from a Facebook post:

People are worried that AI music will kill real musicians.

Which is funny, because they said records would kill live performers.

Then film was supposed to kill theatre.

Then television was supposed to kill cinema.

Then cartoons were supposed to replace actors.

Then photography was supposed to kill painting.

Then synthesizers were supposed to kill “real music.”

Then drum machines were cheating.

Then sampling was theft.

Then Auto-Tune was fraud.

Then home studios were the end of professionalism.

Then streaming was the end of albums.

Then bedroom producers were the end of bands.

And now it’s AI.

Every new tool arrives wearing the same accusation: “This isn’t real.”

People said guitars plugged into amplifiers weren’t real music.

People said distortion wasn’t real tone.

People said effects pedals meant you couldn’t really play.

People said multitracking meant you couldn’t really sing.

People said sequencers meant you couldn’t really compose.

People said laptops meant you couldn’t really produce.

And yet somehow music kept happening.

The truth is: tools change who gets access.

Records let people hear music without going to a hall.

Film let stories travel across continents.

Synths let one person become an orchestra.

Drum machines let rhythm exist without a drummer in the room.

Home studios let songs exist without permission.

Streaming let listeners become their own radio stations.

AI is just the latest tool in a very long line of tools that scared somebody before they inspired somebody else.

It won’t replace musicians.

It will annoy some musicians.

It will help some musicians.

It will expose lazy musicians.

It will empower weird musicians.

It will absolutely be misused.

And eventually it will become normal.

Because art has never been about the tool.

It’s always been about the person holding it.

Every generation says, “Music was better in our day.”

Every generation is wrong.

@FreakyFwoof I mean, there is an argument that cds and mp3s and streaming hurt a lot of live music opportunities, wedding djs -are- cheaper than hiring a band, and a weird cousin with an ipad is cheaper still

doesn't kill performing music, but doesn't help it! opportunity loss hurts bad

@caitp Yep, but cd's always play back the same way, can't read the room, get the wedding party to clap along, so cheapness is cheap but doesn't mean you get a stella experience.
@FreakyFwoof Absolutely right. I've been able to put a lot of song ideas into existence thanks to suno. and I've had endless fun doing it too.
@FreakyFwoof Whoever wrote is, he is the man, or she is the woman, I don't know. so true!

@FreakyFwoof I'm struggling to answer this question: did any of those other tools perpetuate a massive amount of plagiarism and copyright infringement?

It's a complicated question, for sure.... but I just don't see "AI" as just another tool.

@mmdolbow Napster.

@FreakyFwoof you didn't mention Napster in your OP, but *yes*, great example of that phenomenon. And, in that case, the industry used copyright law to shut it down.

Of course, it wasn't the *mp3 technology* that was the problem, but the way Napster *used* that technology.

I'd love to see a similar reckoning happen for "AI". I'm not holding my breath.

@mmdolbow wasn't my post, but it's true none the less. I just got sent it.
@FreakyFwoof whoops - my bad - I read too fast!
@mmdolbow @FreakyFwoof AI is not just a tool.
AI is a system of extracting money and moving it to the most rich people.
The hardware needed for AI destroys cities, water supply , energy supply and any chance we might have had of avoiding some of the bad stuff in the climate breakdown.
@thierna @FreakyFwoof I agree... and these are reasons why *I* don't see it as just a tool. So that's why I'm questioning the premise of the OP.
@FreakyFwoof Video did kill the radio star though, as well as home taping did kill the music industry
@FreakyFwoof I very much agree with this. Can AI music be misused? I mean, of course it can. Anything though can be misused. I'm against people doing lazy uncreative outputs with it and flooding everything with slop, but otherwise who cares.
@FreakyFwoof How true. I'm not a grate musician anymore so really, the AI is helping me get my words and melodies and energy I can't do any longer.
By the way
/sings: Video killed the radio star.
that refrain was in my head while reading what you posted.

@FreakyFwoof I don't think this is true. AI is used to make art. Artists will always use new tools and in the contemporary art world there are artists who use automation or systems to remove most of the human element in art. As much as you might get expressive painters, you get process painters that use a system to create their paintings, etc. So using AI doesn't necessarily mean it's not 'real' art.

But the problem with AI isn't really about artists or musicians using it. It's about ordinary people, who would normally need to hire creative people, using AI to get something that sounds or look professional but for less money.

As well as AI being 'trained' using other people’s art, it takes work from creative people and money is given to tech bros instead (who never had any creative skill in the first place, just stole that creativity).

Someone might work hard developing a skill and just have their look/words/sound taken from them and replicated in no time. There's always plagiarism but AI seems to make is much easier for more people to do it.

Yes, you can use it to help your creativity, but I think that post deliberately misses the real issues. A guitar effects pedal didn't take skills from thousands of musicians for it to work.

@FreakyFwoof @flamulous This post misses the whole point of why people are upset about AI. If it was just that people were using it to make music, that’s one thing. But now you have corporations deliberately trying to get rid of human workers. None of the other things mentioned in this post was ever trying to do that.