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I hope smarter minds than myself will somehow figure out a way to square this circle and get heavy restrictions on commercial usage without killing the technolo

I hope smarter minds than myself will somehow figure out a way to square this circle and get heavy restrictions on commercial usage without killing the technology outright. As far as AI rap goes: Notorious BIG is (by far) my favorite rapper of all time, yet he died in his early 20s with barely any unreleased songs in the vault. For me, as an aging superfan, AI deepfakes have me feeling 15 again - like Biggie is still alive somewhere and dropping covers of other classic rap tracks on YouTube. I wanted to link an example of an AI Biggie cover of a Nas classic, but the full thing seems to have vanished off YT after getting some press a few weeks back. A Shorts snippet is all I could find quickly.[1] And if you’re not a fan of old rap, these Michael Jackson[2] and Freddy Mercury[3] “AI cover songs” are absolutely wild. I just don’t see how this sort of stuff holds zero cultural value. Yes, it’s fake and a cover song to boot - but if the music elicits an emotional response that differs from both “original” artists of the deepfake, isn’t that art? 1. https://youtube.com/shorts/l81JqY2uhEo https://youtube.com/shorts/l81JqY2uhEo 2. https://youtu.be/370dSdNRYG4 https://youtu.be/370dSdNRYG4 3. https://youtu.be/XiZtIARF0iM https://youtu.be/XiZtIARF0iM

AlexandrB 3y ago
There's a saying in physics that the field "advances one funeral at a time". I don't understand the impulse to bring back artists of the past like this. At best, it's a hollow pantomime, and at worst it can be tremendously offensive too their memory. Moreover, how will the medium move forward if every new artist has to now compete for mindshare with every artist that lived and died since 1950 or so? Not just their legacy works (which is hard enough) but "new material" cranked out by AI.
- trafficante 3y ago
  I personally agree that AI art is likely a cultural cul-de-sac, but I don’t think our current society has a framework that can exclude it from the art world without inflicting an Emperor Has No Clothes situation on several decades of post-modernist art. So there will be much gnashing of teeth, but ultimately the question posited by AI (“what is Art?”) is too destructive/inconvenient to be answered and the hubbub will eventually go away as AI generation becomes normalized. Doomerism aside, I think the focus should be on stopping wide scale commercialization of AI generation being packaged as art. I greatly enjoy the dead artist pantomimes, but I certainly don’t want Diddy magicking up a new Biggie single through AI necromancy.

AlexandrB 3y ago

There's a saying in physics that the field "advances one funeral at a time". I don't understand the impulse to bring back artists of the past like this. At best, it's a hollow pantomime, and at worst it can be tremendously offensive too their memory. Moreover, how will the medium move forward if every new artist has to now compete for mindshare with every artist that lived and died since 1950 or so? Not just their legacy works (which is hard enough) but "new material" cranked out by AI.

trafficante 3y ago
I personally agree that AI art is likely a cultural cul-de-sac, but I don’t think our current society has a framework that can exclude it from the art world without inflicting an Emperor Has No Clothes situation on several decades of post-modernist art. So there will be much gnashing of teeth, but ultimately the question posited by AI (“what is Art?”) is too destructive/inconvenient to be answered and the hubbub will eventually go away as AI generation becomes normalized. Doomerism aside, I think the focus should be on stopping wide scale commercialization of AI generation being packaged as art. I greatly enjoy the dead artist pantomimes, but I certainly don’t want Diddy magicking up a new Biggie single through AI necromancy.