 Later in this video I'm going to be referencing a particular song as an example of one of my main points. It's one of thousands of songs I could have picked from musical history but it just so happens that as I was pondering this topic it's the first song which popped into my head. It's from 1939, the singer is Billie Holiday and the song is called Strange Fruit and if you happen to follow the link in the description down below to familiarize yourself with this song I'd like you to keep in mind the following. I'm not asking you to like this song as if I could. Whether you like it or not has a lot to do with your particular tastes in music, your cultural background, your age and a whole bunch of other factors which frankly are a fascinating topic for another video. I'm not even going to ask you to consider whether the chords, the melody or a likeness of the voice could be reproduced by AI or artificial intelligence because they could. Instead I'd like you to consider it's well humanity. Hi folks I'm Mike and I hope you well. I'd like to thank one of my Facebook followers Paul Williamson for asking me this question. How concerned are you with AI encroaching upon the creative process when it comes to music and that got me thinking. How much of the so-called creative process is really that creative and do we really need to keep doing those less creative things ourselves? Now before we get into my slightly convoluted ideas about AI and music creation I'd like to make it clear that these videos are not really possible without our sponsor DistroKid and if you do follow the VIP discount link in the description down below you'll get 7% off an already amazing price to distribute your music around the world. It's very natural for me to be intrigued by AI and its possibilities. Apart from my musical background I also have a bit of a background in software and technical hardware development so this makes me a little bit tech curious and particularly over the last year or so I've been experimenting with image audio and text AI. When I say text AI I actually mean chat GTP which I've mainly used to try to write scripts for these videos the results of which I've never actually used. In fact let's reword what I just said using chat GTP. When I mentioned text AI I'm referring to chat GTP a tool I've extensively used to try writing scripts for my videos on numerous occasions. However despite my numerous attempts I have never actually utilized the results it generated. Let's take a moment to revisit the previous statement and explore what chat GTP has come up with. Okay so let's run a little experiment. Let's have chat GTP reword that passage again but this time in the style of Shakespeare. Here's the Hark when text AI doth grace my tongue I speak of chat GTP a wondrous creation which countless times have I employed I confess to draft my video scripts a playwright elation yet truth be told near have I employed the fruits of its labor as if to dispel a moment's thought we shall rewind and witness what chat GTP did compel as you can see chat GTP does a pretty good job of impersonating Shakespeare I guess but when it comes to employing my particular style it lacks one thing and that is data. You see most of what AI does is collect massive amounts of data sorts it makes sense of it combines it and then reproduces it in a pseudo original format and in a way that's exactly what we do. Let's imagine for a moment that I am AI and you come to me with some instructions or some prompts and you say hey Mike AI give me something which is in the style of a kind of a slow blues and I say no problem human got you covered. And you say no I was actually after more of a kind of a jazz swing kind of a thing I say you mean like this. You say nope I was actually after something much more contemporary with the kind of chords that they may use in a hit single I say I absolutely got you covered there let's have a go at this. All of which are technically correct but incredibly incredibly forgettable. You see none of these things would deserve any kind of awards or accolades or even any kind of protection in my opinion and unfortunately many of us have been writing music just like this. Unfortunately many of us have been creating music like this for quite a long time including me and whilst it's mostly unintentional much like AI we draw upon all of our past influences to create something new. I say mostly unintentional because sometimes it's completely intentional. Now whilst I have no direct knowledge of this Rick Beato says and I have no reason to doubt him that in places like Nashville there are literally groups of professional songwriters who sit around and attempt to create hit songs by committee. They look at previous hits they look at the chord structures the melodic structure the lyrical style and they attempt to reproduce that and create something new and I have to say given the outcomes I'm pretty sure this is the case because so much of what I hear is absolutely bland and that's the worst thing in music ever and it also may contribute to the fact that we see so much more music with that one five four six chord structure which I demonstrated earlier on. So my question is if we continue to create music in this way don't we deserve to be replaced? In fact I actually think it may be a good thing that AI can take care of this more mundane creativity that we're often involved in. It will free us up to create more exciting music or something a little bit different perhaps that AI couldn't come up with and before you keyboard warriors get busy of course I'm aware that we could ask AI to produce something which is even a bit sort of avant-garde or something along those lines and here's where I'm gonna start to contradict myself because actually I believe that even if the chord progression behind your music is one five four six you can still create a great work of art think of let it be by the Beatles or no woman no cry by Bob Marley or Adele's someone like you because great music with a human influence is much more than just its chord progressions its melodies and its lyrics. Enter Billy Holiday. Strange Fruit is a song recorded by Billy Holiday in 1939. It speaks graphically of the lynching of African Americans a practice that was still happening at the time of the recording of the song. The lyrics talk of the bodies hanging from the trees as a strange fruit. The chords and melodies are dark and uncomfortable and Billy Holiday's delivery contains the shared generational pain of the results of hate and prejudice. AI can reproduce the chords the melody and even the tones of Billy Holiday's distinct voice but it can't produce one thing the humanity. The humanity lives in between the lyrics in between the melody lines it exists in one place in you it's not in a database it can't be retrieved as knowledge because it's experience. If you only think of music in kind of superficial ways in terms of its musical theory or its sonic properties then I think that the product of AI music may actually satisfy you but if you've been creating music in this way and I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you AI has figured you out it knows your formulas and it's gonna use them but it's not all bad news I actually think this is a really good thing for most of us it's gonna give us a good swift kick up the butt if you will it's gonna force us out of our comfort zone and get us actually creating something a bit more new and hopefully we will exploit our totally unfair advantage over AI our humanity. Let me know what you think in the comments down below and if you do produce and release some music don't forget to use the sponsor of this video DistroKid they make it super easy you just have to upload your song and it's artwork and DistroKid does all of the rest for you I'll see you in the next video