AI in Music
AI in Music, Disingenuousness, and the Opinions of Dark Juan Upon Them
By Dark Juan
Dark Juan is poorly sick and therefore is in a piss bad mood. Because of this, I feel compelled to have a rant, simply to make myself feel better. Mainly because I have already annoyed Mrs Dark Juan to the point of her threatening to go and sleep at her daughter’s house tonight. However, craven and frequent apologies have mollified her somewhat (it didn’t help that the youngest Smellhound had had her up all night puking, which magically cured itself at the possibility of fresh chicken this morning) yet I am still annoyed and irritated at my body letting me down, so here is a rage-fuelled opinion piece.
It may not be common knowledge, but Dark Juan is against the advent of AI art in all ways. The point of AI is that it does the shitty work and frees up the human to create art, not the other way round. You see it all over the place, especially on album art at the moment (I’m looking at you and your last release, Glen Benton and Deicide) and Dark Juan thinks that this is cheating phenomenally talented artists like Dan Seagrave and Adrian Baxter out of business. Part of the joy of record ownership is staring intently at the cover art when you listen to it for the first time and trying to decipher any codes and messages hidden within it. Without the human artist, there would be no Eddie, no Vic Rattlehead, no Flying Killer Cobs from the Planet Bob…
The same goes for the music, and this is where the music fans, and Dark Juan personally, have been royally betrayed by an unscrupulous “creator” of AI music in the form of Occult Metal “band” Hail Darkness.
Hail Darkness were easily (before I discovered that they are an AI project) a top five release of the year and Dark Juan was incredibly enthusiastic about them because I thought that they were, finally, the band that the great Coven and the sublime Jinx Dawson could hand their Satanic Psychedelic crown to. The problem with it is that the person or persons behind this project developed back stories about the “members” of the band and had created physical records and merchandise to be bought in good faith without telling anyone that they were a creation of AI.
In short, we were fucking lied to.
Several well regarded Metal websites and reviewers including myself listened to the album and, lo, it was universally decided that it was good, and high scores were awarded all round. All was serene until it came out that the band weren’t even a band at all. This has pissed me off because I couldn’t tell the music was computer created, and neither could many other people, and it was therefore judged on the merits that it was the work of an actual band, and therefore got decent scores. If we had known it was AI music, it would not even have got through the fucking door, let alone been given attention.
AI art is not art. It is a conglomeration of endless gigabytes of data-scraping, normally without the permission of the people who own the images and data, and it is the construct of artificial creation, merely being the agglomeration of millions of other people’s talents and abilities jammed together with no soul to the resulting thing that is crapped out. It is the same for music. In the confession of the person behind the Hail Darkness project (he claims a clue to the nature of the “band” was the fact that there is the letters A and I in “Hail”and their use of the term “Anno Inferni”) he admits that he basically just typed prompts and refined things – over hundreds of generations, to be sure, but it’s still sitting in front of a computer and has no real creative value, in Dark Juan’s opinion.
Here is a quote from the Hail Darkness Substack, where the confession has come from – “What is the difference between AI generated vibrations and frequencies that give you joy or human created vibrations and frequencies that give you this same reaction? Is it all in the ear of the beholder? Or is the human touch an absolute necessity to bring joy to a listener? And who is to decide which process gives a creator the most artistic satisfaction, if it brings the same pleasure to his listener ?”
Let me answer the questions posed!
The difference between AI generated vibrations and frequencies and human created ones is that there has been time and effort and sacrifice from the talented humans, to learn instruments, and how to write music, and the scribing of lyrics and then the performance and the recording and the knowledge that grows with repeated playing, and all those variables are done simply because of drive and passion, and because people all have experiences that come out in lyrics and performances, and directly influence a performance on a given day. AI does none of those things. It is a robot. It has never known sadness, or desire, or joy, or hopelessness. It can’t write about the death of a child with any emotion. It can’t paint the Sistine Chapel with the most glorious of religious imagery or the faceless screaming mouths of Francis Bacon because it doesn’t know how to. It doesn’t know how transcendental faith can be, or the horrific alienation of depression and abuse. It doesn’t know rage, or panic, or what illness or love feel like. The works of Hieronymus Bosch would blow circuits because they defy description. It cannot experience the things that humans experience on a moment to moment basis. All it can do is leach quantifiable bits from the whole of human existence and regurgitate a soulless composite, and suck up information. It doesn’t know nuance, or allegory, or hidden motifs that can be solved with knowledge and a keen eye.
Dark Juan is of the opinion (and these words are just that, my opinion. You are free to disagree with me, and no harm done) that the human touch is ESSENTIAL to bring joy to a listener as far as music is concerned. The fact that I LOVED the Hail Darkness album has been forever tarnished because I am of the opinion that artists are being screwed by AI regardless of what art they create. Mrs Dark Juan, even, with her textile art, is at risk as people create images based on data-scraping of embroidered items that a flesh and blood embroiderer could never hope to emulate to the level of machine-like perfection.
Hail Darkness has truly wounded my soul. I feel dirty for having liked it so much. I feel fucking stupid because I didn’t see through it. I feel betrayed because the faces I put to the “people” performing were also AI constructs, done through Midjourney. Jez’s voice is a construct. In short, I have been fucking HAD in a big way, as have a fuckton of fans around the world.
A question I have for myself because of this, is why did I not realise? Was it because I was simply carried away on waves of enthusiasm because the Hail Darkness record was some of my preferred kind of music and I lost journalistic integrity? Am I too thick to tell the difference between machine noise and actual performance? I mean, even in Electronic music there is a human component – look at Kraftwerk, and VNV Nation, and Grendel – all of these have humans operating electronic instruments and that is the difference between their music and Hail Darkness – there is a person in the loop and the music is still composed by humans. Hail Darkness’s music was created entirely by machine – someone operated the machine until it spat out something they found pleasing. Where is the craft? Where is the artistry? Where is the talent?
Some might say that the artistry, craft and talent are in the creation of the overall Hail Darkness concept. I disagree. Music is an entity all of its own and to take this most human of arts and bastardise it with AI is nothing short of an assault on the very essence of art in all its forms. Being a machine operator is not being an artist. By that argument a lathe operator is an artist. Someone operating CAD/CAM machinery is an artist.
Imagine the Metal scene powered by AI. It would die in a few short years as the AI expanded its database and the music would all eventually morph into a single sound, because computers don’t understand that some people like Thrash, and others like AOR, you may enjoy Groove and Stoner and another group like Gothic stuff and that variety is the spice of life.
AI kills true art. It harms creators, it damages trust and ability, and it is replacing the wrong thing for humanity. Art is an incredibly human concept that blends the technical with the Godlike. Talent is a rare enough beast as it is without trying to supplant it with microchips.
A closing thought for you – You would never have read this article had it been left to AI to create it. Reviews and opinions (especially ones that fly in the face of convention) would not exist in a world of AI art. Neither would choice as everything would coalesce to a point of efficiency that would indicate a mathematically perfect sound. Imagine a world with machine-created music and all the humanity purged from it. Welcome to a Brave New World where nothing challenges the status quo. Metal, and most music of more niche genres exist because they want to challenge the norm, to twist it into new forms or just to rage against the misery and injustice that exists in the world.
Imagine music which has been boiled down by algorithms to a homogenous, mathematical precision in which all inventiveness has been programmed out of it…
It’s fucking terrifying. Because it would have no soul.
Disclaimer: This article is solely the property of Dark Juan. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this article, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
