Dom Flemons is a Grammy Award-winning musicologist and founding member of Durham’s veteran string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. He graduated from high school in 2000 and told WUNC that hesitance toward technology is nothing new to him.
“At the time, there was this idea of Y2K, that technology was going to destroy us and disrupt our lives in a big way,” he said. “I feel like this kind of thing has been a part of my entire adult life.”
Flemons has never dabbled in artificial intelligence to create music or visual art, but he is working with ChatGPT by training a chatbot to more accurately answer questions about himself as a scholar and artist. He’s seen some success, but he’s also seen the show confidently state information that it knows to be false.
North Carolina musician takes on AI
Last month, thousands of artists, writers, innovators and creative thinkers gathered in Knoxville, Tennessee for the Big Ears Festival. First held in 2009, this year the four-day festival of “adventure and discovery in music and art” has drawn more than 35,000 attendees to the state’s third-largest city. Since its inception, Big Years has earned a reputation as one of the world’s most forward-thinking music festivals, one at the intersection of art and technology. Boasting nearly 250 musical performances, many centered around improvisation and one-off collaborations, it will also feature art installations, film screenings, and panel discussions focused on how creatives cope and evolve in a world where technology is rapidly changing the way people interact with art.
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence was a topic of interest for many at this year’s gathering. This is something that’s been discussed a lot in the music world lately, with stories about AI song generator startups and the proliferation of AI-generated music on Spotify leading to lively discussions from both artists and the fan communities that support them. WUNC attended Big Ears this year to meet with some of North Carolina’s leading musicians to talk about how AI is showing up in their world.
“As someone who plays the jug, I asked ChatGPT, ‘What does it mean to Dom Flemons to be an African-American jug player?'” he said. “After this was brought up, I asked, ‘Are there any other African-American Jug players?’ It mentioned Thule Greg Wilson, who was a big influence on me. Then it said Rhiannon Giddens played the Jug and Amicist Kia played the Jug.”
Flemons said neither Giddens nor Kier had ever played a Jag.
“So I had to fix it,” he said. “I asked, ‘Are there any references that you use to get that information?’ And they said, ‘No, I don’t have any references, I just guessed.’
Although this example highlights some flaws that ChatGPT and other large-scale language models still have, Flemons says he remains optimistic about the benefits AI will bring to the music industry. For example, he said this type of program could benefit smaller venues that can use the tools to create press releases and other promotional materials for artists performing in their spaces.
Skepticism within the music community
Mary Lattimore is a classically trained harpist who was born in Asheville and spent some time in the Triangle before relocating to Los Angeles. Ever since she was first fooled by an AI-generated video she saw online, she has been fed up with the way people use AI technology.
“There was a video of a rescue dog coming up and choosing someone to adopt,” she said. “I was so fooled by this, where a man and a dog looked into each other’s eyes and formed a deep soul connection. At first I was hooked, but when I found out it was AI, I hated it.”
Speaking more specifically about music, Lattimore says that human imperfection is an inherent part of music and art that AI cannot imitate.
“You think about mistakes, you think about the sound of your breath, the sound of the harp strings resonating with the wood. You can’t recreate that.”
Lattimore, a professional harpist, says he spends a lot of time replacing the MIDI harp, an electronic version of the instrument, with the real thing in film scores. She says the harp is something that cannot yet be recreated with MIDI technology dating back to the early 1980s, so she hopes that fact remains with AI.
And when it comes to AI-generated music, Durham-based poet and hip-hop artist Charlette Ammons says she recently got into an argument with her family over a song created by an AI gospel artist.
“Everyone in the text thread was saying, ‘This song is beautiful,’ and I just said, ‘That’s AI,’ and they thought I was the devil,” Ammons said.
“Their response was, ‘Well, it’s still a beautiful song, so don’t worry about it.’ Gospel music is about testimony and the lived experience of struggle, and you’ve got this machine that imitates funk? That to me seems like it’s exploiting people’s lived experience.”
Percussionist and improvisational trio Setting Joe Westerlund has a similar opinion. “Creating music involves conflict, and that conflict leaves a personal mark on your work. If you don’t have that anymore, I don’t know what you do have.”
Jamie Fennelly, who plays synthesizer with Westerlund on Setting, is critical of the rise of AI-generated music, but says he has no intention of changing what he does.
“I think it’s up to the individual to decide what they’re trying to say with their work and whether they want to use technology,” he says. “My work uses a lot of technology that was unthinkable a few decades ago. As long as humans are creating the work, the work will remain human.”
Fennelly also said that better regulation is essential for the future of AI, as all forms of AI have a lot of potential.
“I feel like we’re all at the mercy of this thing that’s stepping on our necks. Until we get some laws in place that protect humans and start regulating businesses, it’s just going to be open for business.”
