Rick Rubin on AI (& now Graeme Revell, too)

[BONES]

You can't tell?

No, which is why I'm asking how you could. And I meant specifically that it was AI and not something done with a sample library and an arpeggiator in a DAW or some way other than playing the thing. What's the specific telltale that it's AI?

San Diego Comicon bans A.I. Art.
Hopefully more backlash in the music world will come soon(Shout out to Bandcamp): https://news.artnet.com/art-world/san-d ... rt-2739389

Yeah, that's being pushed by a woman who will imminently lose her job as a VFX artist if she doesn't retrain because AI will have completely taken over all those jobs in the next few years. She's toast and she knows it. Boo-f**king-hoo.

As for Bandcamp, someone said something in an interview recently but they haven't yet informed us of any specific policy.

[eassae]

As for Bandcamp, someone said something in an interview recently but they haven't yet informed us of any specific policy.

Incorrect: https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/ke ... amp-human/

[Gamma-UT]

Yes, I think that you can tell pretty quickly. I gave Suno instructions to write a Bach style piano sonata, and this is the result. I can hear that this is AI after only a few seconds in. YMMV and all that.

What are those lyrics!!!

When you gotta go, you gotta go.



On the “is it AI?” I can see how someone might think it was hand-done with samples but the zippery/phase vocodey artifacts on the trills stand out like a sore thumb.

[Bombadil]

Yes, I think that you can tell pretty quickly. I gave Suno instructions to write a Bach style piano sonata, and this is the result. I can hear that this is AI after only a few seconds in. YMMV and all that.

If you don‘t mind me saying: that truly sucks!

[chagzuki]

Comic book art is an interesting case because it combines artistic elements with a gruelling production pipeline. I haven't paid attention to the scene/industry for a long time, but I remember a trajectory for artists: they'd appear on the scene young and eager, their style would mature quickly and after a few years deteriorate as they lost the enthusiasm for the work.
Drawing all day is a physically very awkward activity, probably inherently unhealthy, almost guaranteed to lead to RSI. It's also isolating, mentally draining etc.

I can see a case for the use of AI in comic book art, but the problematic element appears to be how it intersects with intellectual property.

Take Mike Mignola as an example, I don't know what he's been up to in the last decade, but looking over his Hellboy arc, he arrived at a unique style, unmistakably his own interpretation of how the comic book medium can operate. The early Hellboy books contained that mature artistic vision, perhaps it evolved slightly through the first couple of books. But after a while his art started to become more simplistic in a way that was almost certainly a result of reducing the labour involved. Eventually he got other artists to take over, and while they tried to mimic his style they never quite understood how to make it work.

If Mike Mignola was able to employ AI to realise his artistic vision without losing ownership of his style, that would be great imo. It seems though that it's going to be almost impossible for copyright law to cope with the complexity of hybrid AI art production lines. And I guess that's why the discussion is continually coming round to the idea of public ownership of these tools: if it becomes unfeasible to locate intellectual property then it's crucial that profits don't accrue to a few private companies.

[jancivil]

I gave Suno instructions to write a Bach style piano sonata, and this is the result.

If you don‘t mind me saying: that truly sucks!

The rhythm is exceedingly awkward in measure 1, like a displacement. It doesn't understand.

[Gamma-UT]

If Mike Mignola was able to employ AI to realise his artistic vision without losing ownership of his style, that would be great imo. It seems though that it's going to be almost impossible for copyright law to cope with the complexity of hybrid AI art production lines.

One of the problems with the way the current generation of AI works is that it just doesn't work that way. It's case of "best I can do is some Mignola mixed in with generic DeviantArt slop and all the cats have five legs".

For video it's a bit different, but technology to do interstitials has been around for ages and doesn't need gen AI.

[Bombadil]

I gave Suno instructions to write a Bach style piano sonata, and this is the result.

If you don‘t mind me saying: that truly sucks!

The rhythm is exceedingly awkward in measure 1, like a displacement. It doesn't understand.

Yeah, I got that. Took me a while to make out the words, though. Anyone who says that A.I. is actually ‚that,‘ is delusional or wilfully ignorant, as you said. Or, just plain lazy. Or, all of the above. I now know why Fran Drescher took actors out on strike a few years ago. Entirely valid reason to put their foot down and say ‚NO.‘


Another thing: ^^^Bones observed that I won‘t even try it. That is correct. I refuse. I used to love playing chess. I was ok, but not great. However, from the very first, I‘ve disliked playing chess against a machine, and I got my first little computer chess set in 1983 for Xmas. Since then, I‘ve observed the same phenomenon with music making. I hate programming drums and any kind of sequencing. Interacting with musicians, for me, can never be adequately substituted with machines of any kind. For me, having to use machines to generate music is already almost, but not quite, anathema. I do it because there‘s no one around to play with. Ones and zeroes don‘t cut it for me.

[eassae]

15 months to animate 4 seconds, this is a person that knows value.

[jancivil]

The two that are in here arguing for "AI", one rather blandly, the other being the aggro bully he frequently is, are both utterly f**king clueless about the process in any fullness of creating music. AI will fit the bill if what you do is cut-and-dried manufactured unoriginal pablum.

I don't set out to make some generalistic generic music where there is a kind of musical line, riff, lick what-have-you fulfilling a cookie-cutter form - eg., the same chord progressions 18 million songs use, reitrerated 4 or 8 or 16 times etc without exception - where one example of adequately filling this container is as good as the next.

It's specific ideas, specific musical lines, specific rhythms. Arrived at mostly spontaneously.
In the wild. My ideas are uniquely my own, individuated from the hive mind. When there are cases I want something other than what I, too close to the material maybe or just to get another angle on, would do - mainly to be surprised, to get something fresh - I want the musician to be informed about what it is, but free instead of being programmed by me. (I can make virtual instruments do exactly what I write, I don't need to call someone and arse with that and have to pay them.)

I don't specify beyond a generalization. I'm looking for high intelligence. "AI" is_not intelligence. It can_not think, it has no capacity to work through a problem (if you don't believe me, ask someone involved in development; this last bit is a source of major frustration as it means AGI isn't happening. They feed an LLM more and more power and it, if anything gets worse and worse at it.). Again its intent is locate prevalence and produce copies recombined. Michael L nailed it with simulacra. If it produces a different simulacra the next time, this isn't because it had different thoughts, it's a product of its programming. It may as well be random factor.

So someone insists 'you won't even try it', I don't know what you want from me. The pseudo-Bach shows it, the machine doesn't understand Bach; it has a mimicry arrived at by a superficial assessment of tendencies. You won't be able to help it, it doesn't f**king understand. If a student handed that in from an assignment, from measure 1 its grade is F.

IT IS ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT.

[Seafire Mk2]

Blimey...

[Gamma-UT]

The Let Babylon Burn song is a great example. Assuming they are legit, you just have to read the comments to see how it connects with people. So Hollow has 23 million views and more than 12,000 comments. It's over, people, time to accept the fact.

The comments are very peculiar, I'm assuming there's some kind of bot mass spamming going on here because the video has some of that old Will Smith pasta AI surreality going on which makes it clear that there's no real person performing, yet almost every comment addresses the 'artist' as if he's a real person.

That entire comments section is like a worked example of Dead Internet Theory. Though I suppose if you got AI to create the song you might as well get AI to create all the fans.

[jancivil]

I'd embraced sequencing before I ever did it. I first did in 1986. When I had finally thought to compose as a way-of-life, the first things I executed used a Minimoog patched into a Teac 4 track 1/4" tape recorder. I didn't consider notating into a sequencer application really any different than that. It was about the same amount of work, I wasn't so much getting off on reading and performing what I'd written on the Moog, but it was a necessity in 1981. No one without tons of clout and money, having been well-established and reputable, to throw at it got people to perform from scores regularly. I knew John Adams before he was getting all that to happen. At one point he got to have friends in high places (SF Symphony).

I had two models for a machine reproducing exactly what is written: Conlon Nancarrow, all of that is the physical piano roll punched holes in a card operating the player piano; and Frank Zappa Jazz from Hell. This, however came out I think 3 years after my first efforts. It was kind of devastating because of the marked similarities, but unsurprisingly better.
These are not particularly humanistic results. This was not going to happen for some time for a couple of reasons.
But I saw the future by 1990.

I'm no Luddite. I'm not opposed to machines reproducing musical ideas. To try and sell some bullshit in my vicinity ain't gwyne work, though.

[Bombadil]

My bias against machines is complex. When I first started programming drums, I loved it. I could finally get something a bit more complex than my best friend could play on a real kit.
But it took the human element out of it. I think that is when machines started to sour for me. With me playing a rhythm guitar and my partner laying down the drums, there's something there that a machine can't formulate.

I came late to sequencing. That, I didn't enjoy from the start. MIDI is still a half mystery to me. For me, really, there is no substitute for playing with other people. As I've said. I happen to not know anyone here available to do what I want to do. So, I do it myself.
Basically, I'm a guitarist with a bit better than avg. chops in my bailiwick, trying to be more than that. The only way I can do that is with machines. Grudgingly. And my attitude toward sequencing and samples carries over into my desire to make music.
And my brain is slowly turning to mush.....

[jancivil]

When I had a drum machine I almost never programmed it. Once for a show I did to get a controlled accelerando, ending at a ridiculous tempo. I played it. I practiced drum rudiments on it. That show^ people were looking for and baffled to find no drum kit, there was just me sitting at a table. I loved the look of that, that show. It was at the Art Motel, SOMA SF.

My piano roll drumming is easily sloppy enough... I'm real specific about what drums, I tend to dislike dealing with drummers. I played and wrote for a former roommate's record, I remember in rehearsal he came up with this killer complex time signature idea; he wanted me to sort it out but once he had to think about it once I'd done, he lost his own idea.