5 ms·

If this was an actual person performing, I would have smiled all the way to the end. Since this is AI-generated, I feel no emotion towards this, and just listen

by CrLf 3y ago

If this was an actual person performing, I would have smiled all the way to the end. Since this is AI-generated, I feel no emotion towards this, and just listened for a few seconds. It's technically interesting.

HeartStrings 3y ago
This. AI production loses “soul” as human empathy is a crucial component.
- rootlocus 3y ago
  Art is like a lossy compression algorithm. If there is a soul of any form the only reason you think you're observing it in human-produced art is because your decompression algorithm is adding it. While I don't disagree there's a "human touch" to art, I'm not convinced it can't be synthesized to some degree. It may not be innovative, but I think since AI is extrapolating from learned data, it can at least mimic the current pop culture.
jnsaff2 3y ago
I'd be curious to hear your reasoning behind this? Why does this being computer generated ruin it for you? Auto-tune has been around since 1997 so it's not like computers have not been a big part of a lot of music we hear every day.
- komali2 3y ago
  For me all art I enjoy has some aspect of connection to someone that's sharing my human experience. If we get AGI, I could imagine feeling something towards the art such an entity creates, since a big part of the human experience that we would probably share with an AGI is inescapable death. But for today's "AI" generated music, I feel the same towards it as I would towards the random step function output of a given tool in Ableton - sounds cool, now what can we do with that to make it into music?
  - mathgorges 3y ago
    > sounds cool, now what can we do with that to make it into music? So a human using the tools of sound production is what transforms the function output into music. (Please let me know if I’m misunderstanding you). I think I see what you’re saying, but that’s already happened here hasn’t it? I mean, it's not as though an AI made the decision to generate this all by itself, a human had an idea to create this piece and wrote a prompt which created this output. The order is of events is reversed from your Ableton example, but I would contend that this kind of production is no less musical than what someone could create using a DAW, simply that the tools are more accessible (and I presume there is less direct control over what the end result is going to sound like, but the same could be said of conducting an orchestra versus playing a piano.) Eta: For example, some people in this thread have complained that the AI generated voice falls into the uncanny valley. I agree, and I think that’s part of the art here.
    - Devasta 3y ago
      When I go up to the self-service booth in McDonalds, go through the menu and select a portion of McNuggets the result food has been made, the food was only made because of my actions, no nuggets would have been made if I specifically didn't want them, but to say I am the one who cooked them would be absurd. Like, if Trent Reznor had produced Hurt not by putting his doubts, self loathing and pain into words and music, rather by typing "sad, trending on artstation" into a console then heading for lunch, I don't think it would be any way as meaningful even if it was note for note beat for beat the same output.
      - tsukikage 3y ago
        The meaning the listener imparts to the song is constructed in the listener's head, a combination of the song and the listener's own knowledge, experiences, personality and emotions. I knew nothing about Trent Reznor the first time I heard "Hurt". Often when a song is heard on the radio - perhaps a sentence that dates me, but even so - there is no explanation of where it came from or even what it's called to accompany it; or perhaps there may have been, but the listener wasn't paying attention until after they realised they liked what they were hearing; indeed, there used to be an entire industry for solving the problem of "I heard a song I like and want to know more about it, or at the very least find out what it's called so I can hear it again". When I first heard "Hurt", it resonated because of how those sounds interacted with my own experience. Everything else came after. Had those exact same sounds any other origin, that first experience would not have been affected - I would have had no way to know.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Because the cause of a person singing is their mental states (desire, emotion, intention, etc.) and the cause of this generation of audio is that the words are associated with some backcatalogue of previous music. Listening to songs, as speaking with people, is in large part about enjoying the causes of the song rather than the mere variations in pitch. Beethoven's 5th even, purely instrumental, is enjoyable because of how the composer is clearly playing with you. To generate pitch variations identical to beethovens fifth makes this an illusion, one hard to sustain if you know its an illusion. It isnt an illusion in the case of the 5th itself: beethoven really had those desires.
  - tsukikage 3y ago
    Meanwhile, Hatsune Miku remains popular. There are even concerts.
    - Devasta 3y ago
      Hatsune Miku has more in common with Gorillaz than AI slop.
      - tsukikage 3y ago
        I did consider mentioning Gorillaz, but they are voiced by actual people, whereas Miku is software synthesis. The suggestion was that "the cause of a person singing is their mental states", but there is no person singing here and therefore no mental states in the singer - it's just Vocaloid. Meanwhile, "To what extent can a piece of art be a thing that is of interest in itself, divorced from its creator, context, or any representation of anything in particular?" is absolutely a valid area for people to explore and one that artists are exploring all the time. There is now one more tool to play with in the toolbox. I heard the exact same objections to the modtracker scene three decades ago - "it's just computer generated slop, I'm not interested unless it's a real person performing on real instruments". I maintain that not only was it a perfectly valid mode of expression then, but tools like Ableton grew in part from those experiences and are an integral part of much - most? - music now.
  - 3y ago
- CrLf 3y ago
  Art is primarily a means for one human to convey emotions to another human, but for something to be art, the artist must also have invested some skill/effort into the artwork(1). AI-generated art may have a bit of the former (assuming the human had enough control over the details of the final output), but has practically none of the latter. Hence, AI-generated output is not art. But art can be produced using AI tools somewhere in the process. (1) When I look at art produced by one of those "artists" that commission the actual work to someone else, it's similar (I don't recognize the "artist" as the human I'm connecting to, ideas are a dime a dozen). However, it's still art because I can connect with the anonymous human which actually implemented it.
tux1968 3y ago
What if you didn't know either way? Would you refuse to enjoy a song, until you were absolutely sure it was performed by a human?
- jug 3y ago
  I think we kind of already have the answer to this one. Commercial music that use computers to enhance the song or singer is already prevalent. Even straight AI assisted track generation probably already happens. People don't use to mind it for as long as they don't know. Once they do, many still don't care but some feel betrayed and think honesty and humanity is part of the art. I haven't heard of a single person who refuse to enjoy songs they don't know how they were produced, though, and I strongly doubt the parent would too.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  I think people will gladly engage on a superficial level, but refuse to engage more deeply if that makes sense?
- satisfice 3y ago
  Would you refuse to enjoy food if it didn't come from a reputable source? Of course you would. You don't just eat shit at random. If a friend recited a poem, would it matter to do if they read it off the Internet or composed it themselves? Of course it would. If someone tells you they love you, does it matter if they are a robot or an honest human or a con-artist human catfishing you? YES, THAT MATTERS TO YOU. Yes you "refuse to enjoy" things that have suspicious sources.
  - tux1968 3y ago
    I don't think those examples are equivalent at all. Food isn't just about taste, but could literally kill you. Not many people have friends who recite poetry. And as for love, that's something that takes years to meaningfully develop. But, I barely know any musical artist's name today. Most music is just something to listen to at the gym. It's pleasant enough, but I don't dig in to know who is singing at all. Every source is equivalent to me, as long as it's pleasant to the ear. Perhaps you're different. The only question is, which attitude is more prevalent?
comboy 3y ago
What if you didn't know? You wouldn't know whether you like it until you've learned more about the artist?
- Shrezzing 3y ago
  AI Audio isn't far enough along to be convincing in song (at least in this song, anyway). This song sounds like a disturbing uncanny-valley rendition of a slow Phoebe Bridges song performed by Taylor Swift using a broken auto tuner. While I think it's technically impressive that this exists at all, I think this tune is still at the stage of "Pope in a puffer jacket".
- weregiraffe 3y ago
  Yes, that's how communication between humans works. It is context dependent.
mrtksn 3y ago
Seriously, the "creatives are screwed" narrative has fallen apart for me because the stuff made in AI has proven to be worthless. Why is it worthless? Because the point of art was to communicate or convey something with other people and the AI has no idea because its not human. A few words or a sequence of sounds can be enough to transfer great deal of feeling and meaning because we run about the same software and as a result we can generate the same output with a little bit of input. This is all done by looking inside and externalise it, that is someone feels something and makes a song from it and that song can be used to regenerate feelings in other people. The current AI tech doesn't have a way to do that because doesn't have a way to look inside. At best, it can imitate things within some context but the output doesn't have any meaning at all. The most successful AI content was maybe the "Pope wearing Balenciaga" image but that wasn't because the AI thought it mean something but because someone looked inside and thought this can be interesting. So no, AI isn't taking over the creative process. AI is taking over the mechanical part of it only, that is the part where the artist traditionally had to master a method of production or an instrument. The AI evangelists keep pushing short videos or drawings that look "professional" and claiming that Hollywood is done, artists are screwed etc but those are worthless outside of the context that AI made it. No one is interested in paying or even spending time to consume this content, its extremely dull.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  > Because the point of art was to communicate or convey something with other people and the AI has no idea because its not human. This is mixing up art with the art industry. Artists will struggle just like copywriters are struggling after the arrival of LLMs. Not everything in the art industry is trying to break new artistic ground or communicate some deep emotion to the listsener. For much of the industry, "good enough" will suffice if it's 10x cheaper.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    I disagree, the industry participants still need to have this ability to look inside when doing their work even if they do routine/mundane work. That's how you get people who are better or worse in their jobs. Maybe with exception of strictly technical work like people who remove background in mages or calibrate instruments. Those people are screwed yes.
matsemann 3y ago
For me it's the opposite. This is interesting in its absurdity, the mistakes it makes, how it tries and somewhat fails to convey emotion etc. Someone making a "proper" song where they just sang these words would be quite boring, then I'd rather spend my time checking out other music.
dspillett 3y ago
While I find the current pervasiveness of AI articles¹, artwork, & code³, irritating, especially when it claims to be something else², that is different because they often try to appear not AI generated, or are presented by others as not being. This states from the outset that it is using AI tools, at which point I become more understanding. Someone had an idea, but lacked the singing voice or a friend with a singing voice & free time, so used a tool to fill the gap. This is better, at very least more honest, use of tech as a tool than, for instance, autotune on studio albums, IMO. If you _really_ want it with a real human voice, perhaps contact some of the many performers on social media to suggest it might be an amusing way to generate some content to monetise. Or, of course, sing it yourself! -- [1] I've gone from clicking very few of facebook's “recommend for you” articles to clicking absolutely none of them – the number that are, or are indistinguishable from, hallucinations from an LLM that doesn't understand what is actually being written about, already dwarfs things that are worth reading. SciFi TV/film/book reviews and essays seem to be particularly affected, with “local” news links not far behind. [2] “you won't believe this isn't AI generated!” — no, I won't, because it quite obviously is. I don't know whether to be insulted that you think just saying that will convince me otherwise or sad for the state of humanity that many do seem fooled. [3] Too many people seem to think that slapping code out of copilot into a stackoverflow answer without nothing to check it for correctness in any way is acceptable, and before that was possible there was already too much bad (sometimes working but blatantly insecure) code out there that people were blindly copying. And that is before the potential licensing & moral issues that mean I have not yet been convinced to use anything like copilot myself, but I'm getting far off-topic here…
KolmogorovComp 3y ago
In reality it will not be exploited like that by the big players. It will be used to create hits for even cheaper and then the labels will be looking for a puppet singer that will perform for the audience. At first it will be kept secret, and then as it spread more and more among the industry, it will be more or less stated, but by that point people will be already accustomed.

by CrLf 3y ago

HeartStrings 3y ago

This. AI production loses “soul” as human empathy is a crucial component.

rootlocus 3y ago
Art is like a lossy compression algorithm. If there is a soul of any form the only reason you think you're observing it in human-produced art is because your decompression algorithm is adding it. While I don't disagree there's a "human touch" to art, I'm not convinced it can't be synthesized to some degree. It may not be innovative, but I think since AI is extrapolating from learned data, it can at least mimic the current pop culture.

jnsaff2 3y ago

I'd be curious to hear your reasoning behind this? Why does this being computer generated ruin it for you? Auto-tune has been around since 1997 so it's not like computers have not been a big part of a lot of music we hear every day.

komali2 3y ago
For me all art I enjoy has some aspect of connection to someone that's sharing my human experience. If we get AGI, I could imagine feeling something towards the art such an entity creates, since a big part of the human experience that we would probably share with an AGI is inescapable death. But for today's "AI" generated music, I feel the same towards it as I would towards the random step function output of a given tool in Ableton - sounds cool, now what can we do with that to make it into music?
- mathgorges 3y ago
  > sounds cool, now what can we do with that to make it into music? So a human using the tools of sound production is what transforms the function output into music. (Please let me know if I’m misunderstanding you). I think I see what you’re saying, but that’s already happened here hasn’t it? I mean, it's not as though an AI made the decision to generate this all by itself, a human had an idea to create this piece and wrote a prompt which created this output. The order is of events is reversed from your Ableton example, but I would contend that this kind of production is no less musical than what someone could create using a DAW, simply that the tools are more accessible (and I presume there is less direct control over what the end result is going to sound like, but the same could be said of conducting an orchestra versus playing a piano.) Eta: For example, some people in this thread have complained that the AI generated voice falls into the uncanny valley. I agree, and I think that’s part of the art here.
  - Devasta 3y ago
    When I go up to the self-service booth in McDonalds, go through the menu and select a portion of McNuggets the result food has been made, the food was only made because of my actions, no nuggets would have been made if I specifically didn't want them, but to say I am the one who cooked them would be absurd. Like, if Trent Reznor had produced Hurt not by putting his doubts, self loathing and pain into words and music, rather by typing "sad, trending on artstation" into a console then heading for lunch, I don't think it would be any way as meaningful even if it was note for note beat for beat the same output.
    - tsukikage 3y ago
      The meaning the listener imparts to the song is constructed in the listener's head, a combination of the song and the listener's own knowledge, experiences, personality and emotions. I knew nothing about Trent Reznor the first time I heard "Hurt". Often when a song is heard on the radio - perhaps a sentence that dates me, but even so - there is no explanation of where it came from or even what it's called to accompany it; or perhaps there may have been, but the listener wasn't paying attention until after they realised they liked what they were hearing; indeed, there used to be an entire industry for solving the problem of "I heard a song I like and want to know more about it, or at the very least find out what it's called so I can hear it again". When I first heard "Hurt", it resonated because of how those sounds interacted with my own experience. Everything else came after. Had those exact same sounds any other origin, that first experience would not have been affected - I would have had no way to know.
mjburgess 3y ago
Because the cause of a person singing is their mental states (desire, emotion, intention, etc.) and the cause of this generation of audio is that the words are associated with some backcatalogue of previous music. Listening to songs, as speaking with people, is in large part about enjoying the causes of the song rather than the mere variations in pitch. Beethoven's 5th even, purely instrumental, is enjoyable because of how the composer is clearly playing with you. To generate pitch variations identical to beethovens fifth makes this an illusion, one hard to sustain if you know its an illusion. It isnt an illusion in the case of the 5th itself: beethoven really had those desires.
- tsukikage 3y ago
  Meanwhile, Hatsune Miku remains popular. There are even concerts.
  - Devasta 3y ago
    Hatsune Miku has more in common with Gorillaz than AI slop.
    - tsukikage 3y ago
      I did consider mentioning Gorillaz, but they are voiced by actual people, whereas Miku is software synthesis. The suggestion was that "the cause of a person singing is their mental states", but there is no person singing here and therefore no mental states in the singer - it's just Vocaloid. Meanwhile, "To what extent can a piece of art be a thing that is of interest in itself, divorced from its creator, context, or any representation of anything in particular?" is absolutely a valid area for people to explore and one that artists are exploring all the time. There is now one more tool to play with in the toolbox. I heard the exact same objections to the modtracker scene three decades ago - "it's just computer generated slop, I'm not interested unless it's a real person performing on real instruments". I maintain that not only was it a perfectly valid mode of expression then, but tools like Ableton grew in part from those experiences and are an integral part of much - most? - music now.
- 3y ago
CrLf 3y ago
Art is primarily a means for one human to convey emotions to another human, but for something to be art, the artist must also have invested some skill/effort into the artwork(1). AI-generated art may have a bit of the former (assuming the human had enough control over the details of the final output), but has practically none of the latter. Hence, AI-generated output is not art. But art can be produced using AI tools somewhere in the process. (1) When I look at art produced by one of those "artists" that commission the actual work to someone else, it's similar (I don't recognize the "artist" as the human I'm connecting to, ideas are a dime a dozen). However, it's still art because I can connect with the anonymous human which actually implemented it.

tux1968 3y ago

What if you didn't know either way? Would you refuse to enjoy a song, until you were absolutely sure it was performed by a human?

jug 3y ago
I think we kind of already have the answer to this one. Commercial music that use computers to enhance the song or singer is already prevalent. Even straight AI assisted track generation probably already happens. People don't use to mind it for as long as they don't know. Once they do, many still don't care but some feel betrayed and think honesty and humanity is part of the art. I haven't heard of a single person who refuse to enjoy songs they don't know how they were produced, though, and I strongly doubt the parent would too.
im3w1l 3y ago
I think people will gladly engage on a superficial level, but refuse to engage more deeply if that makes sense?
satisfice 3y ago
Would you refuse to enjoy food if it didn't come from a reputable source? Of course you would. You don't just eat shit at random. If a friend recited a poem, would it matter to do if they read it off the Internet or composed it themselves? Of course it would. If someone tells you they love you, does it matter if they are a robot or an honest human or a con-artist human catfishing you? YES, THAT MATTERS TO YOU. Yes you "refuse to enjoy" things that have suspicious sources.
- tux1968 3y ago
  I don't think those examples are equivalent at all. Food isn't just about taste, but could literally kill you. Not many people have friends who recite poetry. And as for love, that's something that takes years to meaningfully develop. But, I barely know any musical artist's name today. Most music is just something to listen to at the gym. It's pleasant enough, but I don't dig in to know who is singing at all. Every source is equivalent to me, as long as it's pleasant to the ear. Perhaps you're different. The only question is, which attitude is more prevalent?

comboy 3y ago

What if you didn't know? You wouldn't know whether you like it until you've learned more about the artist?

Shrezzing 3y ago
AI Audio isn't far enough along to be convincing in song (at least in this song, anyway). This song sounds like a disturbing uncanny-valley rendition of a slow Phoebe Bridges song performed by Taylor Swift using a broken auto tuner. While I think it's technically impressive that this exists at all, I think this tune is still at the stage of "Pope in a puffer jacket".
weregiraffe 3y ago
Yes, that's how communication between humans works. It is context dependent.

mrtksn 3y ago

Seriously, the "creatives are screwed" narrative has fallen apart for me because the stuff made in AI has proven to be worthless. Why is it worthless? Because the point of art was to communicate or convey something with other people and the AI has no idea because its not human. A few words or a sequence of sounds can be enough to transfer great deal of feeling and meaning because we run about the same software and as a result we can generate the same output with a little bit of input. This is all done by looking inside and externalise it, that is someone feels something and makes a song from it and that song can be used to regenerate feelings in other people. The current AI tech doesn't have a way to do that because doesn't have a way to look inside. At best, it can imitate things within some context but the output doesn't have any meaning at all. The most successful AI content was maybe the "Pope wearing Balenciaga" image but that wasn't because the AI thought it mean something but because someone looked inside and thought this can be interesting. So no, AI isn't taking over the creative process. AI is taking over the mechanical part of it only, that is the part where the artist traditionally had to master a method of production or an instrument. The AI evangelists keep pushing short videos or drawings that look "professional" and claiming that Hollywood is done, artists are screwed etc but those are worthless outside of the context that AI made it. No one is interested in paying or even spending time to consume this content, its extremely dull.

hackerlight 3y ago
> Because the point of art was to communicate or convey something with other people and the AI has no idea because its not human. This is mixing up art with the art industry. Artists will struggle just like copywriters are struggling after the arrival of LLMs. Not everything in the art industry is trying to break new artistic ground or communicate some deep emotion to the listsener. For much of the industry, "good enough" will suffice if it's 10x cheaper.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  I disagree, the industry participants still need to have this ability to look inside when doing their work even if they do routine/mundane work. That's how you get people who are better or worse in their jobs. Maybe with exception of strictly technical work like people who remove background in mages or calibrate instruments. Those people are screwed yes.

matsemann 3y ago

For me it's the opposite. This is interesting in its absurdity, the mistakes it makes, how it tries and somewhat fails to convey emotion etc. Someone making a "proper" song where they just sang these words would be quite boring, then I'd rather spend my time checking out other music.

dspillett 3y ago

While I find the current pervasiveness of AI articles¹, artwork, & code³, irritating, especially when it claims to be something else², that is different because they often try to appear not AI generated, or are presented by others as not being. This states from the outset that it is using AI tools, at which point I become more understanding. Someone had an idea, but lacked the singing voice or a friend with a singing voice & free time, so used a tool to fill the gap. This is better, at very least more honest, use of tech as a tool than, for instance, autotune on studio albums, IMO. If you _really_ want it with a real human voice, perhaps contact some of the many performers on social media to suggest it might be an amusing way to generate some content to monetise. Or, of course, sing it yourself! -- [1] I've gone from clicking very few of facebook's “recommend for you” articles to clicking absolutely none of them – the number that are, or are indistinguishable from, hallucinations from an LLM that doesn't understand what is actually being written about, already dwarfs things that are worth reading. SciFi TV/film/book reviews and essays seem to be particularly affected, with “local” news links not far behind. [2] “you won't believe this isn't AI generated!” — no, I won't, because it quite obviously is. I don't know whether to be insulted that you think just saying that will convince me otherwise or sad for the state of humanity that many do seem fooled. [3] Too many people seem to think that slapping code out of copilot into a stackoverflow answer without nothing to check it for correctness in any way is acceptable, and before that was possible there was already too much bad (sometimes working but blatantly insecure) code out there that people were blindly copying. And that is before the potential licensing & moral issues that mean I have not yet been convinced to use anything like copilot myself, but I'm getting far off-topic here…

KolmogorovComp 3y ago

In reality it will not be exploited like that by the big players. It will be used to create hits for even cheaper and then the labels will be looking for a puppet singer that will perform for the audience. At first it will be kept secret, and then as it spread more and more among the industry, it will be more or less stated, but by that point people will be already accustomed.