A Call To All Creators (LONG POST ALERT!)
Some of the most passionate critics of AI are people who work in creative fields. The fundamental objection is over its role in the process. I am aligned with those who regard it as another tool in the arsenal, and should only be used as such. This makes AI software no different than a midi keyboard or a digital effects rack. Certainly many DAWs have had smart functionality built into the production flow for years.
The line is drawn however, at using AI to actually create. I agree with this position as well. At its core, music is human-to-human communication. The rhythms, melodies, and words of a composition combine to capture and convey meaning – from one person to another, or one to many.
A song shares what someone else was thinking, feeling, witnessing, experiencing, remembering, etc at a specific point in their personal timeline on earth. This doesn’t mean every song is a good song, or that all music is worth listening to, but I would argue that any music created by a human has more value than anything generated by a machine.
The word for what AI produces is simulacra – essentially an inferior imitation of something real, often referring to art. It’s a counterfeiter. A forger. An artificial sweetener. A fake plastic plant. It’s programmed to scan, scour, and steal from any and all sources. So when it spits out a melody or lyrics, it’s trying to make something familiar enough to fool people. But so far, it doesn’t know how to speak to the soul. Somehow it’s still not clever enough to understand that humans are an uncrackable cipher – an impossibly complex concoction of biology, chemistry, physics, and spiritual ether.
AI will never understand love, or faith, or yearning, or grief, or any of the other invisible realities of the human condition because they are incorporeal. The very things that fill us up and connect our kind are invisible to a system that can only see data points.
Come up with chords, write the riffs, craft your melodies, and labour over the lyrics. Make it YOURS, THEN give it to AI when it’s ready to be performed or produced. But please, for the sake of our souls, do not ask it for input.
My fellow humans: please continue to fill the world with the music of your hearts and hands, minds and emotions. Our story is not nearly over.
