AI Generated Metal...

[Lorcan Ward]

It's very janky and rough on the ears but I can't deny it is an incredible example of how far technology has and will go. That said is it like AI art where it piecing existing art rather than actually creating? I haven't experimented but Toontrack have beat detection and creation in EZbass and Ezdrummer. I think Logic also has the ability to scan files and generate drums to it too.

 

[crushingpetal]

Not sure why you'd think that? Certainly the technology is there -- it's more a matter of if anybody has taken the time to grind it on this particular genre/data. Take a look at OpenAI's Jukebox, and that's quite an old model at this point, and also very general.

No, OpenAI's Jukebox is still pretty shitty. The OP's example is too slick for me to think this is 100% AI. (The video I believe, because it's weird and kinda' shitty.)

 

[crushingpetal]

I'd be extremely surprised if it's an AI-generated waveform. But a MIDI which was then produced with VSTs (which could also be automated with an AI, I'm sure)? Seems way more plausible. Train it on freely available Guitar Pro files, commercialize it, profit. Same shit as with AI art, there were mentions that some generators made art with watermarks. It's not making stuff out if thin air, it's basically a parrot that has a lot of raw computing power behind it.

Yeah, I believe the drum MIDI could be AI.

The mix is just too slick to be AI at this point. One day, sure. Not today.

Does the company give any specifics about the AI used, and how much?

Now that AI is a super-premium buzzword, it makes sense that people are just throwing it around.

 

[narad]

It's very janky and rough on the ears but I can't deny it is an incredible example of how far technology has and will go. That said is it like AI art where it piecing existing art rather than actually creating? I haven't experimented but Toontrack have beat detection and creation in EZbass and Ezdrummer. I think Logic also has the ability to scan files and generate drums to it too.

That's really a misconception being spread -- AI art doesn't piece together existing art. It is learning patterns but can apply those patterns in novel ways. The dimensionality reduction between the training data and the model parameters is too great for it to be "picking and choosing" pieces.

 

[Lorcan Ward]

That's really a misconception being spread -- AI art doesn't piece together existing art. It is learning patterns but can apply those patterns in novel ways. The dimensionality reduction between the training data and the model parameters is too great for it to be "picking and choosing" pieces.

What was happening when people posted comparisons of their art being used and watermarks being visible on early versions of Midjourney and Dall-e? Or was that not true and being used to attack Ai art.

 

[narad]

What was happening when people posted comparisons of their art being used and watermarks being visible on early versions of Midjourney and Dall-e? Or was that not true and being used to attack Ai art.

Regarding the watermarks/signatures, to an image model trying to analyze a particular style, placing some blurry cursivey text in the bottom corner is simply part of the style of the image, and reproducing these images involves placing something there. The people that looked at that and said, "ah ha! it's theft of this artist!" don't understand the objectives of the model during training. It wasn't anyone's watermark. It is similar to how a model might learn that a street sign should have some blockish font of something, but the rendered text is not of any street sign or combination of street signs it has seen during training. The loss function is just a little bit more minimized if it attempts to fill it in with gibberish than if it makes no attempt at it.

 

[gnoll]

But AI can make art in the style of a certain artist. Which seems a bit questionable. If an artist works hard to develop their own style, is it really okay for an AI to train on their images and start churning out images in the same style?

 

[narad]

But AI can make art in the style of a certain artist. Which seems a bit questionable. If an artist works hard to develop their own style, is it really okay for an AI to train on their images and start churning out images in the same style?

Is it okay for a human to look at another artist's style and then start churning out images in the same style?

 

[Asdrael]

Noone has mentioned the goblin on drums playing the massive troll as a kickdrum? Fucking ace.

 

[Aewrik]

AI generation of art also reifies the algorithmic marketing strategies used to build pop songs and curate your instagram feed. When robots make all the art, they'll make the art they already know you want based on the 4 quadrillion data points they have on you and beam it directly to your Meta™ pituitary implant while you're shooting through the hyperloop to your job at the surveillance drone factory.

Personally I love AI generated stuff. Makes it alot easier for me to be creative -- a lot of times I wouldn't make it to the end of a song without some kind of procedural generation early on. I just suck at making interesting chord progressions and leads. I mostly do procedural stuff though, not really AI. But AI generated images are just wonderful.

 

[gnoll]

Is it okay for a human to look at another artist's style and then start churning out images in the same style?

I think there's some pretty big differences between the two. Should it really be automatically 100% okay to train AI on copyrighted things? A human looking on something and being inspired seems very different to a company collecting things for their AI to train on. I think at least there should be a discussion about if current copyright laws need to be updated with AI in mind.

 

[Aewrik]

I think there's some pretty big differences between the two. Should it really be automatically 100% okay to train AI on copyrighted things? A human looking on something and being inspired seems very different to a company collecting things for their AI to train on. I think at least there should be a discussion about if current copyright laws need to be updated with AI in mind.

It's just a time gate. I think the more relevant question is what value does society put on art, rather than copyright.

 

[narad]

I think there's some pretty big differences between the two. Should it really be automatically 100% okay to train AI on copyrighted things? A human looking on something and being inspired seems very different to a company collecting things for their AI to train on. I think at least there should be a discussion about if current copyright laws need to be updated with AI in mind.

I mean you say there's differences, but really what is the difference? A human takes in art over their lives, including some of artist style X, and then is asked to generate some new image in style X for commission, and does it to the best of their ability, generalizing from what they know about art as a whole and about artist X's style within that broader context. In terms of collecting things -- it's just publicly available stuff. Humans and machines alike view copyrighted material and try to incorporate parts of it when creating new images.

Really what someone needs to try to formalize is how training an ML model is different from an artist "being inspired".

 

[gnoll]

I mean you say there's differences, but really what is the difference? A human takes in art over their lives, including some of artist style X, and then is asked to generate some new image in style X for commission, and does it to the best of their ability, generalizing from what they know about art as a whole and about artist X's style within that broader context. In terms of collecting things -- it's just publicly available stuff. Humans and machines alike view copyrighted material and try to incorporate parts of it when creating new images.

Really what someone needs to try to formalize is how training an ML model is different from an artist "being inspired".

But just because something is "publicly available" doesn't mean you can do anything with it. And these companies use a lot of other people's things for a program that they then charge money for. I mean you couldn't just google a photo and use it for your commercial ventures, you'd get sued.

The fact that it "learns like a human" just seems like a loophole. AI isn't human.

 

[narad]

But just because something is "publicly available" doesn't mean you can do anything with it. And these companies use a lot of other people's things for a program that they then charge money for. I mean you couldn't just google a photo and use it for your commercial ventures, you'd get sued.

The fact that it "learns like a human" just seems like a loophole. AI isn't human.

Sure, but there is another company that uses a lot of other people's things for a program that they then charge money for. It's called Google. It processes images and data that is copyrighted, into models that are used to serve up suggested pages. So you have to argue why it's okay to train a model from data for one purpose, and not another, when neither of them are reproducing the original image. Algorithms can "look at" copyrighted material under the law.

This is totally different from your stealing photos to use in commercial ventures example, so you'd need to find some in-between from complete strawman to currently totally legal usage. I find most of these arguments seem motivated by some gut feeling and not really any care for consistency with precedent.

 

[gnoll]

Sure, but there is another company that uses a lot of other people's things for a program that they then charge money for. It's called Google. It processes images and data that is copyrighted, into models that are used to serve up suggested pages. So you have to argue why it's okay to train a model from data for one purpose, and not another, when neither of them are reproducing the original image. Algorithms can "look at" copyrighted material under the law.

This is totally different from your stealing photos to use in commercial ventures example, so you'd need to find some in-between from complete strawman to currently totally legal usage. I find most of these arguments seem motivated by some gut feeling and not really any care for consistency with precedent.

It's too much "oh but this is kind of like that so it's okay". If AI is no different then why does it exist in the first place? "Neither is reproducing the original image" is just a convenient excuse.

Anyway I think I'll leave it at that, this conversation is not going anywhere. It's not like I can sit here and propose new fully formulated copyright laws.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with gut feelings if they make you stop and think about things rather than getting swept away by excitement.

 

[Albake21]

And so the end is near... This shit is awful to see and I don't understand how anyone can find this cool or exciting.

All this does is make me want to just quit guitar or making demos. AI just cheapens the experience for everyone else and makes it not worth the time investment.

 

[Demiurge]

AI just cheapens the experience for everyone else and makes it not worth the time investment.

I don't think that it cheapens everything. Maybe the future will be some metaverse nightmare where people will have to pay dogecoin to see some tepid AI approximation of bands that can no longer afford to tour, but at least that's not the case right now. Music, for me, has always been my 'not giving a shit about what everyone is doing or wants' space, and I think that helps.

 

[c7spheres]

Would an AI version of Ted Kaczynski brick itself?

 

[narad]

And so the end is near... This shit is awful to see and I don't understand how anyone can find this cool or exciting.

All this does is make me want to just quit guitar or making demos. AI just cheapens the experience for everyone else and makes it not worth the time investment.

I mean, AI does make it hard to compete at a mediocre level. But so do skilled humans. Music industry has always been pretty much winner takes all so I'm not sure what has changed except there will now be a "you must be at least this good / original" to be a blip on the radar.

On the other hand, the barrier of entry will become much lower so more people will be able to produce full mix stuff while maybe not being able to sing, or play bass, or various other instruments. Of course there are a lot of people who want everyone to have to basically invest Ten thousand hours in order to be able to make a piece of music with a guitar solo in it, and are naturally opposed to anything that democratizes music creation. Traditional artists used to say the same about Photoshop.