AI's Threat to Music's Emotional Resonance

I open the Spotify app on New Music Friday and am notified about a release of a new Beatles song. I assume it’s going to be a re-release of the Fab Four, maybe a remastered version or even an unreleased track. But something isn’t kosher. It looks like chicken, it tastes like chicken, but the soul is filled with Impossible meat. It’s AI music. And it shows.

Four years ago, sandwiched somewhere in between cleaning bags of chips with soap and water, and fireworks going off in New York every night for two months, DIY and mainstream artists alike took to online platforms to stream at-home concerts. The void of the touring industry was palpable; the most lucrative aspect of making music was null, and front-facing cameras with smartphone quality audio took its place. The city emptied out, bars shut down, artists produced cottage-core albums with 100 tracks, and eventually we found a new normal in the world of live music. And you may ask yourself, “When did AI enter the chat?”

Long before TikTok ads alerted us about apps that could insert our vocals into any song with the promise of “Share & Go Viral,” we dipped our preverbal toes into the intersection where art meets technology. Apps like Boomy helped quarantined artists mix beats on a small scale, while larger scale artists found profit in virtual concerts in Fortnite. Yes, we returned to in-person performances, but the new normal now meant the integration of the new standard.

The discourse around what can be “real” music continues as a reverberation of major publisher AI lawsuits and the recent removal of music on TikTok. If mainstream artists set the precedent for what is attainable for smaller artists, should we be concerned when Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr use AI to complete a song by their deceased bandmate?

It’s possible that live music will be safe from AI, and even DIY-ers to their core will refuse to incorporate AI on principle. I want to believe that’s true. But it's hard to be sure when Spotify generates a Daylist of AI-recommended songs throughout my day, including DIY artists. Will DIY music be able to exist the more this integration of technology becomes old hat? And who gets paid if ChatGPT writes lyrics?

These apps are popular for a reason: We like the sound of our own voices. It’s the same psychology responsible for the daily tourists lined up waiting to get a picture of themselves rubbing the bronze balls of the Charging Bull statue in FiDi. No matter how many people have the same picture before us, we want a photo in front of the Trevi fountain, generated versions of ourselves in the Renaissance era, artificial vocals of ourselves performing Charli XCX, and so on. We have our individual thresholds for how much or how little we are willing to participate with AI.

If we can use vocal databases to record a dead artist’s unfinished track, where do we draw the line? And how much longer until we see a show at Berlin Under A where the vocals are the band’s deep fake covers of The Strokes? And let’s be real, it’s Berlin Under A, so would we be able to tell? It might sound farfetched now, but insert your own niche proclivity within pop culture to find the line of when you might participate in an AI event: Virgin Suicides sisters covering Haim albums all night at Niagra, Poor Things original score in the style of Labrinth as the opener in Zone One. The list can’t save you.

In the music industry, executives are being encouraged to lean in, Sheryl Sandberg style, in an attempt to figure out how to embrace AI and use it to our benefit. There’s no use kicking and screaming against quantum leap AI set forth. AI is past the point of no return and determining what’s right or wrong for itself. Hell, AI music is now a genre that encompasses Arca and Grimes. Music journalists are being asked to review AI singer-songwriters.

The truth is that we are all learning to navigate the new standard just as much as artists are. We can either sink in the fear of the unknown, or swim into a rendered sunset. So can we expect to be holding court in the green room of an AI concert any time soon? Not no. By the time we’re done philosophizing about what makes music real, an indie AI persona can reach the Top 40 Billboard charts.