Topic: Official Stance on AI-generated music

There are a few releases in the AP database that are AI-generated. Should we do something about that? My personal opinion is: No. If a release is listed on official sources (e.g. RYM, Spotify, Bandcamp, PA etc.) then it can also be listed here.

I know that some people are very much against the use of AI, especially in the music, but also for the cover art. I feel your rage ;-) ... but removing the artist from the database is not necessary. You're welcome to give the release a bad rating, or to write a negative review. I don't necessarily agree that a recording should be "bashed" just because AI was used in its creation, but if you think so, then ratings and reviews are the proper way to express that sentiment.

What do you think? :-)

Hands off! well, at first we should need a description what exactly counts as AI generated, would be a never ending story ... I agree, this is adjustable via ratings, blurbs or reviews

my opinion in short and very abstract: using AI workarounds are acceptable for the composing phase but the music as such should be predominantly finalized by musicians, instruments

^ I'm mostly talking about AI-generated tracks, meaning that the entire track is "played" by an AI generator like Suno or Udio. It can still have major human contributions, since the input to these tools can include human-recorded audio.

[the entire track is "played" by an AI generator like Suno or Udio]

would be ignored by me (if promoted or recognized as such)

Bandcamp is supposedly deleting A.I. music as of this week. So, if it's the only link to that music (here on AP), you probably will never hear it anyway. I had an A.I. generated album cover that I pulled and replaced with a photograph I took, and I'd like to update it here as well... I'm not sure how to do that.

I've been going back and forth on this issue for months and I've finally decided (My opinion only) it best serves 'music' if we ditch all AI stuff from this point on. Leave what's here already perhaps and note it as A.I. I've noticed on PE that some members are reporting A.I. content to Bandcamp.

Hilariously, on Tik Tok, the so called MUSIC REVIEWERS are reviewing A.I. content more than REAL music because they get paid to do a review that takes about 4 minutes... Cant blame them from a monetary standpoint. But I find it funny.

I am sure that there will be websites that cater to A.I. music exclusively, popping up all over the web if that's one's thing. Spotify probably wont turn it down either.

Mike, I know you have put a lot of work into some of your content. I too made a few plays with suno for the fun of it, so I could hear some of my lyrics put to music. But I think banning it may be the correct way to go, especially for Prog related websites.

P.S. Mike, maybe you could be one of the first to create a site similar to this that caters to A.I. Content only... Could be profitable if done Now!

Personally, I've never liked witch hunts. :-)

I would never lower myself to ratting someone out over a song. But they are out there.

You raised some interesting points. Here's my two cents on them:

Bandcamp is supposedly deleting A.I. music as of this week. So, if it's the only link to that music (here on AP), you probably will never hear it anyway. I had an A.I. generated album cover that I pulled and replaced with a photograph I took, and I'd like to update it here as well... I'm not sure how to do that.

Are you worried that your content will be pulled because of AI cover art? Now, that's really approaching witch hunt dimensions ;-) I pulled the new cover from Bandcamp for you.

I've been going back and forth on this issue for months and I've finally decided (My opinion only) it best serves 'music' if we ditch all AI stuff from this point on. Leave what's here already perhaps and note it as A.I. I've noticed on PE that some members are reporting A.I. content to Bandcamp. Hilariously, on Tik Tok, the so called MUSIC REVIEWERS are reviewing A.I. content more than REAL music because they get paid to do a review that takes about 4 minutes... Cant blame them from a monetary standpoint. But I find it funny.

Well, I think that every "creator" should decide for themselves which tools they use to produce their content, and then it is for the listener/viewer to decide whether it's any good.

Bad content, AI or not, will remain in obscurity. Good content, AI or not, will sometimes go viral, but will remain obscure most of the time ... simply because there is so much good content out there and only a limited amount of users.

Like I've explained elsewhere (in the PA forum), I see AI generators like Udio or Suno as production tools. Musicians have been using production tools for a long time, to enhance their productivity (it's in the name). Some are very subtle (think AI mastering), some less so (my go-to example is autotune), some (like AI generation) are revolutionary in how much of the music production process they take over. But at the end of the day, all of these are tools musicians use which make the music a little less authentic.

Think of it as a spectrum. On one end there is a musician (or band), playing analog instruments, recorded by a few microphones, no DAW editing, only the bare minimum technology to capture their music on tape in a single take. On the other end there's someone with a song idea who asks Chat GPT to come up with lyrics and a Suno prompt. They paste it into Suno and download its first generation.

Now, the interesting question to me is: At which point in this continuous spectrum do you draw the line? Is autotune ok to use? There were HUGE discussions about it in the 1990s, when that Cher song (Believe, from 1998) first used it in a very obvious way, as a gimmick almost. But by that time there were already many artists who used it to just correct their bad intonation. Who are you (or me, or anyone else) to say what is ok to use, and what is off-limits?

I think it's best to let the listener decide. Currently most AI-generated music will remain obscure simply because it's boring, so there is no real issue.

I am sure that there will be websites that cater to A.I. music exclusively, popping up all over the web if that's one's thing. Spotify probably wont turn it down either. Mike, I know you have put a lot of work into some of your content. I too made a few plays with suno for the fun of it, so I could hear some of my lyrics put to music. But I think banning it may be the correct way to go, especially for Prog related websites.

I’m not comfortable banning artists or releases if there is no definite objective criterion for doing so. Even if there was, how would we verify that an artist reported as ”using AI” really does, and to an extent which justifies banning them?

P.S. Mike, maybe you could be one of the first to create a site similar to this that caters to A.I. Content only... Could be profitable if done Now!

Websites in general are not profitable anymore, we live in the age of apps and social media platforms. I’m running AP because I really like progressive music, not because I’m hoping to make money from it. I leave that to M@x ;-) 

And neither do I publish my (partially) AI-generated music for monetary reasons. It’s just experiments which I think are interesting, and I enjoy listening to them. Like I said so many times, listeners will make the right choice for them and listen to what they enjoy the most.

Excellent new album from this year by the English prog-rock artist Chris Picton featuring AI-generated female vocals (el. guitar and synths, played by Mr Picton himself, are real), and it sounds rather good: https://chrispicton.bandcamp.com/album/run-on-this-land-album

i hate everything genai and won't touch it with a six foot pole

but the question is do you want this site to be a comprehensive music database of anything that can be considered music, or a database of strictly human work? the problem wiht the latter is whereyou draw the line between what is human and ai generated. somewhere along the line a human was involved with something ai generated.

ultimately, i think it's easier to just let it go and allow it to remain. it's up to the users to research the artist and see to whom or what they're actually listening.

I think that AI is here to stay. Generated tracks are still usually mediocre, so there is no danger of them replacing human-generated tracks any time soon. They will improve a lot though, and by that time I expect AI to have become just one more valid tool creators use, as has happened with synths, DAWs, virtual instruments, amp modelling, autotune etc.

oh i don't think genrrative ai is going to last as long as you imply here. profit margins are low, the average person has a negative opinion on it, and the market is already oversaturated, and the more that ai outputs,the lower quality it will get as it begins pulling stochastic variables from itself this is going to result in the most expensive economic bubble burst ever, and we'll all suffer the consequences when that happens... but thy good news is no more genai after that :)

the idea that it will replace thr majority of human jobs was laughable from the beginning. the datacenters need massive manpower to operate, and without a human economy backing the corpos that run them, they can't hire that human manpower. in other words, the tech is unsustainable in the longrun and the corpos are blinsided by greed and market trends

I don't agree. Today gen-AI requires huge datacenters, but as the technology matures it will increasingly run on home computers. Together with more sophisticated models and increased acceptance (old generations of users retiring, new generations arriving with less resistance), I do think it's here to stay. And I actually think it's valid to let computers do more (menial) work and allow humans to focus on the creative parts. In AI-generated music, this means more elaborative prompts, more ways to input actual audio for the model to work on, with it becoming more of a production tool.

But we'll see! None of us have a crystal ball to look into the future :-)