more like it’s one of the few things people still can enjoy.
Suno was what radicalized my stance on AI, and I refuse to use any of it.
As a solo hobbyist game dev who struggles with art, I had a pretty reserved approach for AI for stuff like art, animation or most notably voice acting, which makes the game a lot better but is really hard to do if you’re not a native speaker or don’t have a budget. My plan was to start with AI filling in places I couldn’t do, but then pledge that 100% of the first sales will go towards paying an actual artist/VA and replace the assets as soon as possible. That felt like a fair compromise.
And then I tried Suno. You see, as a programmer, my line of work isn’t really threatened by AI. Quite the contrary - it hinders the learning process of so many new programmer who will end up missing core skills, that it kind of increases my job security.
And since stuff like VA is something I don’t really understand, I mostly considered it as an asset that AI can temporally provide.
After trying Suno, which makes something I am passionate about - I’ve tried and failed for the past few years to learn instruments, and starting a band and making music is one of my so far unattainable dreams, it was so, so devastating. To see something you’ve actively struggled with, dreamed about, and made an effort for to overcome the challenges, unsuccessfuly so far, be overtaken by a literal three word prompt, making a better song I probably ever will - it’s so heartbreaking, demoralizing and awful. Which is something I haven’t realized when thinking about art I was not invested into, but now, thanks to Sunk, I see how it must feel for every artist, and I refuse to support any of it. It gave me determination and motivation to make the effort towards meeting people who do VA or assets I need, and collaborating, even if it postpones everything by a long time.
Fuck AI, and fuck this guy. The product may be useful and is pretty mindblowing, but it comes at a cost of making a lot of artists demotivated and miserable. Also, saying that “music is hard, people don’t want to” just adds salt to the wound, insult to the injury, and is really fucked up thing to say, after the product you’ve made affected and demoralized artists at large so much. Seriously, fuck that guy.
AI is also not very good at replacing artist or anyone if your standards aren’t in the Mariana trench. Best use of it is somewhat realistic clip art generation, otherwise it only generates a shitton of soulless stuff.
A version of generative AI with more human involvement would be closer to what I call “art”, but that is not what makes investors soyface over the tech, whose idea of art is “coming up with an idea”.
Oh yeah, nobody spends years and decades mastering a skill set unless they hate it. Authors? They fucking hate books. Actors? They actually all want to work in finance. Teachers? You’d better believe there’s nothing they hate more than explaining shit to children. And there’s not an artist alive that wouldn’t give up their art in a heartbeat if it meant they could live their dreams of working in customer service.
JFC some people will say anything to justify being a jackass.
I used to keep a piano keyboard next to my computer for loading downtime, and it was the least depressed days of my life.
Tell that to the $1700 guitar I just bought
Or the $600 guitar, $600 baritone guitar and $600 fretless bass I just bought. 🥴
What kind of baritone for that price? The Danelectro one? Hagstrom?
I picked up a real nice baritone (a little pricier) a few years back and it’s pretty fun to fuck around on… Make sure to put heavier gauge strings on it if you can. I’ve also found that it sounds better coming from a bass amp than my tiny Vox.
Or the $200 guitar I’ve spent a small fortune to upgrade. Or the MIDI controller I’ve fixed and planning on turning it into a Jankó-style keyboard. Or the few software synths I’ve made for my game engine.
This man needs to be sentenced to 10 years solitary confinement in a room with 100 electronically controlled vuvuzelas serenading him at all hours of the day and night.
Maybe if he could make it subscription-based and monetize peoples’ creativity…
I totally suck at the piano/keyboard but I still enjoy it so much
Why do I keep buying synths then?
Suno… the app I use to send shitty personalized birthday songs…
or to play tacky bard songs for my DnD character, which is the perfect use case IMHO!
Corporate will suck your soul and drink your blood when you’re young. They will take or steal everything they can from you to accumulate money, just to make sure you would not have any other options than work for them until you die or get old and become useless. After that if you’re lucky to climb the ladder they will push you off the building for certain death and replace with younger generation. Is that really the future we want ?
This is the kind of thing you say when you never learned how to play Blitzkreig Bop.
The only use I have found for AI music generation software is for the app to make me a loop in the correct key and tempo so I can practice guitar against it. Even then I still prefer a ticker most of the time.
My coworker is using one of these sites and is uploading to YouTube. He says there’s a lot of curating he’s doing and listens to 14 hours of AI music a day to find the actual usable songs.
The songs he’s shared are okay, I wouldn’t have gathered they’re AI besides that they’re generic.
The thing I wonder is if people would accept this music knowing that it was generated.
