AI music is here 🤖

Oh, my arms are just fuckin’ stuck like this

They’ve been warning us about this for a while now, and it’s finally here: AI-generated music!

My first introduction was via Twitter, where a user informed me of a (frankly excellent) use of AI to create a song called My Man Sh*% In HIs Pants at Work by a band called Mitch Burger and The Fries. Just to be clear, this is exactly what AI should be used for.

Then, I was scrolling TikTok when I heard a familiar-sounding vintage-style song: My Arms Are Just Fuckin’ Stuck Like This.

cant believe there was a time where this could happen… #vintage #popmusic #dance - @ObscurestVinyl on TikTok

The song is attributed to both ‘Jenny Stardust’, which is not a real artist, and an account called Obscurest Vinyl which purports to share “the greatest records you’ve never heard”. ‘Cause they’re not real. They’re AI.

To give you a flavour of Obscurest Vinyl’s oeuvre, they also have hits like I Glued My Balls to my Butthole Again and It’s Time To Take a Shit on the Company’s Dime (bop).

Now, is AI music a novelty? Yes. New platforms like Suno and Udio (the latter produced by Google DeepMind developers) can generate songs from a simple text prompt. And judging from the sheer number of songs the communities on there are churning out, they’re really popular - Udio launched its beta version on Wednesday last week and already the site has hundreds (? Hard to tell) of songs to explore.

Is it extremely easy to make? Yes, almost worryingly so. No longer do you have to bother with music theory, or even chords on a guitar. A very simple text prompt, like ‘Write a 50s doowop song about my friend Seth who shit his pants at work’, will churn out a clip or two. You can enter your own lyrics or let the AI generate them for you. You can produce them in numerous languages too.

😥 Oh no ?

While AI music is, currently, a novelty, it could easily overshadow the hard work and dedication of actual artists. The music industry is cut-throat enough as it is without a steady churn of catchy, simple songs. You can easily imagine songwriters passed over in favour of generative AI, which never complains, never gets writer’s block, and never needs a break.

Plus, on social media, novelty reigns supreme. It's no coincidence that AI-generated songs like My Arms Are Stuck Like This are already thriving in an environment where brevity and catchiness are king. The algorithm’s going to favour content that can be churned out quickly and effortlessly over the inconsistent, grindingly human process of launching a new musician’s career.

And it won’t just harm the people who are making new music either. There’s already been lawsuits for allegedly misusing copyrighted song lyrics to train AI. The algorithms are gorging themselves silly on existing intellectual property of established artists and then regurgitating it to us. It’s not not illegal, but how long until we’re asking for tracks ‘in the style of’ long-dead artists? 

Is it OK if we’re not making money off of it? 

Is it OK if we are?

💻 A techno-optimist’s view

ChatGPT came out at the end of 2022 and we got all of the Nostradamus end-of-the-world-ing then: it was going to spread disinformation; terrorists were going to use it to launch more sophisticated cyberattacks; it was going to make itself stronger and then kill us all. So far, though, we are all still alive.

As AI tools become more sophisticated, so too do humans. AI-generated music has the uncanny valley quality to it that image-based and text-based AI still has. Although it’s improving all the time, you’ll often notice the lighting is off, or that there’s one too many “delve”s in an essay. 

Instead, I can see this tool being used mostly for goofy TikTok sounds and perhaps as jumping-off points for artists. It might save musicians from remixing yet another ‘upbeat corporate beat background music’ to make money, and save them time and energy for their own stuff.

Plus, you know. AI can read a thousand coming of age novels but it won’t understand how it feels to be a teenage girl. It will never actually feel how gut-punchingly, sweat-inducingly, heart-poundingly bonkers being alive is, most of the time. Music, and what music means to us, is too deeply rooted in the visceral human experience to replicate by machines alone.

What I’m saying is, AI couldn’t come up with Fall Out Boy. And that’s fine.