AI is forging the past and turning the future into a simulation, unless music lovers demand transparency in the name of Music (with a capital M).<\/p>\n
AI-generated music offers a mirage of emotion and feeling. The soulless models train on pre-existing, manmade music compositions, their harmony and structure. And then steals them, producing forgeries, counterfeits, phonies, and knockoffs for mass, unwashed consumption. <\/p>\n
AI copies and original human compositions are already blending into one in the ears of casual listeners. Artificial intelligence simulates human music so convincingly that it is tough for many to figure out which is which. Only expert music listeners can distinguish the two. <\/p>\n
Still, AI-generated music\u2019s only true innovation is the elimination of humans from the music making process, padding already record corporate profits. Since the days of Woody Guthrie, musicians have always been a little too pesky for the suits, who now have the tools to extinguish the musician off the face of the earth. The margins of mocha-sipping executive stooges in skyscrapers balloon, all on the backs of the creative class. <\/p>\n
Today\u2019s artificial intelligence trains itself on human-composed pieces. Tomorrow, artificial intelligence will train itself on the AI-generated compositions of today. Humans would no longer be needed as the free labor for training models. <\/p>\n
Over time, and with lightning speed, artificial intelligence learns cultural nuances and emotions, supplanting musicians entirely, leading to widespread dehumanization and cultural erasure. <\/p>\n
Since most artificial intelligence models are trained on data from the West, the homogenization of global cultures accelerates. When SunoAI rips off Middle Eastern Maqamat music, it doesn\u2019t bother with the microtones. It just uses the nearest note on the Western scales. Indian raja reduced to caricature. The death of genre.<\/p>\n
AI is already releasing an avalanche of music prior art. Humans will one day have trouble formulating music they can copyright, since machines will have already done it. Tech titans will hold a monopoly on sound.<\/p>\n
Not long ago, a person\u2019s voice was a unique trait. Not anymore. Voices rendered fodder for the AI Gods, pirated in ways that make Sean Parker look like a microgreens farmer and Napster the local Farmer\u2019s Market.<\/p>\n
+Read more: <\/em><\/strong>“AI Stole My Client\u2019s Song \u2014 Then Its Version Went Viral.”<\/em><\/p>\n All this amounts to tech bros stealing the past itself. What Elton John<\/strong> called “committing theft, thievery on a high scale.\u201d <\/p>\n And yet a resistance brews, standing nary a chance against a shoulder-to-shoulder $400 billion American technology industry and the $30 billion music industry. Sting told a BBC currently replacing its writers with AI:<\/p>\n In addition, campaigns like \u201cStealing Isn\u2019t Innovation\u201d are backed by renowned musicians like Questlove, Cyndia Lauper,<\/strong> and R.E.M. Queen\u2019s Brian May <\/strong>sees the future as \u201calready forever changed\u201d in a reality where AI models eat copyrighted music and excrete it out directly into our auricles.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a creepy, disconcerting, and synthetic reality.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a weird kind of wanky, tech-bro nightmare future, and it seems this is what the tech industry does best,\u201d said Radiohead\u2019s Thom Yorke. <\/strong>\u201cA devaluing of the rest of humanity, other than themselves, hidden behind tech.\u201d<\/p>\n But, it\u2019s important to understand: AI-generated facsimiles of sound are not musical reality. They are musical simulations. They are one part of our emerging hyperreality, a state in which consciousness can no longer decipher simulation from reality, a concept most often associated with French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. <\/p>\n