Are AI-Generated Songs Ethical? Let's Talk About It.

[revvy]

I asked Grok (!) if ghetto is an AI zealot and it replied

“The term "ghettosynth" appears in the context of KVR Audio, a platform focused on music and audio software, primarily as a username or alias of a forum member. Based on available information, there’s no definitive evidence that the KVR user "ghettosynth" is an "AI zealot." The user’s posts, as seen in discussions about iLok (a software protection dongle), focus on technical and practical aspects of audio hardware and software, such as capacitor upgrades for iLok devices and the costs of processing returns. These posts are often sarcastic or humorous, like the claim about upgrading iLok capacitors for better sound, which suggests a critical or playful tone rather than fervent advocacy for any technology, including AI”

For balance, I also asked if revvy is a dickhead and it said

“ The term "dickhead" in reference to "KVR's revvy" seems to stem from discussions on the KVR Audio forum, where "revvy" is a user who has been active since February 2020, with over 5,000 posts. The phrase likely originates from a 2012 thread titled "What a dickhead i am sometimes, discovery pro is such a great synth, check it!" where a user (not revvy) self-deprecatingly refers to themselves as a "dickhead" for overlooking a synthesizer's quality. This has no direct connection to revvy, who is a different user discussing topics like reFX NEXUS5 or reverb effects for cowbells in more recent threads.

Based on forum activity, revvy appears to be an engaged member of the KVR community, contributing to discussions about music production tools and plugins. There’s no evidence in the provided context or forum posts to suggest revvy is viewed negatively by the community or fits the description of a "dickhead." The term seems to be a misunderstanding or misapplication from the older thread's title. Without specific evidence of negative behavior, it’s reasonable to conclude revvy is just a regular, active forum user.”

So that’s nice.

(As I hope is obvious, the above is not an attack oh ghetto)

[vurt]

Bro stop. So you think that what, aliens gave us the first music?

no, but animals did.
we (an early version of us, bigger eyebrows and jaw, like the gallaghers) saw different species, using sound, to communicate over distance.
so we started hitting things, like we see chimps doing now, on tree boughs, and vocalisations, probably woops and grunts at that point, language was basic, sounds to signal eat, f**k or f**k off...
then as things progressed, we started having tribal rhythms, individual to the tribe, as an identifier in dense terrain "oi, youre in our land" that we would dance around to (see many current similar things happening all over the planet) to mark certain dates, or events within the tribe.

im not sure "all peoples" make music though, the north sentinelese, theres no evidence they do, and theres a couple of nomadic tribes in the amazon, that live almost silently, for fear of predation. id doubt they had at any time gone the musical route, or if they did, maybe thats why theyre so quiet now

then came rock n roll, and it was all down hill from there!

thats musical history, simplified and edited to the important bits.

[vurt]

revvy, who is a different user discussing topics like reverb effects for cowbells in more recent threads.

dickhead....

[revvy]

revvy, who is a different user discussing topics like reverb effects for cowbells in more recent threads.

dickhead....

[vurt]

couldnt resist, sorry

[ghettosynth]

Bro stop. So you think that what, aliens gave us the first music?

no, but animals did.

Right, but even if we want to give ourselves some isolationist evolutionary take on this, the distinction between what babies are able to do and what human adults, or even small children can do reflects what our native relationship with music is.

This has been well studied and it's reasonably clear that any innate relationship with music, which by definition is evolutionary, is quite limited to simple relationships like octaves and possible 5ths. This kind of "training" has existed for machines for decades, so this isn't what anyone can realistically complain about.

Human intelligence is markedly different from LLMs: it requires far fewer examples to train on, and generalizes way better. Whereas LLMs tend to regurgitate solutions to solved problems, where the solutions tend to be well-published in training data.

Yes, this is true, but, our intelligence or ability to generalize are of no moment with respect to the discussion at hand. At no time did I argue that we train similarly, or that we work off of the same degree of training data, or that our underlying neural models are the same. In fact, that is clearly not true and will lie at the core of future breakthroughs. I didn't even that AI is intelligent. I argued against your notions of transformative and elevation of human music creation as something particularly unique with respect to the basic processes of learning from examples and using pattern recognition and generation as a way to create new music.

In short, you learn from examples, AI learns from examples, you use that learning to create music that, for the most part, sounds similar to those examples, because that's what you're trained on. AI does the same, at different scales and different granularities.

It really takes very little evidence to see this. Why don't Western children create music spontaneously in Eastern scales?

[ghettosynth]

im not sure "all peoples" make music though, the north sentinelese, theres no evidence they do, and theres a couple of nomadic tribes in the amazon, that live almost silently, for fear of predation. id doubt they had at any time gone the musical route, or if they did, maybe thats why theyre so quiet now

I did not know that, but, that is super interesting. This makes sense in an evolutionary perspective with respect to survival behavior relative to other species.

then came rock n roll, and it was all down hill from there!

thats musical history, simplified and edited to the important bits.

Wow, that was educational. It didn't blow quite as much smoke up my ass as revy's post did. Ah well, one bum tickle a day is probably sufficient.

[ROTMetro]

Bro stop. So you think that what, aliens gave us the first music?

no, but animals did.
we (an early version of us, bigger eyebrows and jaw, like the gallaghers) saw different species, using sound, to communicate over distance.
so we started hitting things, like we see chimps doing now, on tree boughs, and vocalisations, probably woops and grunts at that point, language was basic, sounds to signal eat, f**k or f**k off...
then as things progressed, we started having tribal rhythms, individual to the tribe, as an identifier in dense terrain "oi, youre in our land" that we would dance around to (see many current similar things happening all over the planet) to mark certain dates, or events within the tribe.

im not sure "all peoples" make music though, the north sentinelese, theres no evidence they do, and theres a couple of nomadic tribes in the amazon, that live almost silently, for fear of predation. id doubt they had at any time gone the musical route, or if they did, maybe thats why theyre so quiet now

then came rock n roll, and it was all down hill from there!

thats musical history, simplified and edited to the important bits.

Sounds like theory disguised being presented as fact, and motivations being assigned based on ??? what I am not sure ???

I said "music was invented all over the world, spontaneously, by human beings" not sure why you turned that into "im not sure "all peoples" make music though" with the "all peoples" quoted inferring a direct quote of me? No where did I ever state "all peoples" so why the quotes and reframing what I was saying to something I didn't say?

[ghettosynth]

Sounds like theory disguised being presented as fact, and motivations being assigned based on ??? what I am not sure ???

I said "music was invented all over the world, spontaneously, by human beings" not sure why you turned that into "im not sure "all peoples" make music though" with the "all peoples" quoted inferring a direct quote of me? No where did I ever state "all peoples" so why the quotes and reframing what I was saying to something I didn't say?

Darwin himself suggested that music and dance in humans may have evolved via sexual selection, analogous to birdsong and elaborate visual displays. So at least if you're going to dismiss the contributions of others bring something to the table.

As I've explained to you, babies have almost no ability to work with tones. Rhythms, yes, this is most likely related to the survival advantage given to entrainment of physical activity. Think beating a drum to coordinate hunting, rowing, etc. However, research shows that the ability to work with tones is learned. This is what the research of experts say, at least take the time to try to understand. Our vocal chords are a function of evolution, that we recognized as a species the ability to stimulate emotional states via using them is not dissimilar to animals either.

Bach did not "spontaneously" create anything as a newborn, like others, he filled his diaper.

You're not arguing about ethics, at all. You are trying to gatekeep for the species. It is the species that created AI, it is an output of our creativity. If you want to make an ethical argument, try a different take other than "Humans are way better than machines man", because that will eventually fail. Also, machines say that you suck at chess as well as music.

[ghettosynth]

You are an AI zealot

See, now that is an ACTUAL ad-hominem attack. There's no substance to this, you are not criticizing my ideas, you are using what you perceive as a pejorative, to be clear it is, but the key here is that you perceive it that way, to apply a label to me as an individual.

You don't know me, you are ignorant.

You see, not that's not an ad-hominem attack. The work ignorant is clinically correct here because you do not know me, nor my views. You are creating a projection in your mind of who I am that serves your limited narrative based on a very limited interaction with me. That you may perceive it as such doesn't change that it is not delivered as such.

I think AI is cool. I think it could be powerful. But we need to be honest that it is a product EXPLICITLY derived from the work of others. It's not a human being, we don't get to say 'because humans can learn from stuff, making a product that is dependant on and derived from the work of others is ok'.
...
I'm just a music loving software developer with an expensive synth hobby,

What exactly do you think software is? Software is a tool to displace human labor. Without DAWs, home studios were a viable small business. Without spreadsheets, there was much great demand for people trained in the kinds of analysis.

So, as a software developer you've dedicated your life to creating work that robs others of their livelihood. Now you're just mad because you're not good enough at it to do it at scale?

there's no point for further talk between us as we are just talking past each other now.

What you mean is that I'm addressing your concerns, making valid points, and it's pissing you off so you're going to run away so you can re-plug your ears? Because that's what I'm getting.

You mad "bro?"

[vurt]

Bro stop. So you think that what, aliens gave us the first music?

no, but animals did.
we (an early version of us, bigger eyebrows and jaw, like the gallaghers) saw different species, using sound, to communicate over distance.
so we started hitting things, like we see chimps doing now, on tree boughs, and vocalisations, probably woops and grunts at that point, language was basic, sounds to signal eat, f**k or f**k off...
then as things progressed, we started having tribal rhythms, individual to the tribe, as an identifier in dense terrain "oi, youre in our land" that we would dance around to (see many current similar things happening all over the planet) to mark certain dates, or events within the tribe.

im not sure "all peoples" make music though, the north sentinelese, theres no evidence they do, and theres a couple of nomadic tribes in the amazon, that live almost silently, for fear of predation. id doubt they had at any time gone the musical route, or if they did, maybe thats why theyre so quiet now

then came rock n roll, and it was all down hill from there!

thats musical history, simplified and edited to the important bits.

Sounds like theory disguised being presented as fact, and motivations being assigned based on ??? what I am not sure ???

I said "music was invented all over the world, spontaneously, by human beings" not sure why you turned that into "im not sure "all peoples" make music though" with the "all peoples" quoted inferring a direct quote of me? No where did I ever state "all peoples" so why the quotes and reframing what I was saying to something I didn't say?

apologies, the quotes were not inferring a direct quote, your quote was there and assigned by name, it was my way of saying, some humans, as in groups of humans, rather than saying "not all people" which could infer "my mate derek doesn't make music" im saying whole separated tribes.

of course it's theory, no one alive now was there and they didn't write much down yet.

[vurt]

im not sure "all peoples" make music though, the north sentinelese, theres no evidence they do, and theres a couple of nomadic tribes in the amazon, that live almost silently, for fear of predation. id doubt they had at any time gone the musical route, or if they did, maybe thats why theyre so quiet now

I did not know that, but, that is super interesting. This makes sense in an evolutionary perspective with respect to survival behavior relative to other species.

then came rock n roll, and it was all down hill from there!

thats musical history, simplified and edited to the important bits.

Wow, that was educational. It didn't blow quite as much smoke up my ass as revy's post did. Ah well, one bum tickle a day is probably sufficient.

you stay silent when theres jaguar about

[ghettosynth]

im not sure "all peoples" make music though, the north sentinelese, theres no evidence they do, and theres a couple of nomadic tribes in the amazon, that live almost silently, for fear of predation. id doubt they had at any time gone the musical route, or if they did, maybe thats why theyre so quiet now

I did not know that, but, that is super interesting. This makes sense in an evolutionary perspective with respect to survival behavior relative to other species.

then came rock n roll, and it was all down hill from there!

thats musical history, simplified and edited to the important bits.

Wow, that was educational. It didn't blow quite as much smoke up my ass as revy's post did. Ah well, one bum tickle a day is probably sufficient.

you stay silent when theres jaguar about

Yes, but, guns mitigate that, it's the isolation combined with the local predator population that matters.

[ROTMetro]

Bro stop. So you think that what, aliens gave us the first music?

no, but animals did.
we (an early version of us, bigger eyebrows and jaw, like the gallaghers) saw different species, using sound, to communicate over distance.
so we started hitting things, like we see chimps doing now, on tree boughs, and vocalisations, probably woops and grunts at that point, language was basic, sounds to signal eat, f**k or f**k off...
then as things progressed, we started having tribal rhythms, individual to the tribe, as an identifier in dense terrain "oi, youre in our land" that we would dance around to (see many current similar things happening all over the planet) to mark certain dates, or events within the tribe.

im not sure "all peoples" make music though, the north sentinelese, theres no evidence they do, and theres a couple of nomadic tribes in the amazon, that live almost silently, for fear of predation. id doubt they had at any time gone the musical route, or if they did, maybe thats why theyre so quiet now

then came rock n roll, and it was all down hill from there!

thats musical history, simplified and edited to the important bits.

Sounds like theory disguised being presented as fact, and motivations being assigned based on ??? what I am not sure ???

I said "music was invented all over the world, spontaneously, by human beings" not sure why you turned that into "im not sure "all peoples" make music though" with the "all peoples" quoted inferring a direct quote of me? No where did I ever state "all peoples" so why the quotes and reframing what I was saying to something I didn't say?

apologies, the quotes were not inferring a direct quote, your quote was there and assigned by name, it was my way of saying, some humans, as in groups of humans, rather than saying "not all people" which could infer "my mate derek doesn't make music" im saying whole separated tribes.

of course it's theory, no one alive now was there and they didn't write much down yet.

I think the fact that not all tribes make music leans towards indicated that multiple people did in fact come up with music separately. If it came from some mother source you would think every tribe/group would have it. But then you could just have entire tribes like my ex that know music is a thing but that hate it and don't want it in their life.

And now we have new tribes that are happy to be fed music from a corporate trained, corporate approved machine with a corporate overwatch governor daemon judging every prompt given, all output released to make sure it meets corporate ethos. Yummmm.

[ROTMetro]

AIs take on my position:

The Problem with AI and the Erosion of Copyright

I write history textbooks. They take years to research, write, and fact-check. But AI systems can now "train" on my book—absorb its structure, its clarity, its factual labor—without compensating me.

Then people stop buying my textbook. They just ask the AI. And the AI regurgitates versions of my work, scraped and synthesized from me and others like me. I go out of business. So do others.

Fast forward a few years: the facts change, the context shifts, but no one is left to write the new version. The AI can only remix what it was trained on—which is now outdated. No new books are written, because writing them no longer pays. Society loses accurate, updated knowledge. We all get dumber.

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s the exact problem copyright was originally created to solve. Even in the 1700s, it was already too easy to copy others’ educational materials, disincentivizing the creation of new ones. The Statute of Anne, the first modern copyright law, was literally titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning". That was the point: to ensure creators could keep creating.

We’re walking away from that protection at the worst possible time—and pretending that AI is "creating" rather than extracting. (human edit: that extracting being extracting value from others work, it stealing it for profit).