If you saw a video of a person doing something cool, and later found out it was AI generated, would you still be impressed?
Of course, it's not exactly the same situation, but if I listen to a song and appreciate that the vocalist sounds cool and they're doing some technically difficult things, I am definitely less impressed to find out it's a computer program. And it also means I can't find other songs with that vocalist's same artistic sense because they don't have one, they're a computer program who can sound like anything.
If the person behind it pretends to have produced it themselves, or (this actually happened) put themselves in AI-generated photos with celebrity artists in their cover/album art, then I will sour on them and stop listening to their uploads.
This has only happened once. The rest of the time, I will be listening to a radio playlist as I work when a song comes on that makes me go "Wait a minute." Checking the song's cover art, clearly AI. Artist page? 30 singles in 2025, every one with AI cover art. The bio reads like a Suno prompt (and probably is). The uploader then gets tossed in the proverbial bin.
The above has been happening more and more often. To the point where it's about 30% of the songs I hear on the radio playlist, as of this week. I'm in the process of migrating over to Deezer as a consequence. They label AI-generated music and do not recommend them or include them in radio playlists.
Edit:
Not the exact same artist, but I searched a generic song name to find an AI slopper. This one AI-inserting himself into pictures with women for cover art is the same idea as the one putting himself in pictures with celebrities like Ariana Grande. https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kEPAFHKkMPF1...
Of course I do. But what gives me joy with art is that it's a communication from one person to another. It's not about pretty sounds (or pictures, or whatever the medium is). If that communication isn't there, then the art has no real value to me regardless of how pretty it is.
If I think I'm talking with a person and it turns out that I'm talking with a machine, I've been duped and will likely be angry about it.
Another way to think about it is that when it comes to art, "the ends justify the means" doesn't really work because the whole point is more the means than the ends.
>But what gives me joy with art is that it's a communication from one person to another
Maybe if a person generated 50,000 songs, not even listening to them, you could have a point. Although, even in that case, regardless of the lack of an "artist's intention," there is the interpretation of what people will take from that thing. And that interpretation is often different from what the author originally had in mind. Hell, most people don't know the author of most movies, TV shows, and the like they watched. In other words, to me, it's more about what people take from that thing, as opposed to "Oh, what that sentient being was trying to communicate?"
And I do believe a sufficiently advanced AI model would be able to mimic or synthesize human knowledge/worries/dramas in such a profound way that, regardless of "intention to communicate," it would be able to create things that people would relate to and take deeper meaning from.
Also: the very dataset where that thing was trained wasn't trained on an alien dataset, with an alien culture and the like, all originating from poems written by real people, movies by real people, etc., etc. The model learned from human culture; therefore, whatever it produces is a reflection of that culture, which people could and most likely will relate to, and, hell, they are already doing that.
But even taking the argument at face value, "Oh, human creation," someone might have used AI, but they were still involved in all parts of the creation process, like writing the lyrics, curating the data, and the very fact of them choosing a song and saying, "Hey, I liked that, I will share it with people," would already be a communication.
It needs to be more than that, I want to hear musicianship that has been honed and crafted. The struggle to find their sound. I'm fine with even an amateur musician learning their way around an instrument and being able to put something together that they tracked and mixed.
If a prompt returned the most perfect song, I would still not care to listen as that to me has completely divorced any human element that I would be interested in. Would not find it to be inspiring nor aspirational no matter how "good" it sounded so the models themselves could get exponentially better, but the manner in which it was created will prevent me from ever listening or caring about. It will always be hollow and lifeless.
Again, this is personal preference. If it makes others happy, that's great. In other many other mediums, I'm probably fine with that reduction in human-ness (where others may not be).
Fine, but you've now established this loop where one must find and analyze the human struggle in the music before qualifying an opinion, how does this jibe with deciding whether or not a tune playing in the grocery store has a catchy beat?
Do you run and grab your phone to id the artist before you decide to tap your foot?
> Although, even in that case, regardless of the lack of an "artist's intention," there is the interpretation of what people will take from that thing.
Of course. My interpretation is an important part as well, but that comes from me, not the artist, so is a bit different. Well, maybe I should say that the meaning and importance of a song is in the confluence of the artist and myself. I did want to clarify something, though -- I'm not really talking about the "artist's intention" here. That's a different thing, too.
The emotional communication I'm talking about happens even if I have no idea what the artist's conscious intention was, or even if I don't know who the artist is.
> And I do believe a sufficiently advanced AI model would be able to mimic or synthesize human knowledge/worries/dramas in such a profound way that, regardless of "intention to communicate," it would be able to create things that people would relate to and take deeper meaning from.
Perhaps so! But that kind of simulacrum is something I have absolutely no interest in. In fact, I find the idea of it a bit repulsive.
> someone might have used AI, but they were still involved in all parts of the creation process, like writing the lyrics
If an artist actually created the thing, then it's not an AI generated song. It's a human created song that may have involved AI as a tool. I'm talking more about if a human just describes the song they want to an AI and the AI creates the rest.
That said, I'm particularly averse to AI vocals, because vocals are particularly intimate for me. A song that has a machine as a singer is a song I'll reject even if the rest was created by a human.
> the very fact of them choosing a song and saying, "Hey, I liked that, I will share it with people," would already be a communication.
Technically true, but that's nowhere near the kind of communication I'm talking about. That has little value to me unless the person sharing it and myself know each other very, very well. Then, it's a communication/connection between that person and me, which can make it a great thing even if the song wouldn't resonate with me on its own.
I mean, art is inherently about human experience and emotion. Each of us resonates with certain types of art and doesn't resonate with other types. All I'm trying to do here is explore and maybe explain what resonates or not with me. I am in no way saying that anybody else should share my tastes.
I used to enjoy Lostprophets before the news about the singer SAing children came out. You cannot disconnect your relationship with the artist from the art.
So in the future when we need an expert to discern the real art that's fundamentally human you'll be available, right?
The concept that there is some hidden quality to human made art strikes me as the same line of thinking that lead people to try to measure the weight of the soul.
Art is someone making creative choices. It's someone putting a bit of themselves and their own lived experiences out there because they wanted to share it.
I'm with you on the sentiment, but pretty sure this is wrong.
Art is interesting and challenges you because you choose to have that reaction to it. Part of the reason for making that choice comes from what you believe about the origin of the art.
No. Just like Owl City isn't his real voice. If the song is good I don't personally care.
Most of the music I like is loops pasted together in some DAW. Sure, it requires taste to make a good song but if AI figure out how to replicate that taste can crank out catchy tunes I wouldn't have a problem with it. I can only guess though that too much of a good thing will lead to be getting bored with it ... maybe.
It's not like most pop music isn't formulaic. I enjoy the currently popular songs from K-Pop Demon Hunters but they're so cliche, if they turned out to be AI generated I wouldn't be surprised :P
But the qusstion never got answered. If you liked a song that you later realized was generated would it ruin the song?
If a robot ai basketball team was authentic enough to have hoodwinked me into thinking it was a real entertaining team then it has become a different question than whether or not I would knowingly participate as a spectator in an AI basketball league.
> If you liked a song that you later realized was generated would it ruin the song?
This whole discussion reminds me of Milli Vanilli from the 90s. They were hugely popular with a few songs and then people found out it wasn't actually them singing. It was a big scandal and the songs because unpopular instantly. I was always a bit confused by the crash because it's not like the song on the radio changed at all.
I think it's because music is a dialogue, a relationship. The artist is saying something, and your interpretation of the art is a response to that. That's why great (to you) songs often feel like they were written for you, personally, when that's obviously untrue.
If you find out that the relationship is based on a lie, then the relationship can switch from "great" to "horrible" instantly.
I generally don't think I'd care, but I don't put most music (or most of any art) up on a pedestal and imbue it with all sorts of stories and meaning about how it's a dialogue or relationship between me and the artist. If I enjoy it, I generally don't care where it came from or how it was made.
BUT I also recognize that is NOT how most people feel, and that's fine.
This happened to me last month. After the first song, I suspected so I checked the cover and the artist profile. It was AI generated. I enjoyed the album nevertheless. You can find AI music enjoyable. People also hated DJ music before. And recorded music before. And electro amplified live music performances before that. This is just another category of music. Doesn't take away from human music. What people are right to be angry is that the tech was made on the backs of other people's non-remunerated work. Whether a human made a song or not shouldn't be as important as actual living artists being taken advantage of.
I agree entirely. Well, not entirely. I think anger would also be an understandable response if the music were misrepresented as being by human musicians if it weren't. Like it would be understandable if people got mad if they thought they bought easy listening and actually got acid metal. Or vice versa.
I agree with you. It should also be clearly marked it's AI.
I have this discussion all the time about written stories. At some point AI will start creating very good and possibly great written works. Do we ignore them because they are AI? I would hope not.
