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I was involved in a conversation about cheating in video games the other day, and the topic shifted to AI use in music. Someone said, "using AI is like using a

I was involved in a conversation about cheating in video games the other day, and the topic shifted to AI use in music. Someone said, "using AI is like using an aimbot for music." I absolutely love that comparison since it highlights the shortcut past creativity/skill to get a computerized best result while also associating it with blatant cheating. The "enables creativity" argument is ironic since the root of the word is "create" and AI users are literally removing the "create" step from their production process.

jacquesm 9mo ago
That is an excellent way to put it. Thank you for relaying this.
ggrantrowberry 9mo ago
I disagree. The point of playing a shooter game is to have fun and be competitive while abiding by the rules of the game. Using aimbot is circumventing the whole purpose. The purpose of making music is to make music. So why does it matter what tool you use to do it? Because tools like Logic or Garageband can create lots of sounds for you is that removing creativity? Really shouldn’t music be recorded with a live band every time? Those music production tools are destroying creativity… No. Obviously not. AI does enable creativity. Turns out it also requires a lot of skill to use it to get something good.
- andyfilms1 9mo ago
  The purpose of eating is to ingest nutrients, but that's not why most chefs enjoy cooking, or why people pay more for nicer meals.
  - dogleash 9mo ago
    Come to think of it, AI Stans do remind me of people bending over backwards to justify how their Soylent farts made them more skilled at living life.
- ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
  > Turns out it also requires a lot of skill to use it to get something good. I agree. I don't like blaming/crediting a tool, for how it is used. Some tools may be too dangerous for "just anyone" to use, and there may be justification in restricting access, but I'm not sure the tools should always be banned. I was just talking about this, with a friend who leans conservative (but not nuttily so). He was telling me about watching all these shows about folks living north of the Arctic Circle, and how everyone walks around with guns, because polar bears look at us as walking snacks. In those cases, the gun is an absolutely necessary tool, and no one even thinks twice about it. Not so, New York City. But it would be a life-endangering mistake for someone in NYC to dictate to an Alaskan Inuit, that they can't carry a gun, and it might be a life-endangering mistake for an Alaskan to insist that everyone in NYC walk around with a gun (I won't get into the political arguments, there, be draggones).
- elsjaako 9mo ago
  I agree. My problem with AI produced media is that a lot of the things I've seen are really bad. If someone uses AI, but has taste and takes the time to curate and fix the output, then the output can be fine. Just like with digital effects in movies, plastic surgery, and makeup - if it's done well, there's a good chance I didn't even notice it. If it's clearly noticeable, it's often because it's not done well. I think you can compare to another "uncreative" way of making music: sampling. The way the Timelords do it in "Doctorin' the Tardis" is pretty terrible (in their case on purpose, I believe). There are plenty of hip hop examples where I think musically not much is added to the music, but the lyrics and maybe the act do add a lot. And then there are bands like Daft Punk that will chop up and recontextualize the samples to the point that it's clearly a completely new thing.
  - platevoltage 9mo ago
    There were plenty of hiphop examples where the samples are recontextualized as well, then Puff Daddy came along and attempted to rap over virtually unchanged Led Zeppelin songs and everyone ate it up. AI Is doing the same thing to music that he did decades ago. ruin it.
    - elsjaako 9mo ago
      I didn't mean to say all hiphop is like what I mention. I'm 100% sure that hiphop also does sampling in really interesting ways, I'm just not as familiar with the examples. This was not not meant as a diss, and I wasn't saying all hiphop does things the same way. I was just mentioning examples that I'm personally familiar with of "Sampling Slop", "Different kind of creativity", and "Using Sampling as a completely new instrument". For the middle category, I meant things like Gangsta's Paradise. I really like the song, I think Coolio really adds something. But you can hear much more of "Pasttime Paradise" in there than you can hear "More Spell On You" in Daft Punk's "One More time" I mention Daft Punk because it's really accessible: there are videos on youtube that can show a layperson like me exactly how they chopped up the samples.
- shinycode 9mo ago
  People just enjoy and value the process of making music. Just like you could enjoy the process of drawing, or doing sports. Given the amount of talented musicians that do not live off their art, most of the time they value the process and the result and if other people like it too and pay for it it’s even better. Most music is not produced to give emotions to other but to the musician. It happens we share the same emotions that the musician sometimes. So if you remove the process or devalue it, it’s touching the artist in its heart and values because most of them worked on their craft for years.
  - lotsofpulp 9mo ago
    One person using more software to "make" music does not remove the process or devalue music for another person who wants to use less software to make music. Replace music with anything in this reasoning.
    - adventured 9mo ago
      Exactly right. It's like arguing there is only one way to make food for enjoyment. It's pure snobbery to proclaim there's only one proper way to do X thing along these lines. Making art is just the same, there is no right way to do it. The HN crowd wants everybody sitting at home on UBI suffering trying to be creative. It's like arguing for hand washing clothes to get that full, proper, drawn-out, brain smashing experience. Now sit at home and be a good boy, take that UBI, create and be productive - but don't make it too easy, don't you dare use AI, bleed for that UBI.
      - lawlessone 9mo ago
        >Now sit at home and be a good boy, take that UBI, create and be productive Honestly i prefer that listening marketing bro's on linkedin posting about how AI means X is finished and everyone who learned X needs to pay for their webinar on writing prompts.
    - shinycode 9mo ago
      Actually with AI the music is made for you. I don’t have to learn how to play the piano the guitar or anything. I just prompt what kind of instrument I want to. Is that still « making music » ? Idk, for me it’s not the same. In the end I’m not a musician. I just enjoy music. But I can understand that the reality of some people is different from mine as regards to what is « making music ». My view or use of AI does not invalidates theirs.
- Rooster61 9mo ago
  It's not real music if you aren't hand crafting the atoms that make up the molecules of the medium you are vibrating to create sound waves. I feel like there should be an XKCD for this
- xg15 9mo ago
  During Christmas shopping, I saw several books and board games with illustrations in the signature ChatGPT cartoon style [1, 2] as cover art. (As well as a coloring book that was literally only ChatGPT images) They were sold both in comic shops and large book stores. I found it just sad, honestly. Nothing against using some AI help to create good cover art, but not even bothering to change the default style screams "low effort". That's the effect I'm fearing. Sure, AI could probably be used to create new high-quality content by people who really put in the effort, but in reality, it just seems to define a new level of "good enough" that lowers the overall level of quality. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1o0sfzz/chatgpt_cartoon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1o0sfzz/chatgpt... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kmao1t/i_asked_chat_gpt_to_create_a_2000s_style_cartoon https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kmao1t/i_asked_ch...
- platevoltage 9mo ago
  AI isn't being used the same way as a drum loop or an electronic instrument, It's being used to vertically integrate services like Spotify so that they don't have to pay as much for content. Maybe you have found a place for generative AI in your workflow that fosters creativity, but this is not how it's being used the vast majority of the time.
bitexploder 9mo ago
AI can do the most basic first pass of creation. For a senior engineer writing code is a relatively small part of the job. There is a paradox where complete novices can churn out content / code that looks decent, but is superficially empty or a maintenance nightmare waiting to happen if the complexity increases even a little. On the other hand, for senior engineers, it is truly useful. If you treat the AI like a modestly skilled junior developer and actually still design your software it just does a lot of the boring boiler plate for you. You are still doing almost everything important. When you understand the code and could write it yourself you can almost always keep the LLM on track towards your objective, achieve appropriate code quality, and finish the task quicker. They are also really decent at refactoring and doing boilerplate. Especially in languages like C++ with a lot of boilerplate. I imagine the same idea above holds for media (music, film) as well. When you understand how to prompt and can get the right scene with all the right constraints you are saving time. The human is still composing, editing, and storytelling. The LLM again becomes a relatively interesting but boring tool in your workflow to speed up some aspects. Right now the power of LLMs is that you can funnel parts of your workflow that they can handle well and you save a lot of time for minimal design cost in terms of how to use them.
lukan 9mo ago
The purpose of music is (usually) to touch people emotionally. If it works, it works. Doesn't matter how it was made. There is no cheating when there is feeling. Generic AI music so far does not touch me. I might tolerate it in the background, but I know there is great music being made with the help of AI. (Which is different from letting the AI do it all) An aimbot in competive playing is indeed cheating and sucks the fun out for others. But if you have fun with single player aimbots, why not. (I know some games integrated autoaim and they can still be fun)
- echelon 9mo ago
  AI music models are a tool. They're only as good as the person doing the steering and curation. I am a filmmaker. I have made photons-on-glass films for decades. I have always wanted to make big-budget sci-fi and fantasy films, as have my friends and colleges who went to film school. The barrier to entry is almost impossible to climb. Most of my friends wound up in IATSE or doing commercial work, but never had the chance to follow through on their passion projects. Ten thousand kids go to film school every year. Very few of them will wind up being able to make what they dream to create. It's a fucking tragedy that all of this ambition withers on the vine. Getting a large film budget requires connections. You see a lot of nepotism. Sometimes a director who was in the right place at the right time with the right ideas will make it, but that's such a survivor's bias problem. There are orders of magnitude more people that didn't make it. Talented people full of dreams. And that's a tragedy - imagine how many Martin Scorseses, Hayao Miyazakis, Yorgos Lanthimoses, Denis Villeneuves, and Chloe Zhaos we're losing. AI is the first tool that will level the playing field for truly driven individuals. I mean this with my full heart - this is a great tool for creative and driven people. It's the arrival of the printing press for us. But the news of this gift has been twisted and soured by the media and by popular influencers who push only a fear agenda. By trying to make AI films, I have been doxed, sent death threats, insulted, called thousands of names. Every day! People pour out hatred, racist comments, sexist comments - they literally want me (all of us) to DIE because they've been taught to hate this. I can't even begin to tell you how exhausting this is. Instead, let me focus on the good. Here's a list of (what I think) are really good AI films. Each of them takes 10+ hours of work: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tii9uF0nAx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tii9uF0nAx4 - Made by a film school grad as a demo of real filmmaking combined with AI VFX. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAQWRBCt_5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAQWRBCt_5E - Created by a Hollywood TV writer for an FX show you've probably seen. Not the best animation or voicing, but you can see how it gives a writer more than just a blank page to convey their thoughts. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWZYP5jn5w4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWZYP5jn5w4 - Music video. Slightly MAGA-coded, but made by a Hollywood VFX person. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAAiiKteM-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAAiiKteM-U - Made by a film school grad as a Robot Chicken homage. If you're going to tell them "don't use AI", then are you going to get them a job at Disney? Also, all the pieces are hand-rotoscoped, the mouth animations are hand-animated, and every voice is from a hired (and paid) voice actor. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NFXGMuwpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NFXGMuwpY - Made by a film school grad as a Robot Chicken homage. See previous comment. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_KXYpaTe_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_KXYpaTe_8 - Another slightly MAGA-coded music video. Made by the same Hollywood VFX person. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hlx5Rslrzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hlx5Rslrzk - Amazing Spider-Man vs. Carnage anime created with ComfyUI and other models. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqoCWdOwr2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqoCWdOwr2U - Christmas Grinch anime. It's really funny if you like Jojo and get the references. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKYeDIiqiHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKYeDIiqiHs - Totally 100% cursed. Made by a teenager following the comic book's plot. Instead of this teenager spending 100 hours on Fortnite, they made this. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps5Dhc3Lh8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps5Dhc3Lh8U - A Pixar-like short film These tools do not remove the need for editing, compositing, rotoscoping. You still have to understand film language, character arcs, story, pacing. The human ingredients still have to be there. By using these models and tools, directors and editors can finally pursue projects that would require many people and potentially very large budgets. Like the Red vs. Blue creators sitting down and making machinima, they can create vivid sci-fi worlds or whatever genre or mood they want to evoke. AI is a tool. In the hands of an artist, you can make art with AI. Yes, people are using AI to make slop. Cameras also make slop - selfies, food pics. Your own camera roll is full of garbage. People are posting slop AI because it's novel. If we'd gone from "no cameras at all" to "smartphones" overnight, you would see so much smartphone camera slop it would be unbearable. We, as a society, had time to develop filters and curation around cameras. That'll eventually happen for AI too. Cameras can make incredible art in the hands of an artist. They can also make a lot of shit. But we don't demonize the cameras. Soon, our feelings towards AI will become equivalent. But right now, it's extremely painful to be a creative person using AI. I - ABSOLUTELY HATE ABSOLUTELY DETEST THE "ALL AI IS BAD" MEME IT IS MIMETIC VITRIOL People have let this stupid meme boil over to the point of sending death threats and doxxing creators. And that is beyond unacceptable. We need to stop adopting angry slogans of hate and start thinking on a case by case basis with nuance. This entire conversation needs way more humanity and humility. And we need to accept that there are good things being created with AI too.
mikkupikku 9mo ago
There's literally no problem at all with using aimbots, the problem is when you're playing with other people and lie about it. In fact, many games have built in aimbots simply because it's a fun mechanic (Ion Fury and Borderlands: Pre-Sequel are two that come to mind.)
wincy 9mo ago
I made my wife a song about how we met using Suno. It took me about 4 hours to get the lyrics just right, rewriting them (without AI help, it’s terrible with lyrics), plugging them in, seeing how they sounded, fixing them some more to get the verse so it sounded right. She thought it was really special and she cried as we listened to it while holding hands in the car. I can’t play guitar, and I can’t hit some notes with my low singing voice, but I wrote every word and it felt like something really special to the both of us. I don’t really care if people think I “cheated”. To torture the analogy, it’s like cheating in a two player game since I’m not publishing this song to anyone else.
- gchamonlive 9mo ago
  It's more like going into a video game and tuning the difficulty all the way down so you are virtually invincible. It's taking the fun out of the game for some, but for others that's the only way to play it.
  - savanaly 9mo ago
    Cozy games where you basically can't lose are a booming industry in the last decade, so that outlook is certainly bullish for AI creative tools!
  - wincy 9mo ago
    And you know what? I’ve got a medically complicated kid with a million doctor’s appointments and a full time job. I often switch the games down to the easiest mode. Then sometimes a new Dark Souls comes out and I relish every moment, if I’ve got the time. I’ve been having Suno make random instrumental chiptunes, too, and it’s got me interested in buying a MIDI keyboard to play around with. Which 40 years ago people were saying that wasn’t real music, either.
    - virgil_disgr4ce 9mo ago
      >a MIDI keyboard to play around with. Which 40 years ago people were saying that wasn’t real music, either. Citation needed
odyssey7 9mo ago
The long history of art shows a story of technology developments and how artists have creatively applied them as new techniques and mediums. Is AI music today able to emulate what a brilliant human artist does? Not really. But is it something that artists can leverage creatively? Absolutely.
_DeadFred_ 9mo ago
Using AI to create music is like having your mom buy you a surfer wardrobe in the 80s/90s even though you lived in landlocked midwest or a skater wardrobe even though you didn't skate.
- cindyllm 9mo ago
  [dead]
slowmovintarget 9mo ago
Agree... AI enables output, not creativity. The mediocre confuse one for the other.
ryandrake 9mo ago
To use the video game analogy, I think it's more about PVP vs "bots" as opposed to PVP vs "humans". A lot of PVP games (especially battle royale style) struggle with the question of whether to include dumb AI characters as "fodder" for people to play against. The PVP purists, pro players, and streamers tend to be against bots because they think the game should be a pure test of human skill. Normie players, less skilled players, and players who just don't have the time to master the game tend to like to play against a mix of bots and humans. Some people just don't like PVP and would prefer to just play against bots only. I'm not going to weigh in on which side I'm on, but I notice the discussion around AI "making creativity too easy" and "devaluing practiced skills" to be similar to the discussion around bots in PVP games.
stale2002 9mo ago
> Someone said, "using AI is like using an aimbot for music." Ok. Lets go with that analogy. Whats the problem with someone playing a single player game with an aimbot on? Sure they wont get good at the aiming part. But it feels kinda up to them on if that matters or not. Additionally, I wouldn't see anything morally wrong with that. Now, if someone entered into a music competition, where only human made music was allow then I agree that this would be "cheating". But what if its not that and the listeners simply are OK with the "aimbotted" music?
- ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago
  > Whats the problem with someone playing a single player game with an aimbot on? People are doing it on the server where all the musicians live, and they have no other place to go, only disconnect.
  - stale2002 9mo ago
    > where all the musicians live, and they have no other place to go, only disconnect. No actually. Those musicians are free to continue making whatever music that they want and can refuse to listen to the AI music if they dont want to. The fact that 2 other, unrelated 3rd parties both like to make AI music and listen to AI music is not the musicians area of control here. They do not get to decide what other people like to listen to or make.
    - ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago
      You're confused at multiple levels. > free to continue making whatever music that they want Never said they weren't. > can refuse to listen to the AI music if they don't want to A musician can be a listener, indeed. If you believe a listener has this freedom and will keep it, you're most probably mistaken. No one besides musicians and discerning, ideologically relentless listeners is interested in making NN-generated music distinguishable and supporting the right of filtering it. The goal is to supplant one with the other. > The fact that 2 other, unrelated 3rd parties both like to make AI music and listen to AI music… Listeners is not an unrelated party to a musician. They form a vital symbiosis. And it's a zero-sum game, as listener's attention is a limited resource. > They do not get to decide what other people like to listen to or make. This is an unrelated point. Who decides what is a separate topic. The crux of the issue is that we have two types of superficially similar product which are in fact substantially different (hope this does not require clarification) and incomparable in terms of resources necessary for their creation. This begets unprecedented power imbalance and incentives for deceit, biased legislation and other moves to solidify this situation.
socalgal2 9mo ago
I find many of the top videos on civitai.com to be amazing https://civitai.com/videos https://civitai.com/videos
ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago
No, comparing to an aimbot is too charitable. Using AI for music is at best like watching a gaming stream and you barely choosing the game, though not the streamer.
veunes 9mo ago
The analogy is great, but it breaks down when we talk about professional use. An aimbot in multiplayer is evil because it ruins the game for others. But an aimbot in game development (e.g., procedural aiming animation) is just a tool. The problem with current AI video is that the model often shoots not where the director wants, but where it's easiest to hit (the template)

jacquesm 9mo ago

That is an excellent way to put it. Thank you for relaying this.

ggrantrowberry 9mo ago

I disagree. The point of playing a shooter game is to have fun and be competitive while abiding by the rules of the game. Using aimbot is circumventing the whole purpose. The purpose of making music is to make music. So why does it matter what tool you use to do it? Because tools like Logic or Garageband can create lots of sounds for you is that removing creativity? Really shouldn’t music be recorded with a live band every time? Those music production tools are destroying creativity… No. Obviously not. AI does enable creativity. Turns out it also requires a lot of skill to use it to get something good.

andyfilms1 9mo ago
The purpose of eating is to ingest nutrients, but that's not why most chefs enjoy cooking, or why people pay more for nicer meals.
- dogleash 9mo ago
  Come to think of it, AI Stans do remind me of people bending over backwards to justify how their Soylent farts made them more skilled at living life.
ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
> Turns out it also requires a lot of skill to use it to get something good. I agree. I don't like blaming/crediting a tool, for how it is used. Some tools may be too dangerous for "just anyone" to use, and there may be justification in restricting access, but I'm not sure the tools should always be banned. I was just talking about this, with a friend who leans conservative (but not nuttily so). He was telling me about watching all these shows about folks living north of the Arctic Circle, and how everyone walks around with guns, because polar bears look at us as walking snacks. In those cases, the gun is an absolutely necessary tool, and no one even thinks twice about it. Not so, New York City. But it would be a life-endangering mistake for someone in NYC to dictate to an Alaskan Inuit, that they can't carry a gun, and it might be a life-endangering mistake for an Alaskan to insist that everyone in NYC walk around with a gun (I won't get into the political arguments, there, be draggones).
elsjaako 9mo ago
I agree. My problem with AI produced media is that a lot of the things I've seen are really bad. If someone uses AI, but has taste and takes the time to curate and fix the output, then the output can be fine. Just like with digital effects in movies, plastic surgery, and makeup - if it's done well, there's a good chance I didn't even notice it. If it's clearly noticeable, it's often because it's not done well. I think you can compare to another "uncreative" way of making music: sampling. The way the Timelords do it in "Doctorin' the Tardis" is pretty terrible (in their case on purpose, I believe). There are plenty of hip hop examples where I think musically not much is added to the music, but the lyrics and maybe the act do add a lot. And then there are bands like Daft Punk that will chop up and recontextualize the samples to the point that it's clearly a completely new thing.
- platevoltage 9mo ago
  There were plenty of hiphop examples where the samples are recontextualized as well, then Puff Daddy came along and attempted to rap over virtually unchanged Led Zeppelin songs and everyone ate it up. AI Is doing the same thing to music that he did decades ago. ruin it.
  - elsjaako 9mo ago
    I didn't mean to say all hiphop is like what I mention. I'm 100% sure that hiphop also does sampling in really interesting ways, I'm just not as familiar with the examples. This was not not meant as a diss, and I wasn't saying all hiphop does things the same way. I was just mentioning examples that I'm personally familiar with of "Sampling Slop", "Different kind of creativity", and "Using Sampling as a completely new instrument". For the middle category, I meant things like Gangsta's Paradise. I really like the song, I think Coolio really adds something. But you can hear much more of "Pasttime Paradise" in there than you can hear "More Spell On You" in Daft Punk's "One More time" I mention Daft Punk because it's really accessible: there are videos on youtube that can show a layperson like me exactly how they chopped up the samples.
shinycode 9mo ago
People just enjoy and value the process of making music. Just like you could enjoy the process of drawing, or doing sports. Given the amount of talented musicians that do not live off their art, most of the time they value the process and the result and if other people like it too and pay for it it’s even better. Most music is not produced to give emotions to other but to the musician. It happens we share the same emotions that the musician sometimes. So if you remove the process or devalue it, it’s touching the artist in its heart and values because most of them worked on their craft for years.
- lotsofpulp 9mo ago
  One person using more software to "make" music does not remove the process or devalue music for another person who wants to use less software to make music. Replace music with anything in this reasoning.
  - adventured 9mo ago
    Exactly right. It's like arguing there is only one way to make food for enjoyment. It's pure snobbery to proclaim there's only one proper way to do X thing along these lines. Making art is just the same, there is no right way to do it. The HN crowd wants everybody sitting at home on UBI suffering trying to be creative. It's like arguing for hand washing clothes to get that full, proper, drawn-out, brain smashing experience. Now sit at home and be a good boy, take that UBI, create and be productive - but don't make it too easy, don't you dare use AI, bleed for that UBI.
    - lawlessone 9mo ago
      >Now sit at home and be a good boy, take that UBI, create and be productive Honestly i prefer that listening marketing bro's on linkedin posting about how AI means X is finished and everyone who learned X needs to pay for their webinar on writing prompts.
  - shinycode 9mo ago
    Actually with AI the music is made for you. I don’t have to learn how to play the piano the guitar or anything. I just prompt what kind of instrument I want to. Is that still « making music » ? Idk, for me it’s not the same. In the end I’m not a musician. I just enjoy music. But I can understand that the reality of some people is different from mine as regards to what is « making music ». My view or use of AI does not invalidates theirs.
Rooster61 9mo ago
It's not real music if you aren't hand crafting the atoms that make up the molecules of the medium you are vibrating to create sound waves. I feel like there should be an XKCD for this
xg15 9mo ago
During Christmas shopping, I saw several books and board games with illustrations in the signature ChatGPT cartoon style [1, 2] as cover art. (As well as a coloring book that was literally only ChatGPT images) They were sold both in comic shops and large book stores. I found it just sad, honestly. Nothing against using some AI help to create good cover art, but not even bothering to change the default style screams "low effort". That's the effect I'm fearing. Sure, AI could probably be used to create new high-quality content by people who really put in the effort, but in reality, it just seems to define a new level of "good enough" that lowers the overall level of quality. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1o0sfzz/chatgpt_cartoon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1o0sfzz/chatgpt... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kmao1t/i_asked_chat_gpt_to_create_a_2000s_style_cartoon https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kmao1t/i_asked_ch...
platevoltage 9mo ago
AI isn't being used the same way as a drum loop or an electronic instrument, It's being used to vertically integrate services like Spotify so that they don't have to pay as much for content. Maybe you have found a place for generative AI in your workflow that fosters creativity, but this is not how it's being used the vast majority of the time.

bitexploder 9mo ago

AI can do the most basic first pass of creation. For a senior engineer writing code is a relatively small part of the job. There is a paradox where complete novices can churn out content / code that looks decent, but is superficially empty or a maintenance nightmare waiting to happen if the complexity increases even a little. On the other hand, for senior engineers, it is truly useful. If you treat the AI like a modestly skilled junior developer and actually still design your software it just does a lot of the boring boiler plate for you. You are still doing almost everything important. When you understand the code and could write it yourself you can almost always keep the LLM on track towards your objective, achieve appropriate code quality, and finish the task quicker. They are also really decent at refactoring and doing boilerplate. Especially in languages like C++ with a lot of boilerplate. I imagine the same idea above holds for media (music, film) as well. When you understand how to prompt and can get the right scene with all the right constraints you are saving time. The human is still composing, editing, and storytelling. The LLM again becomes a relatively interesting but boring tool in your workflow to speed up some aspects. Right now the power of LLMs is that you can funnel parts of your workflow that they can handle well and you save a lot of time for minimal design cost in terms of how to use them.

lukan 9mo ago

The purpose of music is (usually) to touch people emotionally. If it works, it works. Doesn't matter how it was made. There is no cheating when there is feeling. Generic AI music so far does not touch me. I might tolerate it in the background, but I know there is great music being made with the help of AI. (Which is different from letting the AI do it all) An aimbot in competive playing is indeed cheating and sucks the fun out for others. But if you have fun with single player aimbots, why not. (I know some games integrated autoaim and they can still be fun)

echelon 9mo ago
AI music models are a tool. They're only as good as the person doing the steering and curation. I am a filmmaker. I have made photons-on-glass films for decades. I have always wanted to make big-budget sci-fi and fantasy films, as have my friends and colleges who went to film school. The barrier to entry is almost impossible to climb. Most of my friends wound up in IATSE or doing commercial work, but never had the chance to follow through on their passion projects. Ten thousand kids go to film school every year. Very few of them will wind up being able to make what they dream to create. It's a fucking tragedy that all of this ambition withers on the vine. Getting a large film budget requires connections. You see a lot of nepotism. Sometimes a director who was in the right place at the right time with the right ideas will make it, but that's such a survivor's bias problem. There are orders of magnitude more people that didn't make it. Talented people full of dreams. And that's a tragedy - imagine how many Martin Scorseses, Hayao Miyazakis, Yorgos Lanthimoses, Denis Villeneuves, and Chloe Zhaos we're losing. AI is the first tool that will level the playing field for truly driven individuals. I mean this with my full heart - this is a great tool for creative and driven people. It's the arrival of the printing press for us. But the news of this gift has been twisted and soured by the media and by popular influencers who push only a fear agenda. By trying to make AI films, I have been doxed, sent death threats, insulted, called thousands of names. Every day! People pour out hatred, racist comments, sexist comments - they literally want me (all of us) to DIE because they've been taught to hate this. I can't even begin to tell you how exhausting this is. Instead, let me focus on the good. Here's a list of (what I think) are really good AI films. Each of them takes 10+ hours of work: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tii9uF0nAx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tii9uF0nAx4 - Made by a film school grad as a demo of real filmmaking combined with AI VFX. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAQWRBCt_5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAQWRBCt_5E - Created by a Hollywood TV writer for an FX show you've probably seen. Not the best animation or voicing, but you can see how it gives a writer more than just a blank page to convey their thoughts. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWZYP5jn5w4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWZYP5jn5w4 - Music video. Slightly MAGA-coded, but made by a Hollywood VFX person. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAAiiKteM-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAAiiKteM-U - Made by a film school grad as a Robot Chicken homage. If you're going to tell them "don't use AI", then are you going to get them a job at Disney? Also, all the pieces are hand-rotoscoped, the mouth animations are hand-animated, and every voice is from a hired (and paid) voice actor. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NFXGMuwpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NFXGMuwpY - Made by a film school grad as a Robot Chicken homage. See previous comment. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_KXYpaTe_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_KXYpaTe_8 - Another slightly MAGA-coded music video. Made by the same Hollywood VFX person. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hlx5Rslrzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hlx5Rslrzk - Amazing Spider-Man vs. Carnage anime created with ComfyUI and other models. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqoCWdOwr2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqoCWdOwr2U - Christmas Grinch anime. It's really funny if you like Jojo and get the references. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKYeDIiqiHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKYeDIiqiHs - Totally 100% cursed. Made by a teenager following the comic book's plot. Instead of this teenager spending 100 hours on Fortnite, they made this. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps5Dhc3Lh8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps5Dhc3Lh8U - A Pixar-like short film These tools do not remove the need for editing, compositing, rotoscoping. You still have to understand film language, character arcs, story, pacing. The human ingredients still have to be there. By using these models and tools, directors and editors can finally pursue projects that would require many people and potentially very large budgets. Like the Red vs. Blue creators sitting down and making machinima, they can create vivid sci-fi worlds or whatever genre or mood they want to evoke. AI is a tool. In the hands of an artist, you can make art with AI. Yes, people are using AI to make slop. Cameras also make slop - selfies, food pics. Your own camera roll is full of garbage. People are posting slop AI because it's novel. If we'd gone from "no cameras at all" to "smartphones" overnight, you would see so much smartphone camera slop it would be unbearable. We, as a society, had time to develop filters and curation around cameras. That'll eventually happen for AI too. Cameras can make incredible art in the hands of an artist. They can also make a lot of shit. But we don't demonize the cameras. Soon, our feelings towards AI will become equivalent. But right now, it's extremely painful to be a creative person using AI. I - ABSOLUTELY HATE ABSOLUTELY DETEST THE "ALL AI IS BAD" MEME IT IS MIMETIC VITRIOL People have let this stupid meme boil over to the point of sending death threats and doxxing creators. And that is beyond unacceptable. We need to stop adopting angry slogans of hate and start thinking on a case by case basis with nuance. This entire conversation needs way more humanity and humility. And we need to accept that there are good things being created with AI too.

mikkupikku 9mo ago

There's literally no problem at all with using aimbots, the problem is when you're playing with other people and lie about it. In fact, many games have built in aimbots simply because it's a fun mechanic (Ion Fury and Borderlands: Pre-Sequel are two that come to mind.)

wincy 9mo ago

I made my wife a song about how we met using Suno. It took me about 4 hours to get the lyrics just right, rewriting them (without AI help, it’s terrible with lyrics), plugging them in, seeing how they sounded, fixing them some more to get the verse so it sounded right. She thought it was really special and she cried as we listened to it while holding hands in the car. I can’t play guitar, and I can’t hit some notes with my low singing voice, but I wrote every word and it felt like something really special to the both of us. I don’t really care if people think I “cheated”. To torture the analogy, it’s like cheating in a two player game since I’m not publishing this song to anyone else.

gchamonlive 9mo ago
It's more like going into a video game and tuning the difficulty all the way down so you are virtually invincible. It's taking the fun out of the game for some, but for others that's the only way to play it.
- savanaly 9mo ago
  Cozy games where you basically can't lose are a booming industry in the last decade, so that outlook is certainly bullish for AI creative tools!
- wincy 9mo ago
  And you know what? I’ve got a medically complicated kid with a million doctor’s appointments and a full time job. I often switch the games down to the easiest mode. Then sometimes a new Dark Souls comes out and I relish every moment, if I’ve got the time. I’ve been having Suno make random instrumental chiptunes, too, and it’s got me interested in buying a MIDI keyboard to play around with. Which 40 years ago people were saying that wasn’t real music, either.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 9mo ago
    >a MIDI keyboard to play around with. Which 40 years ago people were saying that wasn’t real music, either. Citation needed

odyssey7 9mo ago

The long history of art shows a story of technology developments and how artists have creatively applied them as new techniques and mediums. Is AI music today able to emulate what a brilliant human artist does? Not really. But is it something that artists can leverage creatively? Absolutely.

_DeadFred_ 9mo ago

Using AI to create music is like having your mom buy you a surfer wardrobe in the 80s/90s even though you lived in landlocked midwest or a skater wardrobe even though you didn't skate.

cindyllm 9mo ago
[dead]

slowmovintarget 9mo ago

Agree... AI enables output, not creativity. The mediocre confuse one for the other.

ryandrake 9mo ago

To use the video game analogy, I think it's more about PVP vs "bots" as opposed to PVP vs "humans". A lot of PVP games (especially battle royale style) struggle with the question of whether to include dumb AI characters as "fodder" for people to play against. The PVP purists, pro players, and streamers tend to be against bots because they think the game should be a pure test of human skill. Normie players, less skilled players, and players who just don't have the time to master the game tend to like to play against a mix of bots and humans. Some people just don't like PVP and would prefer to just play against bots only. I'm not going to weigh in on which side I'm on, but I notice the discussion around AI "making creativity too easy" and "devaluing practiced skills" to be similar to the discussion around bots in PVP games.

stale2002 9mo ago

> Someone said, "using AI is like using an aimbot for music." Ok. Lets go with that analogy. Whats the problem with someone playing a single player game with an aimbot on? Sure they wont get good at the aiming part. But it feels kinda up to them on if that matters or not. Additionally, I wouldn't see anything morally wrong with that. Now, if someone entered into a music competition, where only human made music was allow then I agree that this would be "cheating". But what if its not that and the listeners simply are OK with the "aimbotted" music?

ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago
> Whats the problem with someone playing a single player game with an aimbot on? People are doing it on the server where all the musicians live, and they have no other place to go, only disconnect.
- stale2002 9mo ago
  > where all the musicians live, and they have no other place to go, only disconnect. No actually. Those musicians are free to continue making whatever music that they want and can refuse to listen to the AI music if they dont want to. The fact that 2 other, unrelated 3rd parties both like to make AI music and listen to AI music is not the musicians area of control here. They do not get to decide what other people like to listen to or make.
  - ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago
    You're confused at multiple levels. > free to continue making whatever music that they want Never said they weren't. > can refuse to listen to the AI music if they don't want to A musician can be a listener, indeed. If you believe a listener has this freedom and will keep it, you're most probably mistaken. No one besides musicians and discerning, ideologically relentless listeners is interested in making NN-generated music distinguishable and supporting the right of filtering it. The goal is to supplant one with the other. > The fact that 2 other, unrelated 3rd parties both like to make AI music and listen to AI music… Listeners is not an unrelated party to a musician. They form a vital symbiosis. And it's a zero-sum game, as listener's attention is a limited resource. > They do not get to decide what other people like to listen to or make. This is an unrelated point. Who decides what is a separate topic. The crux of the issue is that we have two types of superficially similar product which are in fact substantially different (hope this does not require clarification) and incomparable in terms of resources necessary for their creation. This begets unprecedented power imbalance and incentives for deceit, biased legislation and other moves to solidify this situation.

socalgal2 9mo ago

I find many of the top videos on civitai.com to be amazing https://civitai.com/videos https://civitai.com/videos

ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago

No, comparing to an aimbot is too charitable. Using AI for music is at best like watching a gaming stream and you barely choosing the game, though not the streamer.

veunes 9mo ago

The analogy is great, but it breaks down when we talk about professional use. An aimbot in multiplayer is evil because it ruins the game for others. But an aimbot in game development (e.g., procedural aiming animation) is just a tool. The problem with current AI video is that the model often shoots not where the director wants, but where it's easiest to hit (the template)