the artist: promptgenix.
Well. That’s an interesting name. Sounds a little…AI like I think?
And that reminded me that Spotify removed 75 million songs a week ago. So I did quite a bit of digging and…honestly? No fuckin’ clue. So then I decided to spin up ChatGPT and converse with it and GPT is stumped as well. There are some high signals that it involves AI somehow for sure. But there’s obviously a human or humans behind it to some extent. To what level is the creativity coming from the human? Is this just a machine giving me interesting music while I’m exercising?
So what?
This is the real question. In the absence of proof one way or the other, does it matter? And if so, why?
I’m rocking to their Them Alien Blues album right now. It’s great music. But there’s something in the back of the head that says “this wasn’t made by a human.” A bit of an uncanny valley? Maybe?
Does something fundamentally change when consuming AI-created content, or more specifically human-trained-AI-created content? Is there something ineffable about it having been done by a computer in a meatsuit that has to sleep 8 hours a day or be grumpy?
Really not sure.
Squirt Says…
I feel like AI could either better humanity with its content or cause so much propaganda that it ruins the world. There are already many propaganda videos being created with AI . Sure, they’re obviously fake, but it’s getting better. Much better. Look at the photo below.
Dad Responds…
I like how you’re tapping into the tension between tools being both positive and negative and I think that’s something we’ll need to discuss more.
The Oatmeal just did a big riff on this, too: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art
He captures my experience well - essentially there is a kind of subconscious, emotional "let down" when you like something, then later realize it's AI. I think, for me, it's related to the realization that there was an opportunity cost. This may have stunted the author's creativity, or overshadowed someone else's. At the same time, AI is only able to create things like this because it ingested millennia of human creativity. Sometimes it feels like we're headed towards a kind of stopping point... like the line chart of content creation by humans has already peaked, and is declining, but the paired line of AI content creation is approaching infinity. Maybe the singularity isn't as violent or physically destructive as we think. Reminds me of "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke.