"What's Even The Point Anymore? ...The AI Takeover of Music"

[kane_magus]

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"This is a weird and difficult topic. Curious to hear your thoughts."

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When Charles Cornell was talking about the AI-generated playlists in restaurants, I couldn't help but think about when I walk around in Food Lion, because the only time I ever notice the music at all is when they're playing a song I've heard before, be it Michael Jackson or New Kids on the Block or the Bangles or whatever other 80s/90s stuff they typically play in there. If Food Lion started playing AI-slop, I'd probably stop noticing it altogether, unless it was something exceptionally bad/stupid.

Anyway, if the day comes where Youtube serves only AI-generated videos, that will be the day I never use Youtube again.[1]

(EDIT) Oh, and he makes that same fatuous comparison between humans taking inspiration from others and AI just straight up being trained on stolen material and how it's "what we all do" (even though I don't think he actually really believes it, even as he's saying it). AI is not "taking inspiration" from what is fed into them. They're just using what's fed into them and spitting it back out again. Same as with "art" and "writing," AI "music" is just the generative AI spewing out what is the most likely expected thing, based on whatever prompt it has been given. (/EDIT) (EDIT 2) This comment under the above video is a pretty good rebuttal to the notion that AI theft is "just inspiration." (/EDIT 2)

And as far as people wanting or not wanting to go see a live "AI music" concernt... like... people have been going to fucking vocaloid live concerts for at least a decade now. People pay cash money to go see Hatsune Miku projected onto a screen, "singing" whatever. Hell, that shit was on the fucking Late Show with David Letterman over a decade ago. ("It's like being on Willie Nelson's bus.") But even for vocaloid stuff, that was still ostensibly created by humans... at least for now. Oh wait, no, never mind, vocaloid stuff is already being AI-generated, too. Herp derp.

Man, I will be so, so glad when this fucking AI bubble bursts. That said, Charles Cornell is probably not wrong, here. As much as some people (like me) complain about it, most people really just don't give a shit at all, one way or the other.

[1] - Hell, I'm almost to that point already, just based on all the other stupid bullshit Youtube has been doing lately. It has already been over two years since the last time I ever actually logged in to my own Youtube account, for example, and if they ever remove the ability to watch videos without being logged in, that will be the day I kick them to the curb forever. (Or else find yet another workaround that allows me to continue sticking it to The Man™. *eye roll*)

Comments

[owsf2000]

When it comes to Vocaloid music, there's no AI going on there at all unless you toss AI into it like that apparent channel was doing. Vocaloids are essentially just an instrument using voice samples doing exactly what they're made to do by a human creator. The Vocaloid concerns of old are similarly devoid of AI and people are paying to watch the virtual 3d stuff more than anything. (It's far more realistic than being projected on a screen. They tried a few times to cheapen it by just using regular old projectors and got roasted every time. ^^)

Those concerns are using songs put together by real people, overseas often being played by real people live while the vocaloid is doing its human preprogrammed instructions). So I guess I'm basically saying it's unfair to compare them to AI slop~ I have my doubts that any truly AI-generated concern of a vocaloid would tank just as horribly as any other AI-generated concern using ai-slop music.

But getting to the whole "If youtube just (only) served us AI-created content" I'd remove it all from bookmarks and be done with it. It's already being used by bad actors to create ai-generated slop channels posing as news reporters and (mostly) left-wing figures as "fan channels" etc. Ever since Nov/Dec at the earliest channel after channel have been popping up doing that. Fairly easy to tell them apart from real stuff currently at least. If youtube basically started serving that kind of shit up on their own? Yeah, I'd be totally done with the place I think. If actual user content was still there, I'd probably bookmark specific channels of people I've followed for the last decade, but that'd probably be it.

I mean really, it's YOUtube, not AItube. If they want to do an ai-generated site, they'd do well not to risk the current cash cow by having all that shit on a different site altogether.