I would not be surprised if you've listened to AI generated music or read AI generated text without identifying it. Same as with VFX in shows and movies, the good stuff people don't identify as VFX, but the shitty stuff stands out. It's going to be the same with LLM generated content.
I wonder if anyone anywere actually thinks Beethoven’s 9th is bad. But that’s not the point is it. I can link you plenty of music that was absolutely lambasted and despised when it first was performed and today is recognised as classics. Plenty of people hated while many loved it. Rites of Spring, Charlie Parker, Miles David and Coltrane where all moved people against or for, created energy, created something which changed the way we listen music today. It caused people to feel and react.
I have no idea if most new pop playing at the gym is genetated with this or that machine learning aid and I don’t care. It is all meh. And so is AI-generated music and therefore we will forget it.
I think this is a hallmark of successful art. The point of art is emotional communication. If someone reacts very negatively to a piece of art, that still means an emotional communication happened. If it's an honest and resonant emotional communication, then some people will react negatively to it and others positively.
Every artist I've ever known would prefer to get negative reactions to their art over not getting a reaction at all.
No, music and literature are not like VFX, unless I'm truly blind to the magic of After Effects.
A good novel can have you laughing out loud or crying to yourself, they can introduce new ideas that can totally change your outlook on the world. I've read books I've continued to think about for months after I've finished them.
Great music, whether classical or contemporary, particularly when experienced live, can be transcendental.
Both can be wonderful ways of connecting with humanity. To read The Leopard is to inhabit the soul of a minor Sicilian noble, putting on Ride the Lightning is a viceral experience, like hitting a line of speed.
Cinema can evoke these intense experiences, but VFX is but a minor component, and much of the best uses no CGI.
Regardless, as a man who dabbles in AI in his own creative practice, I remain utterly unconvinced that AI is capable of eliciting the response we get from great music or literature. It may produce some filler around the edges, but that great line, the chorus that drives the heart to the sky with a fist raised in the air like an antenna to heaven, this will always be human.
This is for the simple reason that art is fundamentally about human connection and empathy, the transmission of emotion and energy from one sentient being to another.
No LLM could ever write Hallelujah, because no LLM has witnessed heartbreak, contemplated the divine, or practiced bondage.
No diffusion model could paint Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, which incidentally took over a decade, as no machine has ever laughed in contempt of its enemy.
Sure, we can say that there's a human behind each machine, but AI places a wall between the creator and their work. The momentum, inspiration, creative blocks and breakthroughs in the shower, these form the basis of great art.
Re-reading the parent, I've digressed, and perhaps somewhat misinterpreted. I guess I just wanted to write what I've written. Very human.
Yeah, "good" AI blends into the background? No, good art is never in the background. It grabs us, pours into us, and leaves us changed.
God, spent too long on this and need to get some shit done. I'll go put on Ride the Lightning.
