The coming wave of AI holds much promise. Leaps forward in automation. Tailored, on-demand healthcare. Increased personalisation of any service you can name.
But AI could make us more apathetic. And what if AI’s ubiquity also just makes things, well, more mediocre?
Take music.
A year ago, the makers of Boomy – an app that produces AI-generated songs – claimed to have developed at least 18 million of them. Spotify adds 100,000 new songs a day, and most are thought to be AI-generated.
Move aside Taylor Swift, lofibeats3452 is coming to steal your next Grammy.
This isn’t exactly what Steve Bannon meant by ‘flooding the zone with s***’, but the outcome on the music industry might be similar.
Finding hidden authentic gems will become harder.
Up and coming artists’ airtime will be squeezed by the AI deluge.
Taste makers will need to work overtime.
Do they pick “real” artists with a back story or simply songs that sound good?
And what is authenticity anyway? German electropop futurists (and music legends) Kraftwerk have been toying with our conceptions of realness in music since the 1970s.
Last month ForgeFront attended the Dubai Future Forum where Khalfan Belhoul raised concerns about the temporal nature of modern exhibits displayed within the Museum of the Future. He worries that because of the fast-paced change in AI and tech, they will be rapidly replaced and perhaps forgotten. As CEO of the organisation that runs the museum, he joked that his equivalents at the Louvre in Paris, who deal in much older and seemingly timeless artifacts, don’t have to think about this conundrum as much.
Will modern music be forgotten in the AI flood?
We aren’t quite there yet. The Beatles will always be The Beatles. Nirvana will always be Nirvana. No matter how many AI-generated covers attempt to blur these lines.
Modern artists like Fontaines D.C. are still far more compelling than lofibeats3452.
And despite the volume being produced, AI-generated music hasn’t captured the public’s attention (for now).
The masses continue to prefer melody to mediocrity.