We’re driving home and I’m welcoming silence. I’m catching up on office work (a couple of “since _____ hasn’t responded to me, I’m copying rob” emails because I am my brother’s / sister’s / mother’s keeper) and filing files and checking math and updating income and expenses and sort of wishing I was going to have a day off tomorrow but knowing I shan’t.
And so I wrap up the clerical crap with a last reminder of an unpaid invoice from a client and I sigh because the playing really is just an unacceptably tiny percentage of The Job and I accidentally open Facebook and I mistakenly scroll and I stumble across someone who’s just discovered how awesome some AI-generated artist is and they sound like they’re trying to justify it. They got the emotional response and then looked the artist up and were utterly shocked that they weren’t a real, human artist – and after throwing down a little “and of course, I don’t want to have anything to do with AI!” caveat they ask the question: “but am I really harming myself listening to AI-generated artist?”
No, of course not random music Lover. You’re not doing any harm to yourself. You’re being uplifted just as effectively as you would be by a singer/songwriter whose experienced heartache, and you’re empathizing just as much and you’re learning just as much from the experience and you’re getting the same emotional high. Your mind and heart and soul don’t KNOW the difference. If you’re accustomed to ingesting music without the artist there in front of you as so many you are, there’s not even a difference, much less a “harm” being done.
Just as there wasn’t any self-harm in buying from Amazon rather than your local bookstore, and no-one is hurting themselves by using Spotify rather than buying music from an artist, and you’re not harming yourself by buying the biggest SUV you can get your hands on. You’re just setting precedent, eliminating options for others and … well… spreading tiny harms to thousands if not millions of others.
You’re showing a radio station that they can sell an AI-generated song just as effectively as a person – but sans having to support an artist or their ego or their capricious talents. You’re showing a venue that they don’t need an artist, they don’t even need a DJ. They can make people happy with an algorithmically-generated tune, and barring the NIMBY environmental impact and power useage that’s out-of-sight and out-of-mind, there’s no downside. You’re telling me as an artist that you never cared about me. You only ever cared about my product. Fair. You don’t have to care about me. But you are also teaching the next generation what to value. It’s only your relationship with a THING that matters…. And trating people as things and valuing them the same – that’s the root of everything that’s wrong with the world.
So no, you’re not hurting yourself, but you just devalued your species. If humans care about humans continuing to exist… we need to model that behaviour.
*Kipyn Martin is transitioning to Kai Martin. I don’t know (nor do I need) all the specifics. I BELIEVE “them / they” rather than “her / she” but they haven’t been too upset when / if I get it wrong. I’ve known Kipyn since I ran sound for her in 2014, and though *I’m* doing pretty well calling them by their new identity, I’ve got a lot of momentum. Additionally the Simon and Garfunkel tribute clearly hasn’t gotten the message and continues to call them a her and Kipyn rather than Kai… at a party recently I had people give me blank looks when I talked about Kai, and then the one person where I slipped and said Kipyn got kind of affronted on their behalf. Sigh. Add to that the idea of rebranding a popular local artist and it’s really an uphill battle.
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