whilst on a lunch break with a colleague, he mentioned his concern for ai replacing him as an artist. he’s a house producer, and recently has had some success with a couple of songs that ended up getting signed by sony. the concern came around as he mentioned his friend who had been using an app to generate songs. there is nothing inherently distasteful, in my opinion, about generating music with ai, but i’ll get into this later. however, in this case, i believe it was.

we can all agree that art is tightly coupled with taste, and those who have a particular taste will also enjoy and consume art from artists sharing a similar one. what determines good taste is a common argument i suppose, but personally, i think i can just “tell”. i’m not saying my “telling” is correct, but for me, it is. and if asked for my opinion on subjective work, i will base my entire opinion off that feeling, and treat it as truth for that instance.

despite not having listened to the music my colleague’s friend had “created”, i was confident from the paraphrasing alone that there was no taste involved in its creation. from what i could gather, this guy had no interest in music, and used this app on a whim - immediately bringing me to the conclusion that his music would be no threat to my colleague.

since music has been sampled, or maybe even recorded and mass distributed, it has created a new art form, which may sound obvious, but i think that’s an important distinction. most of us aren’t listening to artists because only they can perform a particular piece of music for us, or even write a piece of music we haven’t yet heard, but instead for their curation of words and sounds that they themselves have collected and interpolated.

artists carefully paint a picture of how experiences and entities feel from their view. and for a moment, whilst listening to that artist’s work, we can see those entities through them, we can infer a fundamental understanding of their aesthetic; i believe you can genuinely become the artist while listening. and this may sound hyperbolic, but you have to think about what you’re doing when singing along, dancing or referencing the lyrics, are you not at least actively role-playing? there of course exist artists who play roles themselves, 2hollis has mentioned that his act is just a character, yet this simply adds a layer of abstraction; funnelling his experience into a single concentrated outlet, in other words becoming his taste.

in a sense, this is what djs are doing, i think. they are collecting and demonstrating feeling. that is to say they are becoming their taste. and you, as a listener, get to join in. this could be true for ai-generated music as well. just because you collect your samples in the form of a prompt output, it doesn’t change your choices of curation and therefore is valid, tasteful work. in this case, there is no difference between ai generated music or some experimental german band that existed before your time.

this begs the question of ai djs, what would that mean in this context? because sure, ais can create well structured setlists; they have more knowledge of records and culture than any one of us humans, along with understandings of music theory. and i have no doubt they would make great djs when it comes to playing a good selection of music. but as i have explained, the technical ability to perform is not the value we seek from musicians now. so without that, where is it their value lies?

maybe it’s possible to think an ai is “cool”, i don’t know. but i have never seen anyone want to “be like” an ai. i have never seen someone want an ai to think they themselves are cool. ai can have taste, after all, similarly to how i mentioned their skill at crafting setlists. it’s just collecting and curating, which is a high level example of how artificial intelligence works to begin with. but you can’t imagine yourself as an ai, and without this roleplaying, without the embodying of art, i don’t think you can really be a fan. you can be a casual listener, but are you really listening if this is the case?

think about those non-copyright background songs you find in YouTube videos, without a doubt, they will be replaced by ai-generated music. and this might suck for those who have developed the skills to create them, but that’s evolution, it promises to deprecate your skills over time. no one can connect to the creator through it, so what’s the point of the creator being human to begin with?

i’d like to question those who are against the usage of ai in creative fields, what is it about the technical labour which provides a connection from consumer to creator? why does the sourcing of work alter it’s validity? i would go as far to say, when we are prompting entire records, projects and albums, there will still be just as much artistry involved, and dismissing it limits the opportunity for human expression.