“It's hateful. It is antithetical to the life force that exists in all of us.”
As we move to a world where art is totally devalued, the early returns are not promising at all imo for AI generated music. It doesn't seem to make great art, but to allow talentless people simulate great art for cheap. It doesn't seem to inspire humans at all, it just makes them annoyed and angry.
Its primary use case to me seems to be "create royalty-free music for my amateur tiktok/youtube video that sounds how I want it to sound." That's valuable as long as the royalty-free thing exists, but no one is sitting around excited about the idea of prompting AI-Tupac rap to about them or their personal interests.
Genuine art will never be totally devalued. Art is fundamentally a form of communication. AI “art” will never be genuine art until it’s produced by some genuine intelligent being.
As for economic value, such as in the case of paintings or sculptures worth millions, that has always been about supply and demand, status and signaling. A form of communication in its own right, albeit not born of introspection.
> Art is fundamentally a form of communication. AI “art” will never be genuine art until it’s produced by some genuine intelligent being.
So recordings of whale songs are art? IFF whales are intelligent?
And field recordings of factory equipment and wind blowing through leaves are not art?
If a painter paints in the woods and no one's there to see it, is it art? Does it become art when it's seen?
I'm really curious about what people see as the "real" at the heart of art. It seems to be more complicated than mere human creativity. I just like to make things and I enjoy things other people make when they challenge me. I don't understand art.
I’d say whalesong is art in the same way that a photograph of a whale is art. And the artist is the photographer or person recording and producing the whalesong.
We don't know whether a letter from the past was written by a human or by a committee of people who wanted to be trolls and all used the same name together (this happens). We won't know whether intentful communication was written by a robot either.
I mean, I am, as are several others I know (although the majority find it abhorrent from an art perspective).
I don’t have any dreams of using it to make high art, but at the very least it should be fun for memes. I wouldn’t mind being able to make a shitty song out of a friends funny misphrasing or having a silly song to play over a video of my dog doing something silly.
I’ve done the same for other things. I’ve made some one-off get well cards for people with AI generated silly images relating to them. I’ve definitely used it for Hugo sites where the page looks worse with images removed.
I use it frequently when I’m not sure my interest will hold out enough to be worth trying to get a friend to make real art, because the effort is so lopsided. I can make a Hugo site in 30 minutes and drop it in less than that because I’ve invested so little; asking someone to spend hours making art for it means they’re investing more effort than I am into a project that I’ll probably forget about.
After watching Apple's take, this seems to be their approach. A user can generate a quick AI image, in a few different styles, to basically joke around with friends or get a quick relevant image to stick in a paper. While professionals currently use stock photos which may get someone paid, a vast majority of images used for this purpose will not be published, and people are doing a Google Image search, finding something, and copying it into their paper/presentation. Replacing that with AI isn't really hurting anyone's livelihood, it's just saving time. I'm sure stock photography will take a hit as well, but I could see major publications still using it to differentiate themselves from sites operating on a tighter budget using AI, or to get accurate pictures of what is being talked about rather than something from AI that's deemed close enough.
Alternatively read as "I'm struggling to come to grips with the fact that the life force that exists in all of us is becoming more and more likely to simply be a series of surprising and emergent properties of simple cellular automata."
I get the point you're making, but I'd argue that even when stated in a reductive fashion, the complex system that leads simple cellular automata to artistic expression is orders of magnitude more elegant and special than AI.
Things being devalued is awesome. It means more people can afford them. Keeping things being luxury was never a sign of progress.
> but no one is sitting around excited about the idea of prompting AI-Tupac rap to about them or their personal interests
Are you kidding? I specifically asked AI to generate songs about joys of programming and I was rewarded with very catchy and inspiring "Code until your dream compiles!" in the style of 80s rock/pop and among other things soft female voice singing about romantic love for her code "I know it's just text, it's true. But it's in my IDE's hue."
It's a goldmine. I haven't had so much fun "creating" "music" for at least few decades.
And I'm definitely not alone. Some AI generated catchy songs on funny subjects already started to circulate as memes.
I don't care for human artists that never thought about creating something like that even though they theoretically could.
The artists that get mimicked are the lucky ones. Last famous singers of humanity.
I thought recently, we knew AI programs where coming along time ago. They were coming for accounting, repetitive corporate jobs.
Having seen/listened to the technology at the heart of AI (caveat, I don’t program and am looking from a mile high) I find it interesting the link I see.
The jobs where randomnesss and errors are at part of success - art, writing, creativity - this is where AI has impact first.
The jobs where accuracy is paramount and errors not tolerated - medicine, etc - maybe that’s where we see impact last if at all.
Yes it's ironic, AI was supposed to free us from drudgery and give us time to spend on creative passions. Instead AI is taking over all the creative work and leaving only the drudgery.
I'll be interested in AI when it can clean my house and do my laundry.
It's doing the creative work badly, which I find particularly interesting. It's recapitulating the best criticism of the original Marxist definition of value: value is not labor added to materials, value is quality improvements to those materials.
What I'm trying to get at is that musicians are still music'ing. We just also now have musicians that we didn't have before who are using these new tools.
The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.
-- 1984
> When Crow heard the song, she was so “terrified” that she was “literally hyperventilating”.
“I know John and I know the nuances of his voice,” she says. “And there would be no way you’d have been able to tell that he was not singing that song.
> …
> “You cannot bring people back from the dead and believe that they would stand for that”
Wait until she realizes that the voices and music of the dead can be played with apps like “YouTube” and “Spotify”!
And it seems intentionally loaded, as if to associate it with hate crime. When nothing could be further from it.
I think there are a lot of valid criticisms of using AI to mimic other artists, things we need to think about as society.
But I don't see where "hate" enters the picture here (assuming you're not actually trying to deepfake people saying legitimately hateful things, or similar). Making that accusation feels inflammatory and counterproductive.
"It is antithetical to the life force that exists in all of us."
Granted, she also thinks we can trick frogs into being boiled when all evidence is to the contrary. And she doesn't want to be "innocuous." There are many reasons in that article alone to dismiss what Crow says.
Hateful can mean "unpleasant; dislikable; distasteful:"[0] or "having or showing a desire to cause someone pain or suffering"[1]. For me its you that is intentionally loading the word.
One of the sources you provided has only one, clear, obvious definition: one that applies 99% of the time, and aligns with how they (and me, and I can assure you, every single reader of BBC.com) interprets the word.
The other source has practically the same definition listed as the top one, providing two alternatives, one of which is practically synonymous, and another showing an obscure alternative which is new to me and almost makes sense in the example sentence.
Yet they're loading the word.
Therefore sorry, but for me it's you who comes off as hateful. As in, unpleasant; dislikable [1]#2 :D
Its maybe odd but its literally her job to be in news and be seen as relavant. we wouldn't be talking about her on HN if she had some balanced sensible take.
In the specific case of the Drake track, hateful is an appropriate word.
He was using Tupac's voice on the TaylorMade freestyle in a really disrespectful way that would borderline on hateful of his artistic legacy. Just read these lyrics...
> Verse 1: 2Pac (AI)]
Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior
Engraving your name in some hip-hop history
If you deal with this viciously
You seem a little nervous about all the publicity
Fuck this Canadian lightskin, Dot
We need a no-debated West Coast victory, man
Call him a bitch for me
Talk about him likin' young girls, that's a gift from me
The way it was used, in context, was certainly a kind of hate.
It was in the middle of the rap beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, employed to fire shots at not just Kendrick but at the entire West Coast rap scene.
You might not understand the consequences of doing something like this, but as Kendrick replied, "I think that Oakland show gon' be your last stop, [...]".
> “It's hateful. It is antithetical to the life force that exists in all of us.”
Where does one draw the line? People could have said the same things when Edison recorded artists and played them on his phonograph. But today we are thankful that he invented that device as it allows us to listen to musicians who are not around anymore.
I mean, if you look at it: the underlying digital technology takes Crow's voice, breaks it down into little pieces and then when needed, combines those pieces back into some semblance of her voice. This allows her to make oodles of money. I bet she's not against _this_ technology!
I think your post is taking these AI voices out of their original context.
First let's consider CD -> streaming as a media change. Streaming didn't really exist when Tupac was around. But nobody would say putting Tupac's catalog on streaming is inherently disrespectful to his artistic legacy because it's preserving (more or less) the same artistic product.
Here are a couple other examples that I do think are more analogous than improvements in recording technologies:
Posthumous releases with material not created by the artist. Sometimes record labels will try to capitalize on the brand of an artist and release material that really only has snippets of random recordings that an artist made. In my view, this is disrespectful to the artist because it's not a piece of artistic material they wanted to release.
Another example is colorizing black and white movies. Similarly, this action changes the actual artistic product in a way that's disrespectful to the creators of those films.
Creating AI voices of artists is similar to these examples because it's changing the artistic output of an artist and disrespecting their artistic legacy. It's creating content under their name without the ability for them to say no or have any input into the output.
There should be some kind of legal document an artist can choose to complete, a "Do Not Reanimate Me" choice. If they decline to make a decision, or agree to be simulated, fine. If they they make their wishes known, that should be respected by their estate.
It's not for the artists, they're dead. It's not for the right holders, as they're already in control of what happens with the likelihood of the deceased artist. If it's for the family, they should be set as right holders from the start if it mattered to the artist.
Is it for the public then ? Should the public have a say on how the right holder monetize their assets ?
I see an argument from preventing art pieces from disappearing at the will of the right holder, but preventing creation of new art should not be a public decision IMHO.
What I meant was beyond that. You can't slander a dead person, for example. However it appears that this may not be as clear-cut as I had thought, for example if there is an Estate that is continuing to earn income from the assets of the deceased person, then there may be a basis for the Estate to sue for damages if a slander or libel reduces those earnings.
So, I (somewhat) stand corrected. At least in the case of someone like Tupac.
It's all perverted now, but the intent of copyright was to encourage artists to create new works for the benefit of society. It wasn't because there's some inalienable right to protect their ideas - it was a trade: "limited monopoly" for "new creation".
What benefit are the rest of us in society getting in exchange for this rule you want to impose upon us?
Considering he wasn't a thug at all and he was an educated theater kid, seems like it's being supportive. He was constantly pretending to be someone else for money, seems like now AI can pick up where he left off.
If anybody wants to use AI to immortalize me after I'm dead they can go right ahead. Imagine getting to be the person who plays or voices a beloved character, forever, instead of just being the person everyone after you imitates.
What Crow's remarks reminded me most of was Pat Matheny's scathing critique of Kenny G (ab)using Louis Armstrong[1], or what he called "musical necrophilia".
This is a very poorly titled article, by BBC no less.
Tupac is merely mentioned twice, while everything else is about Generative AI.
I'm not sure the relevance of Sheryl Crow to have much to say about Tupac when there are clearly people from his estate already dealing with things who might have a more insightful perspective than an artist and a journalist looking for clicks and eyeballs.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadAs we move to a world where art is totally devalued, the early returns are not promising at all imo for AI generated music. It doesn't seem to make great art, but to allow talentless people simulate great art for cheap. It doesn't seem to inspire humans at all, it just makes them annoyed and angry.
Its primary use case to me seems to be "create royalty-free music for my amateur tiktok/youtube video that sounds how I want it to sound." That's valuable as long as the royalty-free thing exists, but no one is sitting around excited about the idea of prompting AI-Tupac rap to about them or their personal interests.
As for economic value, such as in the case of paintings or sculptures worth millions, that has always been about supply and demand, status and signaling. A form of communication in its own right, albeit not born of introspection.
But guess what many artists earn their living off, when they haven't made it with their vocation yet.
So recordings of whale songs are art? IFF whales are intelligent?
And field recordings of factory equipment and wind blowing through leaves are not art?
If a painter paints in the woods and no one's there to see it, is it art? Does it become art when it's seen?
I'm really curious about what people see as the "real" at the heart of art. It seems to be more complicated than mere human creativity. I just like to make things and I enjoy things other people make when they challenge me. I don't understand art.
The ultimate Turing test?
I don’t have any dreams of using it to make high art, but at the very least it should be fun for memes. I wouldn’t mind being able to make a shitty song out of a friends funny misphrasing or having a silly song to play over a video of my dog doing something silly.
I’ve done the same for other things. I’ve made some one-off get well cards for people with AI generated silly images relating to them. I’ve definitely used it for Hugo sites where the page looks worse with images removed.
I use it frequently when I’m not sure my interest will hold out enough to be worth trying to get a friend to make real art, because the effort is so lopsided. I can make a Hugo site in 30 minutes and drop it in less than that because I’ve invested so little; asking someone to spend hours making art for it means they’re investing more effort than I am into a project that I’ll probably forget about.
> but no one is sitting around excited about the idea of prompting AI-Tupac rap to about them or their personal interests
Are you kidding? I specifically asked AI to generate songs about joys of programming and I was rewarded with very catchy and inspiring "Code until your dream compiles!" in the style of 80s rock/pop and among other things soft female voice singing about romantic love for her code "I know it's just text, it's true. But it's in my IDE's hue."
It's a goldmine. I haven't had so much fun "creating" "music" for at least few decades.
And I'm definitely not alone. Some AI generated catchy songs on funny subjects already started to circulate as memes.
I don't care for human artists that never thought about creating something like that even though they theoretically could.
The artists that get mimicked are the lucky ones. Last famous singers of humanity.
Having seen/listened to the technology at the heart of AI (caveat, I don’t program and am looking from a mile high) I find it interesting the link I see.
The jobs where randomnesss and errors are at part of success - art, writing, creativity - this is where AI has impact first.
The jobs where accuracy is paramount and errors not tolerated - medicine, etc - maybe that’s where we see impact last if at all.
Just a reflection.
*edit spelling late at night
I'll be interested in AI when it can clean my house and do my laundry.
Try Rick Beato. A favorite teacher on YouTube discussing how AI generated music is towards the end of the climb out of the uncanny valley already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbo6SdyWGns
> …
> “You cannot bring people back from the dead and believe that they would stand for that”
Wait until she realizes that the voices and music of the dead can be played with apps like “YouTube” and “Spotify”!
And it seems intentionally loaded, as if to associate it with hate crime. When nothing could be further from it.
I think there are a lot of valid criticisms of using AI to mimic other artists, things we need to think about as society.
But I don't see where "hate" enters the picture here (assuming you're not actually trying to deepfake people saying legitimately hateful things, or similar). Making that accusation feels inflammatory and counterproductive.
But she sees it as a hate crime.
"It is antithetical to the life force that exists in all of us."
Granted, she also thinks we can trick frogs into being boiled when all evidence is to the contrary. And she doesn't want to be "innocuous." There are many reasons in that article alone to dismiss what Crow says.
https://www.iflscience.com/boiling-frog-syndrome-isnt-real-y...
IMO we should not grant nonsense the courtesy of allowing it to frame the conversation. It’s important that words mean things.
Not to diminish her feelings, but as far as I’m concerned the words are rubbish.
[0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hateful
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hateful
The other source has practically the same definition listed as the top one, providing two alternatives, one of which is practically synonymous, and another showing an obscure alternative which is new to me and almost makes sense in the example sentence.
Yet they're loading the word.
Therefore sorry, but for me it's you who comes off as hateful. As in, unpleasant; dislikable [1]#2 :D
“Hateful” definitely has a strong connotation of something that is motivated by hate.
But I think she said “hateful” specifically because she meant just that. Hate agains humanity..
Its maybe odd but its literally her job to be in news and be seen as relavant. we wouldn't be talking about her on HN if she had some balanced sensible take.
He was using Tupac's voice on the TaylorMade freestyle in a really disrespectful way that would borderline on hateful of his artistic legacy. Just read these lyrics...
> Verse 1: 2Pac (AI)] Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior Engraving your name in some hip-hop history If you deal with this viciously You seem a little nervous about all the publicity Fuck this Canadian lightskin, Dot We need a no-debated West Coast victory, man Call him a bitch for me Talk about him likin' young girls, that's a gift from me
It was in the middle of the rap beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, employed to fire shots at not just Kendrick but at the entire West Coast rap scene.
You might not understand the consequences of doing something like this, but as Kendrick replied, "I think that Oakland show gon' be your last stop, [...]".
Where does one draw the line? People could have said the same things when Edison recorded artists and played them on his phonograph. But today we are thankful that he invented that device as it allows us to listen to musicians who are not around anymore.
I mean, if you look at it: the underlying digital technology takes Crow's voice, breaks it down into little pieces and then when needed, combines those pieces back into some semblance of her voice. This allows her to make oodles of money. I bet she's not against _this_ technology!
First let's consider CD -> streaming as a media change. Streaming didn't really exist when Tupac was around. But nobody would say putting Tupac's catalog on streaming is inherently disrespectful to his artistic legacy because it's preserving (more or less) the same artistic product.
Here are a couple other examples that I do think are more analogous than improvements in recording technologies:
Posthumous releases with material not created by the artist. Sometimes record labels will try to capitalize on the brand of an artist and release material that really only has snippets of random recordings that an artist made. In my view, this is disrespectful to the artist because it's not a piece of artistic material they wanted to release.
Another example is colorizing black and white movies. Similarly, this action changes the actual artistic product in a way that's disrespectful to the creators of those films.
Creating AI voices of artists is similar to these examples because it's changing the artistic output of an artist and disrespecting their artistic legacy. It's creating content under their name without the ability for them to say no or have any input into the output.
It's not for the artists, they're dead. It's not for the right holders, as they're already in control of what happens with the likelihood of the deceased artist. If it's for the family, they should be set as right holders from the start if it mattered to the artist.
Is it for the public then ? Should the public have a say on how the right holder monetize their assets ?
I see an argument from preventing art pieces from disappearing at the will of the right holder, but preventing creation of new art should not be a public decision IMHO.
What I meant was beyond that. You can't slander a dead person, for example. However it appears that this may not be as clear-cut as I had thought, for example if there is an Estate that is continuing to earn income from the assets of the deceased person, then there may be a basis for the Estate to sue for damages if a slander or libel reduces those earnings.
So, I (somewhat) stand corrected. At least in the case of someone like Tupac.
There was a case recently where an author wrote in their will, "Do not release this unfinished material".
The estate released it anyway.
It's all perverted now, but the intent of copyright was to encourage artists to create new works for the benefit of society. It wasn't because there's some inalienable right to protect their ideas - it was a trade: "limited monopoly" for "new creation".
What benefit are the rest of us in society getting in exchange for this rule you want to impose upon us?
1: http://www.jazzoasis.com/methenyonkennyg.htm
Especially not when ( publicly ) judging people, because that's slander/defamation.
Tupac is merely mentioned twice, while everything else is about Generative AI.
I'm not sure the relevance of Sheryl Crow to have much to say about Tupac when there are clearly people from his estate already dealing with things who might have a more insightful perspective than an artist and a journalist looking for clicks and eyeballs.