AI singer-songwriter ‘Anna Indiana’ debuted her first single ‘Betrayed by this Town’ on X, formerly Twitter—and listeners were not too impressed.

  • There can be nothing new or original out of AI because all of its inputs are stolen from what already exists. Real creativity comes solely from humans. Also, that clip - the song, singing, and visual - is dreadful in every way.

    This needs to be hammered into techbro’s heads until they shut the fuck up about the so-called “AI” revolution.

    • I’ve been doing a lot of using, testing, and evaluating LLMs and GPT-style models for generating code and text/prose. Some of it is just general use to see how it behaves, some has been explicit evaluation of creative writing, and a bunch of it is code generation to test out how we need to modify our CS curriculum in light of these new tools.

      It’s an impressive piece of technology, but it’s not very creative. It’s meh. The results are meh. Which is to be expected since it’s a statistical model that’s using a large body of prior work to produce a reasonable approximation of what it’s seen before. It trends towards the mean, not the best.

        • You have to know how to operate the oven to reheat store bought pie. Generative LLMs are machines like ovens, and turning the knobs is not creativity. Not operating the oven correctly gets you Sharon Weiss results.

        • I guess a protip is you have to tell it explicitly in the prompt who it’s supposed to steal from.

          For instance, midjourney or SD will produce much better results if you put specific artstation channel names along with ‘artstation’ in the prompt.

      • I’m excited for how these tools will be used by human creators to accomplish things they could never do alone, and in that aspect it is a revolutionary technology. I hate that their marketing calls it “AI” though, the only intelligence involved is the human user that creates prompts and curates results.

      • and a bunch of it is code generation to test out how we need to modify our CS curriculum in light of these new tools.

        I’m curious if you’ve gotten anything decent out of them. I’ve tried to use it for tech/code questions, and it’s been nothing but disappointment after disappointment. I’ve tried to use it to get help with new concepts, but it hallucinates like crazy and always give me bad results, some of the time it’s so bad that it gives me answers I’ve already told it we’re wrong.

        • Yeah, I’ve just set up a hotkey that says something like “back up your answer with multiple reputable sources” and I just always paste it at the end of everything I ask. If it can’t find webpages to show me to back up its claims then I can’t trust it. Of course this isn’t the case with coding, for that I can actually run the code to verify it.

    • I get the sentiment, but don’t really agree. Humans’ inputs are also from what already exists, and music is generally inspired from other music which is why “genres” even exist. AI’s not there yet, but the statement “real creativity comes solely from humans” Needs Citation. Humans are a bunch of chemical reactions and firing synapses, nothing out of the realm of the possible for a computer.

      • the statement “real creativity comes solely from humans” Needs Citation.

        Yeah, I’d actually make a more limited statement. Real creativity requires the subjective experience and the ability to generate inputs solely from subjectivity i.e. experience the redness of the color red. AI could definitely do that, which is why LLMs are not AI imo

    • I see it an more an inability to analyze, evaluate, and edit. A lot of “creativity” in the world of musical composition is putting together existing elements and seeing what happens. Any composer from pop to the very avant-garde, is influenced and sometimes even borrow from their predecessors (it’s why copyright law is so complex in music).

      It’s the ability to make judgements, does this sound good/interesting, does this have value, would anyone want to listen to this, and adjust accordingly that will lead to something original and great. Humans are so good at this, we might be making edits before the notes hit the page (Brainstorming). This AI clearly wasn’t. And deciding on value, seems wildly complex for modern day computers. Humans can agree on it (if you like Rock, but hate country for example).

      So in the end, they are “creative” but in a monkey-typewritter situation, but who is going to sort through the billions of songs like this to find the one masterpiece?

    • Still, AI is able to “create” new things by a combination of existing concepts. It can generate a Roomba in the style of Van Gogh for example, which is probably not something that currently exists.

    • Right just as soon as all the people proclaiming that can point to the soul bit of my brain. There is absolutely no reason to say that AI cannot be creative there’s nothing fundamentally magic about creativity that means only humans can do it.

        • Right so why can’t the same sections be simulated? If you accept that the human brain is simply an organic implementation of a neural network, then you have to accept that a synthetic implementation can achieve the same thing.

          The idea that the human brain is special is ludicrous and completely without evidence

          • I mean, I’m not arguing anything other than your false equivalent. I’m sure, at some point, we’ll be able to mimic how the human brain actually works, not just imitate the results. But we’re not even close right now. Not in the same ball park. Not in the same tri-state area. We still don’t really understand how it does what it does completely. We know some of the processes, and understand that’s it’s chemicals interacting with the meat in some way, but it’s still mostly kinda just weird stuff our body does. We’re mostly just pointing at areas that light up with activity when we do a thing and saying “yep, that’s the general area that’s doing stuff.”

            And that’s just understanding it, let alone figuring out how to imitate it with technology. And none of those parts of the brain work independently. They’re spread out and they overlap and exchange and change information constantly, all with chemicals. Getting a computer to mimic the outcome is still something we’re far from, but without the same processes, its not really gonna come out the same. We’ve got just… so long to go before we actually get close to simulating a human brain.

            And just for fun, I do think this line of yours is funny:

            The idea that the human brain is special is ludicrous and completely without evidence

            Again, I wasn’t saying anything of any sort, and I’m still not really taking any stance beyond “that shits complicated and we’re not there yet.” But you’re supposing that a “synthetic implementation can achieve the same thing.” … without supporting evidence. This argument was clearly meant for someone else, but it’s not really fair to demand evidence from someone for their claim when you don’t support your own. Jumping to the conclusion that something is impossible is the same as assuming it’s definitely possible. You don’t know that. I don’t know that. No one really knows that until it’s done.

      • The belief that only humans can be creative is interestingly parallel to intelligent design creationism. The latter is fundamentally a religious faith, but it strongly appeals to the intuition that anything that happens needs a humanoid creator.

      • I don’t think, the human brain is special either, but we are still two big steps ahead IMHO:

        • We can perceive what we’ve generated, to judge whether it’s good or bad.
        • We perceive many, many inputs throughout our lives. Not just text, visuals, audio, but also taste, smell, touch and more. To be simultaneously creative and relatable to humans, AIs would need to be equipped with these concepts and would need to be given ‘memories’, which are fleshed out with all these kinds of input.
    •  aiccount   ( @aiccount@monyet.cc ) 
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      10 months ago

      Yes, it is literally impossible for any AI to ever exist that can be creative. At no point in the future will it ever create anything creative, that is something only human beings can do. Anybody that doesn’t understand this is simply incapable of using logic and they have no right to contribute to the conversation at all. This has all already been decided by people who understand things really well and anyone who objects is obviously stupid.

        • I was agreeing with you. I’m so sick of people thinking that “someday AI might be creative”. Like no, it’s literally impossible unless some day AI becomes human(impossible) because human is the only thing capable of creativity. What have I said that you disagree with? You’re not one of them are you? What’s with all this obsessive AI love?

            • Yeah the current popular LLMs, absolutely they are, you couldn’t be more right.

              We were talking about “AI” though. Are you implying that you think some day AI might be capable of creativity, and that creativity isn’t strictly a human trait?

              • I put “AI” in scare quotes specifically because I do not believe we are having an “AI revolution”. These are not AI.

                I think AI can exist but that’s not what we have right now. What we have are jumped up algos that can somewhat fake it.

                • Even those future “real” AIs are going to be taking in human input and regurgitating it back to us. The only difference is that the algorithms processing the data will continue to get better and better. There is not some cutoff where we go from 100% unintelligent chatbot to 100% intelligent AI. It is a gradual spectrum.

      • Oh shit, I thought you had forgotten a “/s” at the end, but reading your other comments this is actually what you believe and how you talk. So… yeah, I’m not going to take someone who cites “people who understand things really well” as a source at face value.

        • Well then you didn’t read very many of my comments. I made this first comment because the post I responded to was so absurd so I just exaggerated the ridiculousness that they said. Of course AI is capable of creativity and intelligence. If you look at the long back and forth that this sparked you would see that this is my stance. After I made this over the top, very sarcastic comment, OP corrected themself to clarify that when they said “AI” they actually only meant the current state of LLMs. They have since admitted that it is indeed true that AI absolutely can be capable of creativity and intelligence.

          • No, I didn’t read the entirety of the comments you’ve made, I read your comment and the one you replied to. As a general rule, I (and I’d assume most people) read down a thread before replying, and don’t first look through all of everyone’s comment histories

            •  aiccount   ( @aiccount@monyet.cc ) 
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              10 months ago

              Alright, no big deal. But yeah, your’re gut instinct was correct when you assumed there was a missing /s. I don’t really like the /s that much, especially in situations where it is so obvious.

              If you had read down through this thread first then you would have seen the obviousness of the /s. I don’t think my comment history outside of this thread would have done much since I don’t generally talk about this stuff. I just meant if you had looked more than a couple comments in this particular back and forth discussion.

    • Meat goes in. Sausage comes out.

      The problem for a lot of the companies behind these things, is that they’ve run into problems now their investors want them to turn meat into a black forest gateau.

      I’m sceptical if they can manage that feat. But what do I know.

    •  Jamie   ( @Jamie@jamie.moe ) 
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      10 months ago

      I accidentally submitted early, but also, I wrote out the lyrics. It’s the most bland version of those breakup-depression kind of songs imaginable. I guess people voted it as “feel-good” out of irony.

      Sitting at my favorite cafe

      Sipping my tea it’s saturday

      Thinking about all he’s done, to everyone

      This town is full of broken dreams

      Shattered hopes, and silent screams

      Somebody please help me

      Betrayed by this town

      Let’s tear it all down

      We’re all just destined to fall

      I’ve lost it all

      Betrayed by this town

      Let’s tear it all down

      We’re all just destined to fall

      We’ve lost it all

      Alone in the streets, alone in my thoughts

      Thinking of all our favorite spots

      I thought someday things might turn around

      But I was lost and never found

      Betrayed by this town

      Let’s tear it all down

      We’re all just destined to fall

      I’ve lost it all

      Betrayed by this town

      Let’s tear it all down

      We’re all just destined to fall

      We’ve lost it all

      Faces painted with smiles

      Lies are told

      A facade of unity

      A vitality sold

      So I sit here in silence

      Just wondering how

      To rewrite the tales

      This town won’t allow

      Betrayed by this town

      Let’s tear it all down

      We’re all just destined to fall

      I’ve lost it all

      Betrayed by this town

      Let’s tear it all down

      We’re all just destined to fall

      We’ve lost it all

      I’ve lost it all

      We’ve lost it all

      • “Betrayed by this town / Let’s burn it all down “ might be the most relevant chorus of today’s music. It’ll be stuck in my head all night and would fit right in at most protests

  • I think in the context of K-Pop it makes total sense, the music and everything around is anyway just done after a formula which has proven to work very well to sell. While right now you need to put children and teenagers through years of rigorous training and expose them to immense stress and pressure so most of them break, with AI you can easily replicate the same formula and refine much quicker without throwing so many young people into the meat grinder of the music industry.

    More money and control for the companies less people killing themselves.

    The ones who really burn for the music will make music despite AI music being available. And they also will find an audience, even though it might be smaller.

    • What I worry about this is mainstream becoming “accustomed” to assemblyline content by AI. What if eventually people start actually consider the conformity to be good thing and originality deviant? Of course there will always be people who dont care what other think but vast majority of people seems to at least on some level be very conscious about it.

      Imagine being the weird one just because you don’t like ai generated crap

      • Have you seen the movie WALL-E? The people on the space-ship they’re consuming engaging content all day long, nobody is creating anything anymore, so all this must been created by the AI. I’m just trying to say that it’s not a novel idea. Writers and artists have been imagining this future for ourselves for a long time.

      •  The Doctor   ( @drwho@beehaw.org ) 
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        310 months ago

        When you think about it, that’s pretty much the history of boy bands, going all the way back to the Monkees. The faces were carefully chosen for demographic reasons, the songs were written by the labels and targeted for specific demographics, the faces’ histories were largely constructed fictions (and published through “unauthorized” fan magazines and books that were ghostwritten by the labels and laundered through other publishing companies). The only real difference is that now software is being used for it rather than marketing teams.

    • While right now you need to put children and teenagers through years of rigorous training and expose them to immense stress and pressure so most of them break

      Uh… I don’t think that’s a necessary part of the process to making k-pop, or any kind of music. Industry people may think it’s critical to making themselves shit-loads of money, but it’s not important for the creation music or even selling the music.

  • That picture is weird, there’s some AI nonsense going on with the microphone shock mount, and her jaw doesn’t line up with the rest of her face. Plus the usual uncanny valley weirdness of an AI generated image.

    Not even going to bother with the song.

  •  Flaky   ( @Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi ) 
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    10 months ago

    Not so much an expert rather than just parroting what I saw, but according to a cursory search, and a Twitter community note I saw from a friend, the voice used by this project is Synthesizer V, which is actually a perfectly legitimate piece of software for using digital voices in music production. If you’ve heard of Vocaloid, or know about Hatsune Miku, SynthV is basically a competitor in that space.

    Going back to the community note, the voice used is actually called Natalie, and apparently the TOS of SynthV does not allow use of its voices using a name that’s different to what was given. So they essentially can’t present the Natalie voice as Anna, which they are.

    EDIT: I want to clarify that these voice synthesisers like SynthV and Vocaloid are usually based on the recording of someone who has consented to the use of their voice in that regard and has been paid for it. It’s not like the current AI voice cloning trend going on.

    Tweet + Community Note

      •  Flaky   ( @Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi ) 
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        110 months ago

        No prob! These digital voices have been around for over a decade now, maybe more. Some of them use “AI” to improve the sound of the voice (i.e. support more languages than actually recorded, make it sound realistic) but not in the way that current AI voice trends are going.

  •  1984   ( @1984@lemmy.today ) 
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    10 months ago

    I think it sounds the same as other shitty music I hear all the time.

    I fully expect AI music to be part of the musical scene going forward.

    Does it feel dystopian? Yeah, it’s not a fun future. But this is here to stay.

    • AI music can be fire if you use it as a part of the artistic process, not as the end result. It’s just every fucking technocracker wants to replace the artistic process completely so they don’t have to not pay their employees any more. EDIT: Actual AI, not that OpenAI content laundering shit.

  •  saigot   ( @saigot@lemmy.ca ) 
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    YouTube link for those that want to see it for themselves. ~~https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3T175LTQFnw~~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l71Hh1gPkE

    To me the biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t understand the relationship between the meanings of the words and the melody of the song. It kinda makes it sound like a bad parody song. I think if you looked at just the lyrics or just the melody they would be quite convincing on their own.