Zach WeinersmithNow and then there's a headline about an AI musician going huge on some platform. For me the most fascinating thing is that when this happens, and I look up their album or singles, their songs are almost identical. Not like when you say "all of ACDC's songs are the same." Like, they're just tons of tiny variations. Check e.g. the singles by the AI named Eddie Dalton.
Or there was another popular one called Breaking Rust, I believe, who was a sort of modern hardcore country singer. Nearly every song began with him humming, in the same cadence, followed by the same bluesy percussion. And all were some variation on the theme of being a tough guy who doesn't care about other people's opinions. Like, dozens of these songs.
And with this sort of thing I always wonder whether it's that they're (a) gaming the system, or (b) discovered something humans actually wanted all along, in some sense, but which artists would've never produced.
I mean maybe we really just want Oasis to play 83 slight variations on Wonderwall, but they wouldn't.
Marc@ZachWeinersmith I think we're experiencing a kind of "fast food" of music. That analogy works closest for me - plenty of people are happy to eat a McDonald's hamburger even though they don't know where it's from, it was made almost entirely by machine, and it's not really good for them at all. But it's familiar, accessible, and pretty much the same each time.
@mdiluz I see it as taking all the vices of SEO slop and making them automatic!
@mdiluz Like at least so far, I don't see AI media as doing worse stuff than humans do. It's just lowered the cost to basically nothing.