Recently with the new spread of AI in a lot of the technology that we use today in our daily lives, everything is being affected. From how fast we can come up with homework answers to having our own personal venting friend, AI is being used everywhere. Music for example is not left out of the equation.
With the endless capabilities of AI and it’s vast knowledge of basically all information on the internet, it wasn’t very difficult to take an artists music style and lyrics to take a twist on their music. People have started using AI with prompts like, “write me a love song using the lyric style of Ariana Grande”, from there all the producer has to do is use AI again to create a deepfake using Ariana Grande’s voice to sing the lyrics made “by her”. All of a sudden we have what seems flawlessly to be a legit release from Ariana Grande. This has started happening all over and I’ve already seen many examples from artists like Drake for example.
Despite how cool of a technological advancement this is, what are the downsides?
This AI generated music is good for very obvious reasons, seeing that someone can tailor their own song to exactly what they would want it to be. It leaves no room for any criticism from the fans when it is exactly what the fans want. At that point however, what happens to music. All these artists would start to lose their job when people can make what they want of them. Suddenly all personality and character in the music is gone. If there is no further meaning to a song then what would our values become. In the past and as of not too long ago we held a lot of value in good singers that had real talent. People with a good vocal range and strong abilities to play a variety of instruments were valued as good musicians. As tech has advanced we have grown to value what is made more branched out and specific to us as people. Artists now started making beats on computers and auto-tune became a helpful tool for those with the lyrical ability but lacking on the verbal sound side of things. As we’ve got more advanced, less artists have had a lot of individualism or personal sound to their work. They are all involved in record labels and have producers making the beats for them. The qualifications to be a musician have just plummeted lower and lower. Soon we could get to the point where no talent is recognized and now music is nothing special. How long would it be till other aspects of our everyday lives become of little importance or become mainstream? It’s a scary thought to think that we could be coming close to a world with no individualism, personality, or preferences. Maybe this post-earth Wall-e idea isn’t so far off after all.
Music and Mass Media 