Not sure if this is behind a paywall but fascinating and depressing at the same time, it includes audio clips of voicenotes which AI then turned into fully formed songs:
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/829964/country-music-ai?
Paywall sadly
I have a friend, the bass player from my old band back in the UK, who writes songs using AI (not americana related). We've discussed this at some length. His argument is that it's just another tool, much like a thesaurus or a songwriter's dictionary of rhymes (both of which he knows I have used for songwriting). I disagree and say that it's taking the real creativity out of the process; he's relying on AI to create short cuts to a finished song (and he's a lot more prolific since he started using AI), getting results he probably wouldn't have got through his own efforts. Unfortunately, I think this is the way a lot of songwriting, and writing in general, is going to go. Why pay creatives when you can just programme a computer?!
I've already lost a lot of corporate script writing work to AI. Somewhat ironically, most of the writing work that's available at the moment is writing content to help expand AI understanding of creative writing!
Paywall sadly
Not formatted nicely but you can read for free and hear audio clips here: https://shorturl.at/PjDxc
That's really interesting Rick, I tend to agree with you on this one
AI is here to stay I’m afraid. It is now a matter of how it will be used and the implications of this. As Rick has highlighted it is already impacting the business aspects of the creative industries. Personally, I think it is a long way from being truly creative and hopefully it will never be, but it will reduce the job opportunities in the creative industries. The fact that an AI generated track “Walk My Walk” made number one in America is a sign of things to come.
@martinjohnson I think you're right, Martin. I loathe the whole idea of AI art. It's just meaningless shit to me, because it lacks any real context. The day that computers are writing songs about the pain they really felt when the computer next to them had a major motherboard blowout and died will be the day and I might find AI interesting... although, by that stage we'll probably all be utterly done for. AI songs, hologram's for live shows... boring and without any real meaning. Sure, it'll be fine for all those people who don't really care about music, but then there's always been crap music available for folks like that. For people who like or love music, we'll need much, much more than that, I think, and AI can't do that. And probably won't ever be able to do that, because it's essentially a very human activity. I hope I am right.
Having watched the CMA awards show the other week with a couple of honourable exceptions industrially generated music is already dominant in that area The real issue with AI is it's cheap to create in large quantities so can game the streaming algorithms driving play lists and suggestiond swamping the real thing.
