The Big New Wave: Machines Creating Art! Is it Actually Art or Just Some Nonsense?
Note: This blog post is aimed towards music as an artform and this is an opinion piece.
With the rise of ChatGBT and the popularity of artificial intelligence to create anything you can imagine. The real question is can machines be creative? The ability to create music either with or without the assistance of the human is this really a good thing? Or are we just overreaching? The impacts of artificial intelligence on music right now is more of a tool but what about the future? Well let’s take a deeper dive into artificial intelligence in music and how it affects the artform.
What can artificial intelligence achieve?
Currently in the music industry, artificial intelligence is playing a massive role in spotting trends through large amounts of data. This allows artists and musicians to curate songs that would be best suited for the masses especially for social media (Clarke 2023). Despite being relatively new it can assist or even produce in mixing and even songwriting. It can lyrics based on a set data list where it can analyze popular songs and “attempt to replicate a new piece with the same or similar elements” (Clarke 2023).
Some tools that already exist are LANDR. A creative platform for musicians where AI can assist in mastering, distribution, plugins, collaboration, promotion and sample packs (LANDR). There’s other tools which can achieve other tasks like melody or chord progression etc.. Overall looking into the future it seems it can straight up produce a song.
AI Still needs improvements & always not the best ethically:
With artificial intelligence still being somewhat new in the music industry, there are still a couple of tweaks and improvements needed in music production without assistants. It cannot at the moment just create a song out of thin air without some data points.
But another thing to worry about is intellectual property focusing more on deep fakes where almost anyone can create songs of other artist’s voices without their consent. Which is also scary. A popular track that released created by AI featured Drake and the Weekend which racked up millions of plays upon social media (NewYork Times 2023)
At the same time some industry professionals are worrying about the rate of development of AI technology that would replace jobs like a producer (Will go more in depth of jobs ahead).
Are we at risk of being replaced? The Answer is Not likely.
I highly doubt that artificial intelligence would replace humans in art and creativity in general. Art is more of an expression of emotions which artificial intelligence cannot replicate. Unless they become sentient, which is probably a long time aways. The New York Times released a writing prompt to students in high schools in Ohio, Vancouver, Washington, etc… asking “will AI replace pop stars?” Short answer no as the connection between the artist and the fans cannot match the same with a machine. As Yasmin mentioned, “When I listen to music, I like to listen to artists I know have gone through similar things or have the same feelings as me.” (NewYork Times 2023)
Clarke explains that currently artificial intelligence is more of a tool to assist that “complement” human creativity and not replace it. Maybe in the future artificial intelligence would have the capability to generate and compose full songs but for now it isn’t able to express emotions at least for now…
Does it work in other fields: Graphic Arts
How does it relate to my field? Just FYI, I’m a graphic communications student who focuses on print media. You probably already know that AI can also generate custom art with a simple prompt. In a sense it can generate custom art at an insanely fast rate but I also agree that it does miss the human connection. Whenever an artist creates a masterpiece, there’s a story behind it and when a machine creates a piece, it just doesn’t feel the same. I can see the potential of AI being fully independent and creating art on its own. But I just feel like there’s something missing. I’m not sure so please tell me!
Sources:
Clarke, Liam. “Artificial Intelligence: The Future of the Music Industry?” Recording Arts Canada, 22 June 2023, recordingarts.com/artificial-intelligence-the-future-of-the-music-industry/#:~:text=AI%20also%20impacts%20composition%20and,similar%20elements%20it’s%20been%20given.
Network, The Learning. “What Students Are Saying about a.i.-Generated Music.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 May 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/learning/what-students-are-saying-about-ai-generated-music.html#:~:text=Human%20singers%20have%20the%20ability,by%20a%20good%20pop%20star.
