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from the is-it-live-or-is-it-Auto-Tune? dept.
Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve has become a woke, sanitized shell of its former self. The crowd of rowdy, inebriated locals and tourists is long gone. What you see now is bouncing and screaming for the latest flash-in-the-pan artists while industry veterans like Duran Duran barely elicit a cheer.
Youtuber and music industry veteran Rick Beato recently posted an interesting video on how Auto-Tune has destroyed popular music. Beato quotes from an interview he did with Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan where the latter stated, "AI systems will completely dominate music. The idea of an intuitive artist beating an AI system is going to be very difficult." AI is making inroads into visual art as well, and hackers, artists and others seem to be embracing it with enthusiasm.
AI seems to be everywhere lately, from retrofitting decades old manufacturing operations to online help desk shenanigans to a wearable assistant to helping students cheat. Experts are predicting AI to usher in the next cyber security crisis and the end of programming as we know it.
Will there be a future where AI can and will do everything? Where artists are judged on their talents with a keyboard/mouse instead of a paintbrush or guitar? And what about those of us who will be developing the systems AI uses to produce stuff? Will tomorrow's artist be the programming genius who devises a profound algorithm that can produce stuff faster, or more eye/ear-appealing, where everything is completely computerized and lacking any humanity? Beato makes a good point in his video on auto-tune, that most people don't notice when something has been digitally altered, and quite frankly, they don't care either.
Will the "purists" among us be disparaged and become the new "Boomers"? What do you think?.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2023, @11:57PM (2 children)
If there isn't a Neil Young rant about "AI" in music, I'd wager a small bet that there will be one soon.
I'm on (what I assume to be) Neil's side. If I can't be there live (too old for the concert scene now), then I'd rather listen to reasonable quality live recordings, mistakes and all. It's humans, some of us get damn good at what we do, but very rarely are we perfect.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Monday January 09 2023, @12:31AM
I guess you didn't know [youtube.com] your chance is probably coming very soon?
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @02:41AM
Ignoring the idea of deepfaking an entire concert in video form, what happens when you can't tell that an audio recording of some obscure rock band's live performance is actually generated by AI? Like a fake band playing fake songs, or a real band's real songs being imitated. Imperfections and all, including 3D spatial audio for a room that never existed. Do you enjoy music because it sounds good or because it's what you expected?
It's the new Turing Test. When we reach the point where you can't reliably tell if some piece of art or music was AI generated, you have no leg to stand on and will be turned into a cyborg.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @12:14AM (4 children)
One has to remember that current "AI" only knows what it's taught. There's no creativity or novelty. All they can produce are essentially remixes of existing works.
Will "AI" automate the lowest-common-denominator mainstream conveyor belt of popular genres? Possibly. Will they drive truly creative and inventive artists out of the industry? Not for a while yet.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @02:23AM (3 children)
So, pretty much like humans then. Everything you think or say has been done, nothing new under the sun.
The current "AI" is creating random eldritch combinations that no sane human would ever dream up. If not truly novel, it can still inspire creativity in humans.
I acknowledge the limitations and that human creativity is going into the application of these tools and curation of their output, but people are just scratching the surface with the current, dumb "AI". Maybe we will never consider it creative, but it could be directed to create something coherent and not clearly derivative of existing styles and works, due to sheer randomness. Possibly requiring an entirely new approach not being taken by the current diffusion models, but not requiring a sentient machine.
With respect to job elimination, you are right, but it could decimate the number of artists a few times while driving income down. A rat race with global competition will become worse. You can already find alleged artists suicidal over this stuff. Some of them might be trolls, but not all of them.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday January 09 2023, @09:52AM (1 child)
> Everything you think or say has been done, nothing new under the sun.
Speak for yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @12:45PM
Heard that one before, meatbag.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @12:31PM
One has to admit there is some creative force in the universe. Even if it's trial and error, the stuff that "sticks" ends up incredibly complex and ingenious. I guess for me the remarkable thing is that these things are inevitable owing to being the lowest energy arrangement - or somehow trading local low entropy for global high entropy in such a way that it finds a lower energy state. Utterly baffling.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Monday January 09 2023, @01:20AM
Become? You sure you aren't already the new boomer? Because you sure sound like one.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Monday January 09 2023, @02:29AM (1 child)
I wasn't glued to the TV by any means, but Duran Duran was the only band I recognized. I got the impression many in the audience hadn't heard of them.
Personally I can hear autotune most if not all of the time.
The problem isn't so much AI etc, but the music industry execs. They don't WANT unique great bands that become a force of their own, they want OK, interchangeable, flash in the pan bands they can keep under their thumbs. The other tools just allow them to do it. It may actually make it easier for them to keep control if the band sounds like a bunch of squawking parrots if given a raw mic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @01:00PM
It's the triumph of management. See also science, where protocol and organization have almost entirely replaced the creative, radical act of looking at things with your own eyes.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 09 2023, @02:32AM (10 children)
Essentially the same complaint is in a century old rant about player pianos!
Look, musicians, deal with it. Painters had to turn to impressionism and abstract art when photographic realism absolutely destroyed realism in paintings-- and that happened about 170 years ago now.
My mother wanted me to be a musician, like herself. But when I was a kid, I heard a marvel. An Apple II computer was able to play any melody you wanted, perfectly, without having to spend hours practicing and years learning an instrument. I realized computers were only going to get better, much, much better, and so they have. Pianos? They're trash compared to an electronic keyboard. Only thing a piano has over a keyboard is that it doesn't take electricity. Pianos go out of tune, and faster if not played regularly. They take huge amounts of space, they're heavy, and expensive, and lacking in the many features a keyboard has.
As for painting, screw that, I'm skipping right past film cameras to go straight to digital cameras, the GIMP, Inkscape, online libraries of pixel art and images and all that, FreeCAD, LibreOffice Draw, and whatever other graphics tools I know about. No, I have never used Blender, but I hear it's fantastic for animation.
As for the rest, yes, the AI/Robot Apocalypse will happen. It won't be an apocalypse though, and I think it won't come as fast as the fearmongers fear. It'll be a Good Thing.
One of the problems is the thinking around copyright. (You didn't think I was not going to take a swipe at (c), did you??) Some artists scream that pirates are robbing them blind. It's a very poor way to look at things. The ability to copy is a tremendous gift, not a problem. It's like complaining that daylight is a problem because light bulb manufacturers don't get as much business. Further, maybe, we shouldn't use artificial lighting at all, or at least, far less than we do. Copyright has a lot of artists and others bamboozled into thinking that a work of art can be owned in the same way a car is owned. Think they have a right to dictate to all others how "their" art shall be used. These complaints about AI are in the same vein.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @02:50AM
It's legal for an artist to copy another artist's style. They would be looking at references while doing that, possibly hundreds of them. Getting AI models and DreamBooth outlawed would require some hail mary lawyering in front of the Supreme Court.
Artists are throwing money at groups like the Concept Art Association [torrentfreak.com] in a desperate bid to kill AI art. We'll see how well that works out for them.
(Score: 2) by deimios on Monday January 09 2023, @06:12AM (2 children)
The purpose of copyright was to assure compensation for creators so that they are encouraged to create more.
Now it became more about control.
You cannot stand on the copyrighted shoulder of giants.
Still we have nothing better right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @12:39PM (1 child)
"The purpose of copyright was to assure compensation for creators "
So why aren't there more rich musicians and authors?
The purpose of copyright was to eliminate copycats diluting the revenue stream of publishers
who bought manuscripts and music rights to create artificial scarcity
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @01:19PM
As a knowledge worker, it's almost impossible for me to get any recurring benefit for the knowledge I create. It is owned by whoever paid my one-time wages. In that respect, the creative industry is better off. When I started I figured I could work hard and get a few patents that would supplement earned income, but really that doesn't happen. Corporations trade licenses to use intellectual property, cutting knowledge workers out of any financial benefit from their work. But I get to wear my own clothes on casual Friday. Yay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @12:47PM (2 children)
"Pianos? They're trash compared to an electronic keyboard."
Get back to me when a collection of computers can play as a jazz ensemble
Improvisation is communication between musicians, not a player piano roll.
I just watched the 50th anniversary King Crimson documentary.
There are still bands out there that never sound the same i performance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @01:38PM (1 child)
How was the documentary? I watched the trailer for it yesterday and it looks interesting.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @05:24PM
Summary:
Being in King Crimson is as much fun as working for Apple under Steve Jobs
You are a master of your craft and Fripp is a cruel task master
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @01:10PM (2 children)
Music's nice and all but I wish they would focus on sex robots. We can eliminate not just the workers, but an entire sex.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @05:28PM (1 child)
Just remember bro, you can be replaced with a turkey baster and a sperm bank.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2023, @03:17PM
Somebody gotta clean the turkey baster. I've always got a job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @08:00AM (4 children)
Was the article written with an AI and too little human oversight? Or was the human overseer still brain impaired from the Christmas and New Year parties?
I thought the main idea is that with AI you won't need to be a programming genius to use/abuse it?
The last I checked the human "artists" come out with choice keywords and/or samples, then make the AI do the grunt work AND then the humans pick out what they think would be the "winners".
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @01:00PM (3 children)
"a profound algorithm that can produce stuff faster, or more eye/ear-appealing"
The analogy is cranking out 70's sitcoms faster.
People today want something edgy and different.
They still crank out stories using the basic formulas
but every author brings personal experience and
knowledge that can't be bucketed into a weighted
neural network.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @01:25PM (2 children)
Exactly. And how exactly is AI mimicry robot ever going to do punk? Or scathing, insightful comedy. At best it's going to do shitty rapid fire 1-liners to its own laugh track. At which point it will achieve self-consciousness and nuke itself, What The Fuck Have I Become???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @05:30PM (1 child)
"it's going to do shitty rapid fire 1-liners"
someone actually built one.
it could respond to laughter, or the lack of it
and change its path through the laugh maze
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2023, @03:13PM
Groundhog Day for the poor AI.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JustNiz on Monday January 09 2023, @05:24PM
>> Will the "purists" among us be disparaged and become the new "Boomers"? What do you think?.
I fucking hope so. At least so all the whiney lilttle tards who label everyone a "boomer" just for having a different opinion to theirs finally get some payback.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday January 09 2023, @05:48PM
So far, AI art tools need significant human guidance. Otherwise, they produce semi-coherent dream images, delirium, or nightmares. I mean that somewhat literally, the whole thing evolved from experiments in driving neural nets intended for computer vision backwards, which some believe is analogous to human dreams and hallucinations.
Of course, they will probably improve with time, but the concern is more long therm than it is next week.
The copyright argument strikes me as disingenuous. It's an attempt to abuse the law to choke off a new technology rather than solve the underlying problems.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Monday January 09 2023, @08:09PM (1 child)
I can't wait to see an "AI" generated move or TV show. When its only feedback input is how many purchase and advertising dollars it rakes in, it is sure to find the most addictive formula possible that applies to the widest group of people.
Actually, I may have some idea of what that is like already. My downstairs neighbor leaves this weird shit running on her TV. I have no idea if there is video with it, if you aren't listening it just sounds like a TV show or movie, but sometimes she leaves it up so loud I can hear the dialog.
I won't claim to have any idea what it is, but it sounds like an endless stream of babble, much like what an AI would pump out. Except every other word is "fuck". The genera can change every few minutes, sometimes it can sound like people arguing, other times like laughing party conversations, other times like a comedy, other times like a movie along with dramatic bits of music. Once I think I even heard it reading an instruction manual. But it mixes in the word "fuck" with everything.
I think she uses this to cover up her conversations on her cell phone. (Which also mostly consists of "fuck", "fucking", "fuck me", and so on)
The line from whatever this was that really floored me was when it took a sci-fi genera and there was some male voice explaining how to solve some complex technical problem in this long run-on sentence that went nowhere and described nothing specific. When it finished, a sexy female voice jumped in saying "Time's up! Lets fuck!".
Or is this just what streaming TV is like these days?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2023, @07:32AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2023, @09:50PM
Please define 'woke.' Your use here doesn't match up with any definition.