Mikey Shulman, the CEO of AI music generator company Suno AI, argued that most people don’t enjoy the “majority of time” making music.
As someone who don’t know anything about music, AI could enable me to make some music. But I doubt the next one-hit-wonder will be done purely with AI, and especially by some tone-deaf novice.
But would it be you making the music? If I go to a restaurant and ask the waiter for a burger, hold the onions and add a fried egg, did I make that burger, or did I ask for it?
Good question, if I start digging into this, and let’s ignore lyrics to begin with.
In your example the prompt could be, “Make me some instrumental 80’s rock music”, and here you just get a fusion of what the LLM think is 80’s music, the prompt could be refined and tuned to get some specific sound, but it can’t go past what the LLM knows.
Alternatively someone who knows more about music could train their own LLM on what they need and make different tracks that they mix together. In this example an artist uses the LLM as an instrument.
One thought is “Art equals effort” so the more effort/experience an artist puts into a thing the more it becomes art (is there a term for this?).
One thing is sure: It’s complicated.
If we can resolve the ethical complications of AI, I agree, AI could be a net-positive, beneficial tool for learning and accessibility. Suno isn’t really that, though. It’s more like a vending machine.
Can ai determine the symbolism it wants in a song and then choose whether the direction of a scale is down or up or which harmonies are used to convey it?
Just like real visual artists who put real thought and specific meaningful things in their images being basically beyond what visual ai can do… As a composer beyond the ‘just makin a catchy tune for da moneyz’, I don’t have any fear of ai music. Music can convey the soul of it’s maker. what soul does an ai have? Can you hear it’s experiences in it’s music?
So the people who don’t learn instruments and instead enjoy ai music I personally don’t see anything wrong with. Sure, go ahead! I do the same with visual art cuz I can’t draw. Hopefully you can make something you enjoy. :) But there is a level of shallowness ai can’t go beyond.
So I personally can interpret that ceo statement as decent and true for alot of his target audience without problem. Tho, for the sake of not getting 150 downvotes, disregard everything i said and pretend i immediately grabbed my luigi hat and 3d printed poison crossbow while yelling angrily, fist in the air.
I think music might actually be truly different here compared to most other forms of art because music truly is relatively simple in a lot of genres, at least the bit from having lyrics and emotional annotations to the actual song. It will never do anything truly revolutionary of course, that is what human musicians are for but if you just need a new song in one of the more repetitive genres and don’t want to learn an instrument or how to sing to put your hand-written lyrics to music I can see AI actually working well here much in the same way music in the past had to deal with the introduction of synthesizers, MIDI,… which automated large parts of the process already.
Just what you would expect from the CEO of an AI company. Fucking idiot.
He’s kinda right…I don’t like making music with instruments…as much as I like beating people such as him with said instruments. Hey, wait, I have an idea for a concept album…
Maybe we don’t have to pay attention to every idiotic thing some asshole CEO says, especially when it may just be a bid to be provocative for publicity.
Maybe you’re right, and as for people like yourself, who already know the emperor has no clothes, you don’t need to have to look at his nakedness. Others need to see him make a fool of himself. As for me, I like galvanizing people around these issues.
Hard to do though, when the idiot CEO at the media company keeps promoting it
I wonder if CEOs enjoy running companies, maybe they should be replaced by AI.
AI seems to have a firm grasp on the most important CEO skill already, AI is in fact very good at saying idiotic things with the current tech generation.
I just dropped a heap of money on new gear because I haven’t been able to play music in years and fucking missed it so hard.
I have a modular synth that is really fun to play, even when you don’t know what your doing.
I kinda have a stupid amount of instruments because I hate making music so much.
I said how much I want to get my dang drums cleaned up and to start a little joke band where we wear masks and play the local punk bar. Having recorded music at the end is not the goal per se. Its about playing with others and going out and doing things
I thought about learning a new instrument since a few month, so ppl seeing it in my appartment will ask about it and I can show my progress.
Between this and Sam Altman reducing visual arts and literature to aesthetics, I’m starting to suspect AI companies’ CEOs are not fully human.
