Poll: Opinion on AI Generated Music
What are your opinions on AI generated music?
Suno and other similar tools have been discussed on HN a few times and they make it very easy to get started. If you go to YouTube and search for "music to listen to while X" you're very likely to hit AI generated music. What do you think about it? Do you use these tools to make music for yourself only or do you publish them? Do you one-shot tracks or use them alongside more traditional tools?
Cast your vote on the poll below and share your opinions on the thread.
It is "simply music", and therefore of limited interest to me.
“[...] as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end, music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
Short answer: never.
To me, music (and art) is a form of person-to-person expression. I have played music, and that experience is an awesome connection with the composer. I can imagine the composer playing the same very notes (better, of course), and that auditory, tactile and visual experience transports me into the composer's life.
Most striking was when the power went out in the Bay, and I played by candlelight, like those old-timers did.
Things that can be tolerated or even enjoyed superficially are, well, superficial. Bach was accused of being "mental", even algorithmic, but he had some very powerful self-expression in his works. And let's not talk 12-tone. That's just tightly constrained, which in engineering can lead to breakthroughs, but I can't comment on how that plays out in music. I just don't have the experience to say.
> And let's not talk 12-tone. That's just tightly constrained, which in engineering can lead to breakthroughs, but I can't comment on how that plays out in music.
All art is creativity expressed under constraints.
Voted for "I don't mind listening to AI music if I like how it sounds."
Ultimately, music is about the final output. Whether the creator is a human with a guitar or an algorithm on a GPU is less important to me than the feeling the track evokes
I've been playing with Suno lately (I'm an amateur/hobby musician, for context) and I've been making some tracks for my own enjoyment. I've shown it to friends and got mixed reactions.
Personally, I think it's still uncanny similar to these AI image gens with multiple hands and nonsense details in the background. You can one-shot a lot of passable stuff but the moment you want to put more effort into it (e.g. correct a word or two, slightly change the style of a section) the track gets really messy very fast.
Generally, I find aigen content to be obvious and lacking. However, there are some longer psytrance sets I've listened to that I eventually figured out were generated, but didn't mind in the background whilst working.
I think it's fun for the lulz when a friend gets some in-group song "made" for a joke. But I don't think aigen will ever dominate a creative sphere. It can't extrapolate to create something entirely new. It can only interpolate to create something within the realm it has training on. It relies on creativity "top ups" via training on non-aigen content to even remain remotely relevant.
I can't answer as I have no idea how much music recent or otherwise that I've heard that was or was not AI generated. I also believe people who think they can spot all AI music are dunning-krugering