SLOPAGANDA

I didn’t think it would be like this. I don’t know anyone who did think it would be like this. When I was watching movies about this, they told me it would happen differently. They told me that it would make an army of domestic servant robots would turn on us. They told me that it would put us into pods and harvest out bodies while making us believe we live a whole different life in a digital world created and policed by it. They never mentioned the impact it would have on one of the greatest human forms of expression, music.

The it in question is AI. We no longer live in a world where AI is a farfetched idea that sets the environment in which the biggest sci-fi movies take place, we are now living in a world where AI is part of our daily lives. We see it advertised to us on TV, we use it at work, we listen to and watch it on our social media apps but, do we also listen to AI music?

Well, it seems AI is listening to our music with one of the best music producers of the 2000s being the face of an AI music platform. Yes, Timbaland, the guy who uses his voice as ear candy and procession in his beats, is championing Suno AI and its music generation platform and introducing an AI Artist. Suno have been scouring through the internet and all music uploaded on it to inform its generative music without the explicit permission of any artists. This seems like the start of a snowball rolling downhill, ever increasing in size. Because of AI music platforms, we’ve had BBC Introducing championing an AI generated song in its artists of the week section, AI music getting into Spotify and Billboard music charts and even a far-right party backed AI rapper.

Just like Newton’s third law of motion says, “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” and we can see this with a rejection and fight back against AI music. Big Hug Music Group went viral with their open call for “human music” for their music supervision work. Artist Jack Garrett, who rose to prominence through the BBC Introducing system a decade ago, stated on social media “If you use generative AI when you’re making music then you’re bad at making music and you should work harder and stop being so lazy.” FAMM records are looking to take the fight to the courts with legal action for use of an AI voice based on their founder Jorja Smith in an AI generated song.

So where do we go from here? I don’t know. I hope we can reverse this and go back to people having to use their brain power to create music but, I know that bridge has been crossed, and I don’t think it’s likely we cross back over. Maybe it’s really about how far from the bridge we end up? How do we ensure we don’t go too far? I don’t see a solution but I’m not here to provide solutions, I’m just writing about the world I see.

Reporting for SIBLING RADIO,

Bubbler B