How AI might make a lot of musicians irrelevant

Howdy! Today it's time to have the talk I've feared most - AI and it's impact on the creative landscape for middle-class creators.

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If you make a purchase using any of the affiliate links, I earn a small commission with no extra cost to you. This is a great way to get cool new stuff, and support the channel so I can make more videos like this one!

I only promote products and services that I love myself, and I'm sure you'll love them too!

I appreciate it! 😁

[Mancheguache]

The drum machine in my AI band had a massive fall-out with the guitar simulator and the keyboard melody generator is in rehab

[toslinked]

well, you know. I’ve been a professional musician for almost 30 years now. whenever I feel really bad, I pick up an instrument and sing to it. nothing makes me feel more alive and grounded. AI will never take that from me, and that’s good enough.

[amarug]

As an engineer I always thought I knew where this was headed and envisioned a near-ish future where workers in factories, burgerking and mcdonalds are completely replaced by robots. Ironically I have worked in computer vision and machine learning myself, yet I did not see this coming. What I have seen and heard in the past months made me extremely depressed. I had no idea that artists of all things were headed to the chopping block. And I am technically on the "tech side" yet it breaks my heart - I can't imagine how some artists must feel. We have created it and there is no way of undoing it.

[-KingOfKhaos]

I just saw an article yesterday where the US Copyright Office stated AI generated art can’t be copyrighted which I found interesting.

[TOEC]

The only reason AI will result in musicians and artists being made irrelevant is because the general public (the audiance/customers) have reached an absolutely absurd level of apathy for quality. For example, when they look at an Opal gemstone ring, they don't care if it's genuine or not, as long as it *looks* genuine. They don't care if art is genuine, as long as it *looks* genuine. They don't care if music is written by an actual human, as long as it sounds like it was.
There are thousands of hours of video on youtube about understanding why great music is great, and why great artwork is great, but *knowing* the reasons, understanding the things that make a great creative piece, has become a niche market.
AI causing a lot of creative people to lose their jobs is actually not so much the fault of AI, as it is people, on average, being very shallow.

[kpsiegel]

I don't earn a living making music. I make music because it is something that makes me feel like a more complete and connected person and is essential for me to live a fulfilled life. AI has no place for me given that is my purpose for my music. In different circumstances I could definitely see the use. I suspect I am just like a lot of people that way. Keep on making your great content Cameron. AI is training itself on you right now 🙂

[katyaforshort]

I feel like musicians, visual artists and all creators should unite against this unethical technology. If we stand together and defend our justice, then we will be able to change something. The future is in our hands

[esmooth]

My biggest problem with AI music generators and art generators is, it essentially steals from creators worldwide, new and old, by searching a huge database for things that I've already been created, and essentially stitching them together. For instance, I was using an AI music generator website last night, and one of the songs that the robot spat out sounded suspiciously like the late Teddy pendergrass. And that's how I know they pull from other sources.

[radiofloyd]

In a vacuum, I think I'd tend to agree with you.
But at the same time we live in a world where people are just left to die if they don't make money.
The horror to me is that a ton of people who are barely making enough to keep music even as a hobby will just kinda run out of jobs they can perform.

Ideally the increased automation would signify people having more free time, but that's just not how capitalism works.

[mrsparkle]

11:36 yes. I want to make art because I want to share it with an audience that loves it. I want to connect with them and make them connect with each other over my piece of work. But suddenly I cannot share it with anyone. Whatever I will think of, It will have been already cooked up by AI. The ideas I have had for years, characters, designs and stories, that I have put blood sweat and tears into, when I finally get them out, they might already exist, (or at least something very similar), and claimed by some random person who accidentally prompted them. That's where we are headed. There is no place for human creativity there. In my case, me making art for only me to enjoy, it's just not fully why I do it. I don't really care about money, I just care about what I do, to be able to support itself and my very modest living, so I can only focus on making my art.

[untowardMedia]

The interesting development in AI is that, as you reference, the utopian view is that ultimately AI will take over the menial labour tasks to free us humans up to do deep and enriching creative work.

The trend is almost the opposite—everything AI is producing that is making news is ostensibly creative work (albeit a kind of facsimile of previous created works). I wonder if it's the low stakes and imprecise nature of creative work that actually makes it a better kicking off point than high stakes precise work (driving, for example).

[rickenbacker]

I’ve always thought of human brains starting as empty black boxes. Our senses throw inputs into our brains, and those observations, sounds, tastes etc. bounce around and melt into a big soup. I don’t think we’re capable of imagining anything that isn’t some derivative of or iteration on the data that we’ve ingested. Sure we can imagine all sorts of novel scenarios or put unusual perspective on ideas, but it all derives from the stuff we’ve put in there. This is also exactly how ML neural nets work. ChatGPT/midjourney etc. are trained on HUGE data sets. Arguably more data than any one person can ingest in a lifetime. They can also generate novel perspectives and scenarios, just like humans. In short, I think we’ve truly reached a strange turning point. Something fundamental has changed, most of us just haven’t realised yet.

[FuZZbaLLbee]

“Get that computer science degree.”

Meanwhile me as a developer seeing chat-GPT generate code 😳

[royalcities]

Yesturday I asked the chat gpt AI if it can provide me a full written essay on if AI will replace me in music production. It convinced me it would not so Im choosing to believe that.

[Cyberdemon]

"Create something worth imitating" If you do that, your work will just be fuel for the AI.

[Enrique-iryq]

It is depressing to see how AI will destroy first profesions that people love and dream of doing, as you said profesions where suply ounumbers demand.
Nobody asked to replace artists and musicians, nobody needed a drawing, a song or movie to be created from zero in just seconds.
But what pushed these companies to create these image and music generative AI was not the desire to solve a problem or a need for humanity, but just feeding the ego of these AI engineers that wanted to prove that they were able to make machines do the unthinkable and to do flashy and suprising stuff. But stuff that we do not need.
We need to solve problems and make the people happy, not creating stupid consumers that are fed with repetitive souless content

[jeffrobinson]

"Create something worth imitating." LOVE IT

[michaelkonomos]

I think that our work will be even more devalued financially, but the value of what we do from a human perspective will NEVER go away. Humans will always want to connect with other humans. There is a reason why people want to see instruments and not just laptops at live shows - the humanity. The sense of connection. That will remain. But in a world of 8 billion people and now AI flooding their eyes and ears with "content", we will have to SHOW our work. Show we did it. Prove it wasn't AI and emphasize our humanity.

Same reason why people want handmade ceramics when you can just go to target for a bowl.

So I am worried about the financial value of what we do - which is already paying pennies, paying nothing. People's attention? that will be even HARDER to command when everyone is suddenly a "creator". But there will ALWAYS be humans who want to connect with other humans, no matter what tech comes along, because it's an inescapable part of our biology to do so. I do take comfort in that.

Finally, F the tech overlord dude-bros coming for the Arts in the name of some utopia. Guess who gets all their creativity plundered for data? You and I. Guess who makes the money? The oligarchs. F those guys.

[nyanko]

The day humanity relies on AI to emulate Art will be the day it will have lost its very soul.