The person who sang my most played song this December wasn't a human. The artist my sister likes now is also not real.
These were not the sentences I imagined I would type, but here they are. Artificial intelligence is creeping into my playlists and every angle of my creative space. Now it refuses to leave.
As someone who writes for a living, I understood the appeal of generative AI when it first appeared. ChatGPT and other tools delivered the speeds they promised.
Since then, after scrolling through countless photo shoots and lifeless captions that faked my birthday, that excitement has faded. mobile device.
For these very reasons, I sometimes wish I could go back in time to when so many things were still made by humans.
There is a trend of AI artists
After Suno, I don't know what's real anymore.
A few months ago, my niece raved to me about a new app she discovered. I was working on my laptop, half-focused on finding her.
The app is Snow. It's on the Google Play Store and on the web. Free music generator creates complete songs from text descriptions or uploaded audio.
Enter your lyrics and we'll treat them as the spine of your story and compose the music around them. Leave the box empty or describe the theme instead and the system will place the lyrics itself.
The song appears in your library, where you can play it, remix it, or generate new variations.
There are Discovery-style feeds where users share AI-generated tracks, which is why machine-generated music is gaining traction in a format similar to social media.
The app is amazing.
Within minutes, my niece created multiple tracks that would look great on streaming apps and mainstream radio. They were complete with poetry and harmony.
Although she was only 12 years old, she had easy access to software that could mimic her years of vocal training and production experience.
I remember brushing it off as I went back to work. I never thought twice.
I thought I understood what that meant because it couldn't get any worse.
These types of apps are usually subject to heavy scrutiny and are then banned or regulated until they fade out.
The music industry may seem powerful from the outside, but it is fragile because it is built on a complex balance of rights, credits, samples, and permissions.
If it were that easy to make a hit record, we'd all be charting as pop stars. I was wrong.
The human creative process is overly flat
Reminds me more and more of the Wall-E movie
Ophelia's fate This is an Afrobeat cover of Taylor Swift's new song of the same name. This is one of the trending sounds on TikTok and is now popular on YouTube as well.
There's still debate as to whether it's artificial or not, but one video under the sound alone has over 200,000 views and includes a dedicated dance.
If you search deeper, you'll find other unique artists like Zania Monet, who has been featured on Billboard Radio's Airplay chart and has over 44 million official streams in the US.
It dawned on me how unprepared we are when machines replace our assistance and outperform us.
In a traditional setting, creating a song is a slow, layered process that can take many months.
The ideation begins long before production, after which the producer chooses an arrangement that fits the emotion of the song.
A series of processes are then required, including careful selection of instruments before recording.
This timeline doesn't include the questionable emotional labor, the multiple revisions, the vulnerability of sharing something personal, or the cultural context the artist brings to the table.
That's why it's an art form.
When AI can generate a song in minutes, it bypasses almost all of this and compresses a very human process into a mere output.
There is no comfort in sound without soul
it is an important element of musical expression
The most disturbing thing about AI artists and apps is their intentionality, or the illusion of it.
Music is always powerful because it comes from somewhere. You can usually guess where a song came from without being told.
The culture embedded therein is frugal in that it does not waste emotion and utilizes what already exists.
Even if the song is simple, it has weight behind it as the singer injects it with history, language, struggle, joy, and different emotions.
This allows the system to generate Afro-influenced tracks without the system knowing anything personally about the culture it borrows from.
You can also have spiritual songs sung by voices that do not believe in or understand the God they are praising.
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once wrote about such a future. He said that representations will cease to point to reality and begin to replace it.
his book Simulacra and simulation It never left my mind. This was one of the many warnings we should have heard before the AI pandemic began.
Not everything needs enhancements
I'm coming to terms with the fact that AI is here to stay.
But lately it's been slow Decoupling from intelligent functions Because they cross the line between aid and dependence.
When used carelessly, it becomes a distraction that trains us to outsource our thinking and judgment.
I should know. I once entered my likeness into these systems for a mugshot and looked for motivation there.
Now, the more I stare at the replies, the less I see myself. I am taking multiple steps to intentionally deprive myself of these tools.
Similarly, we intentionally leave parts of our lives inefficient. We don't need machines to validate our actions and creations as much as we might think.
