
Yeah, I feel it. That sense of despair when someone in Threads posts a tune they made with an AI plugin and it doesn't sound half bad. Like something that could be on the radio.
But it feels terrible, is the thing. When technology starts to outpace your craft and you feel like you're dipping candles in a world of electric lightbulbs.
I'm not 100% against its use everywhere and my thinking has room to evolve. It's perfect for taking care of repetitive low-stakes things that eat up our time. Business hours, inventory checks, flight discounts, summarizing meetings that should have been an email.
Things of that nature.
Some people will take the new tech and build something neat from it. Brian Eno was already doing generative music with Soundforms/Lightforms before people were filling the streaming apps with app-generated sludge, and I've seen some pretty interesting things from a small cadre of visual creators. But the way AI has been pitched to creators since the launch of the cylon GPTs and the Shangri-La's of Midjourney seems like a tone deaf proposition. A direct attack on this kind of wonderful human prompt engineering.
I wonder how artists will ultimately react on the long timeline. I'm old enough to remember the disruption that came with the wide adoption of digital recording. For a long time, "Pro Tools" was a dirty word to recording purists. Today, not so much. It's just a fact of life and only the nichiest studios are without it or its equivalent. Now anyone can edit a song on their laptop on a long flight and have it mixed by the end of the Uber ride.
(Photoshop, looking at you. Same story.)
In 20 years, I might sound like Albini (RIP) when he talked about digital recording, but this is the hill I’m probably gonna die on. Data is only a mirror, not the spring, and when AI is snuck in it feels dishonest and cheap. Speed and scale doesn't always make for a better world and it feels like we're on the precipice of 10 millions pounds of sludge (from New York and New Jersey) being poured into the airwaves.
But I'm not gonna stan for churning butter while everyone else grabs Land O Lakes off the shelf. McDonalds didn't kill the food scene, thought it did place a premium on the world's fine bistros. So I think what we need is a human manifesto. Like a non-GMO pledge or a statement about the free-range chickens. All natural, radiation-free. Our promise to you.
DL;BR will always be 100% human-generated. This is so important to me that I made an icon to go right next to the Dolby stamp and the copyright symbol on all my new releases so you know you're not getting anything lab-grown. You can use it, too - or don't - and don't worry about crediting me back.
We can debate exactly what it means a la what if ChatGPT inspires the idea but I do the rest myself? and do vegans eat honey? But at the end of the day it's a small, symbolic fight against the incoming wave of artificial flavors trying to pull attention away from what's generated from the hearts and minds of us messy, complex, imperfect and confusing human beings.
Long live us.
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What I’m reading: A Year of Swollen Appendices (Brian Eno)
What I'm listening to: Aja (Steely Dan)
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