AI, AI, AIEEEE…! 😮

I would have thought a farming forum was more appropriate for a discussion of Artificial Insemination?

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On that Richard; for some reason, most AI agents, including ChatGPT, Complexity etc, are notoriously poor in relation to musical knowledge; even very, very basic questions on music theory. I’m not sure how its original data set was generated, but AI has spent more time ‘apologising’ to me for its errors, than actually giving correct information.

As it has developed, AI also seems to be referencing pretty dubious, low quality internet sources for it musical knowledge. Its an odd situation, given that AI’s general integrity for knowledge across other areas is much better.

I have tested this somewhat over time, given my initial astonishment at the consistently 100% wrong answers it gives; it’s very surprising, given the logical, mathematical basis of music.

So anyone relying on AI for a quick answer to a musical question, I would suggest, don’t.

As for the ‘creative’ AI stuff talked about in this thread. Can be fun yeah; but it will end in tears. Mankind’ will, ironically, become homogenised. Music is already speeding in the direction.

Cheers, Shane

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Opinions are very divided and range from each to the other side of the spectrum.
We all draw the line differently.

It can’t be the purpose of a Community this broad, smart and empathic that people should resort to Googling and AI tools so they can answer themselves.

If the research enriches yourself that is great but the you come to the Community to verify :wink:

This topic is causing a bit of a stir.
It does in many communites actually :wink:
I’ll keep an eye on this thread.

I think some of the stuff AI can do with video is really cool. I understand the fear and apprehension of it in music. I still remember the huge controversial issues of sampling way back in the 80s and early 90s.

One of the greatest hip hop albums broke through that wall and is listed as one of the top albums of all time by Rolling Stone magazine many others today spotify and Apple music. I dont know if any of you guys are fans of the Beastie Boys. There are over 100 samples used and this album and it is 100% unique in how it is put togeather. When criticism
about the use of sampling was arising. They paid for the use and then followed up with Cheak your Head, which I personally like better. They used sampling again but added thair own instrumentation to creat an amazing release that fit the time. They blending hiphop and gain infused guitar and funk like the of the growing alt-rock movment. 1992 was a great year for music and the BBoys were right in it leading the way for a whole genre of music that we still have today.

I feel too old to enter into this discussion. I still use a dictionary and a thesaurus. Mind you, I’ve recently misplaced my thesaurus and I just can’t find the words to describe how annoyed I am.

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This thread is morphing somewhat away from my original question of whether the use of AI should be acceptable in the community in general, to whether it should be used to give guitar advice.
There have been some insightful, thoughtful contributions, but strong feelings have also been expressed, some of which have bordered on unpleasantness. That’s a pity.

I’m truly sorry you feel that way, Rick, and that you cannot accept my genuine motivation.
I do hope most people in the community are able to tell the difference between when I am being serious (on most moral and social justice issues) and ‘having a laugh’ (which I do enjoy)
When I mentioned the ‘inevitable tsunami of different opinions’ in the OP, that was because I know the strong feelings people have (for very good reasons). Ignoring issues, simply because they are ‘difficult’ is almost always counterproductive.

In practical terms, last month I shared a video that I ‘borrowed’ from YouTube for a cover song. I’m almost certain it was AI-generated. I had no permission from the creator (although I always credit sources I can find). Am I sorry? No. Do I think it was wrong? No, (although you can never be sure). No one mentioned the AI in the comment section.
I’ll take it down if the Community decides to go down that path, but I’m not going to start self-censorship.

By all means continue the debate, but remember you’re much less likely to cause offense by saying what you feel/think rather than telling others what they are thinking/doing.
Night-night :kissing_heart:

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To me there is no issue using AI to generate graphics for a music video for collaborations or originals. We don’t all have green screens and capabilities to design our own graphic videos.

I think the discussion (or shall I say debate) is more about just posting some random AI songs like the ones poor Richard fell for or using AI to answer questions raised on the forum.

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IMO, sampling - at least in those days - was still a human activity. The sampler had to make up their mind about what sort of sound they wanted to hear and then search for the right piece of music for that purpose. It was a creative endeavor that required effort.

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I quess you never read my first post. I’m not ignoring anything. I don’t think this is the right forum for AI.

So you admit you started this thead because you knew it would be controversial.

I dont disagree. Only that the response is similar.

What about an AI plugin that take our guitar recording and makes it sounds like Justin ? :rofl: (Just kidding, I’m not serious :grin: )

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The raison d’être of this place is for people to come together and discuss Justin’s lessons, learning guitar, and becoming better musicians. I see little or no place for AI-generated content in that context, with the possible exception of AI-generated drums/bass/etc backing an actual human performance on guitar. (Although even there I’d prefer real bass/drums/etc, or even human-programmed MIDI instruments, over an AI-generated backing track.)

Discussion of AI might be okay in the “Just Chatting” area with other random topics, but I honestly wouldn’t miss such discussions if they were declared verboten. There are plenty of places to discuss (and argue about) AI; this needn’t be one of them, in my opinion.

So that’s my $0.02, for what it’s worth…

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Much has been said here already, and most points well articulated. Still, I can’t resist adding my voice.

I freaking cannot stand pitch correction. It can be done really well by hand, where a producer tweaks the occasional note in a vocal if it’s noticeably pitchy, but I still prefer the real, raw sound of a human voice. Otherwise, it feels like a trick? More and more music these days is pitch corrected through-and-through. Everything is too perfect, too smooth. It’s boring. It’s got no texture, or it has a pre-selected identical texture that I’ve heard elsewhere.

It also takes the joy out of it. When I listen to someone perform a vocal number that’s impressive, I’m thrilled! I’m like ‘hell yeah, that was amazing!’ and it inspires me. When I hear someone perform a vocal number that’s pitch-corrected, I feel nothing, at best maybe ‘oh well it was a good idea for a song’. But I often feel cheated!

(That said, I don’t care much for dance music using it, as it goes along thematically with all the synthetic instruments in sound. But it belongs there.)

I do miss the days of AI where the images were all a specific flavour of messed-up, as it was a cool aesthetic. It was easily distinguishable from actual art and often funny on inspection. I think there are some artists who recreate the early days of AI style images. These days it is hard to tell, and that sucks for artists and the audience alike. I don’t care if a computer can do something perfectly, it means nothing, half the enjoyment of something impressive is that it was an impressive feat. If nobody put any effort in (a prompt does not count) then what even is the point? And it is flooding the commissions market which is terrible.

**

With regards to this forum’s scope:

I find AI videos of a ‘guitarists’ and AI music to be an affront. It’s gone past the novelty of ‘wow, look what a computer can do!’ and fallen into the category, ‘yeah, but look what a computer can do’. It takes the joy out of it when you realise it wasn’t an achievement of human endeavour, just well-written code.

AI lyrics, ehh… writing lyrics is a skill, and it’s a learnable one. There are plenty of songs out there that are absolute bangers that have pretty terrible lyrics, and I don’t mean offensive I mean repetitive and uninventive. Personally, from the couple of songs and snippets of songs I’ve heard from Katy Perry’s latest album, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn her collaborators were a computer and a computer. (Frankly, even the music.) I can see how folks might want to use AI to write lyrics but honestly, I feel like if you have a good chord progression / melody you’ve created, you’re doing yourself a disservice by getting AI to come up with something rather than teaming up with someone who can write something decent. That said, this is a forum of people from all walks of life and social networking abilities, and if your goal is just to showcase your tune here with some words to go along with it then I guess there’s no harm in that, although I do think it should be disclosed as such.

Moderating it will get harder, you’re mostly relying on the honour system. But I do think we have a wonderful community of passionate people here, and so I believe any purposeful deceit will be scant, and anybody found to be trying to trick folks into thinking their AI stuff is real will find themselves shown the door.

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:rofl: just like any good journalist does these days (sad but true)

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Having been cited as a forum member who has and still does use AI, I think I should explain why I have used it, and my opinions on its use.
I get it 100% why some people have extreme views about it, they perceive it as a replacement for human artists - which I agree with, but they don’t accept that it can just be used as a tool to enable some parts of creativity that some individuals wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. As regards monetisation for AI produced music, I am 100% against that - I only accept it if it’s used as a tool to expand knowledge and be used for something the individual can not do as a part of their own work.
AI isn’t going away, it’s going to get better and better because it’s self learning, the latest App I’m using is almost indistinguishable from the real artists, this is why I understand peoples concerns and extreme views about it.
I have researched why my AI content was taken down, it’s because the AI App Suno were sued for use of artists vocal characteristics use in their software, this is why I removed all of my content except what I have done myself. I stuck to Suno’s rules regarding credits to them so couldn’t understand why I was targeted. I also am not posting anything on here anymore that contains any AI assistance, if people feel so strongly about it I won’t post anything AI at all.

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Over a century ago, Marcel Duchamp found a urinal and declared it a piece of art. It caused outrage at the time. Now it’s exhibited in the Liverpool Tate Museum, and I love it.
Rogier mentioned above that nature does not create art, and I believe he’s correct. Art is what humans perceive as such (either the artist or the viewer). There is no reason why someone can not find the art in something generated by a computer. Richard did, until he discovered the source. (and don’t forget there was someone behind this project who dreamt up the kinda cool idea of wondering what Led Zep songs would sound like in 50/60s style)

AI is simply a technology. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s simply how humans choose to use it.
The question of how large companies are developing it (and I for one don’t like it) is beyond the scope of our community, but we do have to make decisions on how we deal with it here.
I repeat

Do we muddle on as we are, with the ‘problem’ growing?
Until the JG team decides upon a path, I think we should expect members to declare when they are sharing content that contains AI. If they don’t, it’s reasonable for other members to point this out (politely).

Now that you say it again, Rick, I see that you were right all along.
Sorry if I caused any offense.

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That’s exactly my opinion, provided people openly say they have used it and what for and why I don’t accept that there is an issue - it should be taken for what it is.

I think this is exactly right, it gets more messy in a professional environment when money is changing hands (and all of the AI training material was stolen).

Primarily this is a guitar learning forum (with a little bit of social stuff on the side) and as such if people do something with AI to deceive people then I don’t see what the payoff is around here - and if you’re exposed as a fraud then you might get run out of town. The primary fodder here is people sharing video of them playing guitar but generally only at a beginner / intermediate level and I don’t see why anyone would use AI to create that.

And people, please be nice to each other - if we fight among ourselves, that’s how the robots win!!!

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I suppose I’d also add that given the target audience here is people putting in the effort to learn a musical instrument then it’s not surprising that the general consensus isn’t favour of AI.

I’m not against some AI content if it’s flagged as AI (rather than just trying to fool people because that’s pathetic) and if there’s something that can be learned from it. I don’t think all posts about AI should be banned as that will get messy and difficult for the moderators. If someone is filling the forums with a load of AI content then that’s probably different and perhaps they should be told (politely) they’re in the wrong place. After all if the forum is full of non-human content then the humans will leave.

The whole situation is messy. For example, I’m against AI except when it helps me (and I wonder how many others will admit to this). I use Moises, which I have to assume was trained on songs they don’t explicitly own rights to do so, and is a paid app but it’s helping me to learn to play guitar. I’m still doing the playing, I’m watching YouTube lessons to learn the basics of songs, but the app helps me apply what I’ve learnt to the recorded version of the song. I’m still developing my ear while I do this but it’s definitely getting me over a hurdle and helping me enjoy my guitar playing as I can play along with songs I enjoy

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I’m not sure I could handle hitting the strings and hearing:
“Heeeyyyy, How ya’ doin’? Justin here…” in Amin :rofl:

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