Our Current Times
We are living in the age of artificial intelligence, and although it has been a great help in many ways, it also has negative effects. One of those negative effects has been its impact on music.
Music is a creation, and it was mostly human until some AI apps that generate music like Suno or Udio started releasing bands, albums, and discographies commanded by its users. A person writes a prompt or instruction to these apps, and they generate musical content in seconds, which a human may take days, months, or even years.
Real vs AI
Sadly, some of these generated artists have become more famous than their real counterparts, and that’s the case with the British rock band Holding Absence. There’s an AI band that claims to be “inspired” by them, which sounds very similar, yet they have more followers and listeners than the real deal on Spotify.
I won’t name any AI band here, because I don’t want to contribute to its promotion, but it raises questions about originality and even attribution in these days of AI we’re living in.
What can music fans do about this?
AI bands are becoming increasingly difficult to detect. To fight this trend, we can choose to support real music (as long as we know they’re real), listen to human bands, buy their music and merch, go to see their live shows, and follow them on social media.
Bands like Tool and others that we love take a long time to release new music because it’s human work, it’s complicated. Whereas AI can generate all the music you want in a couple of minutes, but is soulless, fake, and generic.
To create something, it all starts with an idea, a thought, but you have to work on that to retouch it and fix errors and pull that idea until you’re satisfied with it, and you love the result. However, AI doesn’t care about any of that; all it cares about is providing a fast result.
I say that it’s up to music fans, and for music bands and real artists to decide what to do. If we want to keep on enjoying art with meaning and talent, we have to support our favorite artists so they can continue to create more and avoid the fake “products”, because a thing that is generated is not a creation; it is an artificial commodity.
My video about this: