Topical
The Day the Music Died, or Exploded?

The Following was by Contributing Author TheGreatGazoo

A.I. generated music; what is it? Simply put, anyone can use a website like Suno.ai to generate music, but not only music, we’re talking music WITH lyrics, complete with A.I. generated vocals, backing tracks, you name it! Three weeks ago, I decided to investigate “Artificial Intelligence” (A.I.) and it’s been a hell of a journey. I started with watching YouTube videos about it to try and understand where we are today with the current state of A.I. technology. I started out simple: After a Windows update, a curious icon found itself on my taskbar. Co-pilot, it was called. I started out simple, I opened up Co-pilot and said “Create a picture of” something. It gave me four to choose from. I clicked on one and it opened Microsoft paint and, holy crap, it was a hell of a lot different from what I was used to. For one thing, there is a Co-pilot creator icon at the top now.

OK, I need to know more….

It turns out, with simple prompts like, “Create an image of a heroine wearing a dark trench coat with a background of a post-apocalyptic wasteland,” you get… something amazing! The more info you give it, the more details it puts in! Also, you can drag images into Co-pilot and say prompts like, “Based on this image, turn it into an oil painting,” and voila; it gives you 4 generated oil painting images. One caveat, and I think this is a BIG one we should talk about, is censorship. One and a half weeks ago, I asked a Fallout 4 streamer to show me her character in the game. I took a screenshot and told Co-pilot (Microsoft Windows) to generate an image based on it. I think the prompt I used was, “Based on this image, generate a film noir heroine with a black trenchcoat, black fedora, white scarf, holding a sniper rifle in her hands.” The results were amazing! I generated photo-realistic, oil paintings and a few other of the about 8 or so styles Co-pilot gave. One week later, Big Brother decided that ANY depiction of guns was not allowed. Creative art takes a downturn for the masses.

Which brings me to the topic of today’s discussion, A.I. generated music. Suno.ai says, “Anyone can now create music,” and, oh my god, this is so true! In one week, I’ve created some songs that you can check out on Laggin’ Out’s Discord , #e-for-everyone, that–I don’t think anyone can disagree with–are freaking awesome! Sure, it took about 15 hours to tweak and hone the lyrics to where I was happy with it, but we’re talking 4 complete and catchy songs now. Full disclosure: I may not have shared all my greatest hits haha. So the question is…

With this music A.I. getting better by the day, and I do mean day, is this the death of new music/styles/sounds, or whatever you want to call it? Are we just going to rehash the past and re-assemble it using A.I.? Or is this the day, like the website says, that music is in the hands of everyone now? What do you think?