The Topic of the Times - AI
I don't usually chime in on current affairs, but this time feel compelled to....
The topic of AI has become all-encompassing in recent times. Our government is finally taking it seriously, and artists are finally making their voices heard.
I'm in the very same boat as every other music maker in the world right now. I see the reduction in royalties and job opportunities because of the powerful tools now available to everyone. Technologies like Suno and Udio are quickly becoming good enough to pass as a free replacement for hiring a human producer. Ad agencies that once hired composers and engineers to create background music for their pitches no longer need to. With a few specific prompts, they can generate 30 seconds of acceptable background music without spending a cent.
AI music companies can generate hours of passable music in any style without an ounce of musical training, then upload it to streaming services and take a hefty share of streaming revenue away from human artists, who, ironically, are the very artists the AI was trained on.
As said, the Australian government has finally begun to turn its attention to how AI is going to impact our way of life and what it means for creatives. I certainly hope they follow through and help us find a way to coexist with this new technology.
As I see a downturn in the kinds of enquiries I receive, for the first time in my 30-year career I've had to look at ways of raising my visibility online in an attempt to keep my music business viable and healthy. Ironically, without a marketing budget, I saw advantages in leveraging other AI tools, including Canva, HeyGen, Gemini and ChatGPT, to help me put together content.
That said, I've also made every effort to keep those tools away from my own creativity. The words, the message and the music are all mine. The delivery, through the avatar and imagery, is AI-assisted in order to make the content more digestible and competitive on social media platforms.
I know that even this will likely draw some division, but I hope we can all eventually find a way to coexist with AI without exploiting the millions of creatives who came before us.
Everything I've written here is my own. I've simply allowed AI to finesse it and spell-check it. For me, this should be the limit of what AI is used for.
So my message and ask to everyone, is to give some serious thought about the difference between general intelligence and creative appropriation. AI can be trained on either, and both can be taken advantage of. Please help us make a stand against the latter. The genie is out of the bottle, and I don't think anybody expects things to return to what it was before, but if we as creatives can control how our work is used, and are properly compensated for it, our industry can look forward to a better future!
