Is AI the symptom or cause of dying creative industries?
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(Credits: Far Out)
There’s an X (Twitter) post that lives in my head rent-free, and there hasn’t been a day since when the thought hasn’t barged its way in.
It goes something like this: AI was meant to be in charge of all the boring stuff so we could focus on what we want to do, so why will it be making all our art in a few years while we’re still filling out tax returns? Because that really does feel like the way the wind is blowing, doesn’t it?
We seem to be in the process of assembling all the tools for fully automated luxury communism, then using them all in the worst, most bootlicking, least-human ways. All the ways that separate us from our communities, suppress any instinct to defy the rich, and deprive us of living authentically, unless you’re one of those people who believe that the human urge is to work for demagogues and then die.
Trust me, I know what I sound like. I’m an old man, and I’m very much yelling at clouds. I never wanted to be this way. The term “futurist” is a bit strong, but I am a fully paid-up member of the cult of new. I like keeping my ear to the ground, finding out what’s coming next and keeping an open mind about it. I don’t believe the problem is the technology itself, but the rich people in charge of it.
Then I hear music created by generative AI, and suddenly, the term “reject modernity, embrace tradition” appears tattooed on my chest, and I have no idea how it got there.
You probably know the basics of it as well as I do, by now. Using programmes like Mureka, Soundful and Mubert, people can type in a prompt for a certain kind of song, and an artificial intelligence will generate it. Then you go back and forth with the software, tweaking said result until it’s exactly what you’re looking for. Some brain-rotting, Musk-worshipping chucklefucks will actually use this process as proof that it counts as “creativity”. God help us all.
Why is AI-generated music a bad thing?
Putting all my soapboxing and snark to one side, there is an argument to be made in favour of generated AI art, one that I myself have some skin in the game regarding. I have a condition called aphantasia, where, primarily, I can’t imagine images. I can vaguely remember images I’ve already seen, but nothing new. In that vein, when I was a kid, I was incredibly confused when books would be adapted into films and people would say characters “didn’t look the way they imagined them”.
There was no way of imagining those characters for me, and thus, all forms of visual art were basically alien to me. So, I’ll let you in on a little secret, dear reader: The moment I discovered generative AI images, I was truly excited. All the images looked like the deepest, darkest pit of the uncanny valley, yes, but I had a way of expressing a form of creativity that I couldn’t do before.
It’s why, as much as I may want to pillory all AI art and the people who use it, I can’t help but empathise with them. Because the tech and most general people who use it are not directly the problem. It is the way corporations and their billionaire puppet-masters use it. If I reach deep into my soul, I can see an argument for why someone creating music with a generative AI platform could be validating for them, just like the very few times I experimented with generating an AI image was validating for me.
However, it will be a cold day in hell before I see the likes of AI-generated “rock band” Velvet Sundown as anything other than the antichrist punching his way out of the coldest depths of Hades and ruining the thing I love most in this world. The same with Spotify sneaking AI-generated acts onto its playlists without telling anyone, turning their very business platform into a content ouroboros.
This unknowability is the truly scary part of all this, and the thing to bear in mind about generative or agentic AI. The truth is that everything made by either form of AI will be, at the very least, flawed, and almost always bad. People think this will make it a fad that we’ll all eventually grow out of, but never ever forget that capitalism is built around profit-maximising first.
Listening to a Velvet Sundown “song” is agonising. That will not matter to any Spotify high up when the alternative is taking an expensive risk on an actual band, or artist, or any human in general.
When you value money over art, any old slop will do. The problem isn’t the computers generating that slop; it’s the humans who value money over art, culture and most importantly, other human lives. That, unfortunately, is a problem as old as time that won’t be going away any time soon.
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