You’re Either AI Wet or You’re Not
AI and songwriting is a topic that’s been beaten to death, but it seems like the same arguments are being repeated over and over again, where words go in one end and a song poops out the other. But there’s also a fuzzy line where people put their words into AI and they come out a little different, or they put their chord sequences in and it does come out a little different.
And I think somewhere at that break is the line between artfulness and commerce. Full art is no AI. Full commerce is just straight AI slop.
To me, it’s like jumping in water. You’re either wet or you’re not, and if you’re trying to make art, you need to decide not to use it. If you’re trying to make money, go do it, or if you’re trying not to pay too many people, whatever—but do you smoke crack or not? That’s it.
The problem for me, and I don’t know if it’s like this for anybody else, is that the art comes when the problems come—when you can’t finish a song, when you’ve got a deadline, when you’re about to show it to your friend and you’ve got to get the magic in there somewhere. You know it’s there. It hasn’t come yet. You’ve got to be patient, but you have to do the work. You’ve set aside the time and you just have to make it happen. You have to suffer and feel the pain to get to the other side. This where the good stuff comes from, the inspiration. It’s not the only way, but it sure is one of the ways.
It seems like this is where people are pulling in AI. The exact wrong spot! It would be hard to grow from this kind of workflow. Where are you going to go? What’s your next step? How do you stop using it once you’ve started?
So I think a clear line needs to be drawn between art or commerce. Use AI to your heart’s content—it’s not going anywhere. Maybe have commercial music and have artsy-fartsy music. I don’t know!
When I think of me commercializing myself, that’s DJing. That’s DJ parties—I’ve got one Sunday, ’70s soul for a 60-year-old birthday party. Perfect. They don’t want to hear my music anyway. It’s not the right crowd.
I’ll end with this, though: people are going to know it AI. The computer’s damn sure going to know. There are probably little signatures in there everywhere. You gotta be okay with this.
This is not me being a Luddite and saying: don’t use it. It’s me saying: don’t use it when you’re making art; leverage it when you’re trying to make money.