The Pop Corporation

AI is a thing and an inescapable one at that. It’s been trickled into our lives and it doesn’t look like there’s a great deal anyone can do about it. Now, in manufacturing and science terms, it seems like a genuinely exciting use of this latest flame – but in pop culture, less so.

Naturally, someone is going to harness it, flip it on it’s head, and do something interesting with it – but for the most part, it seems like a wholly awful thing and we’ll end up wishing we could burn it with fire. And that’s because there’s absolutely no getting away from the fact that it’s robbing artists of the one thing they had left in this current musical hellscape – their voices.

See, over the years, musicians had their songs taken from them by record contracts. Then it was their sales via streaming, pirating and whatnot. Then, came their personalities and free time, as artists were signed to 360 deals which were all about making money from people’s personal selves, rather than just their artistic output. Instead of being singers, pop stars were supposed to be their own promo and shill a few Beats Pills and booze bottles while they were at it.

And now, with AI, artists are looking at a future where they don’t even have control over what their voices sing. You can sign-up for a number of free AI software products and have them sing whatever you like ‘in the style of Drake’ or whatever. All over YouTube are AI renderings of singers doing cover versions and even AI generated songs ‘in the style of’, which as a curio, are fun enough as a novelty, but like deep fake pornography, you could potentially get a famous singer and have them churn out whatever message the user requires, even if that message is wholly vile.

If the artist has had zero input to a song, then they’re not going to be making any money on it either.

Obviously, it’s easy to look like a tired old reactionary about the whole thing. We saw in the past, the musician’s union worrying about drum machines, synths and samplers, like we wouldn’t have the need for real players any more – and that didn’t happen. Will AI enable musicians to make grander epics for cheaper now? Will it be utilised so that a lot of the labour intensive things can be sped up?

As fatigue sets in with subscriptions, apps, timelines and the rest, you can imagine that listeners will demand a certain reality when it comes to the music they listen to, and surely, it’ll be obvious when a record company or artist is cutting corners to make a product that’s to be stacked high and knocked out en masse? Raw musical talent is a thing that people just like.

However, the technology is more sophisticated than ever before, and as that grows, it’ll take an increasingly keener ear to be able to spot it. And live? The average listener would be surprised at the amount of playback that’s used in shows, even by musicians who pass themselves off as the realest of the real. We’ve already seen AI used in graphic design, and generally, it’s strikingly obvious when it’s been used badly, and largely, it’s a composite of human artist’s work. So, stealing in other words? Or interpolating? Either way, there’s already services available which look to putting a layer of data into someone’s online work so it can’t be scraped by AI.

One argument has seen people saying that using AI just speeds up the jamming process. If you want to sound like a disco record from 1978, then AI can give you ideas to riff on. As musicians are doing that organically, is AI just another jamming tool? It’s been argued that musicians are scraping data in just the same way, but it has to be conceded that four humans bringing their own influences to the table with their individual skillsets and their mood on that day, the weather, the chemistry, is not the same as algorithmic data provided by Big Tech.

However, artists young and old are voicing their concerns about this in an open letter about the ‘predatory’ nature of AI in music.

Robert Smith, Billie Eilish, REM, Noah Kahan, Yard Act, The Last Dinner Party, Stevie Wonder and more have echoed sentiments from the Artists Rights Alliance which they wrote about here. It states: “make no mistake: we believe that, when used responsibly, AI has enormous potential to advance human creativity and in a manner that enables the development and growth of new and exciting experiences for music fans everywhere.”

“Unfortunately, some platforms and developers are employing AI to sabotage creativity and undermine artists, songwriters, musicians and rightsholders. When used irresponsibly, AI poses enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, our identities, our music and our livelihoods.”

“Some of the biggest and most powerful companies are, without permission, using our work to train AI models. These efforts are directly aimed at replacing the work of human artists with massive quantities of AI-created “sounds” and “images” that substantially dilute the royalty pools that are paid out to artists. For many working musicians, artists and songwriters who are just trying to make ends meet, this would be catastrophic.”

“Unchecked, AI will set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it. This assault on human creativity must be stopped. We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likeness, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”

It isn’t going anywhere any time soon, but this is worth thinking about beyond the usual reductive ‘modernity versus conservatism’ schtick.