Sorry humans – Turns out A.I. is creative too!
Artificial Creativity
Within the decade, ‘someone’ will create an album entirely with AI which will be a global super hit. And I’m talking about multiple songs, all of which will be among the most downloaded on Spotify for months. The album will have incredible music videos the likes of which no one has ever seen creatively. And this album will create a media sensation where pundits explore this new reality with amazement. Though, this shouldn’t surprise anyone, given we’ve already had a super hit which was an AI Fake Drake just over a year ago.
No Subscribed? Get on it here.
But when this happens, it’ll be just like the moment ChatGPT-3 exploded, and every news reporter across the globe got it to write the intro for the story on ChatGPT itself
The pieces of the AI music puzzle are already here for the non-musically inclined. We can get ChatGPT to write lyrics in any style and prompt it with topics and keywords to include in them. We can get DALL-E to create album covers and titles. We can get Sora to create videos via prompt, and we can get Udio to put any type of music underneath the lyrics that have been created.
I recently did a little experiment to create a song using the exact tools above… Key life hack… Practice what you preach, experiment with the tools.
I was pretty buzzed when I first saw Udio, the AI song-making tool. And this time I thought, I’m actually going to do that just for fun, for me. But as you are well aware, it’s like there are thousands of new AI tools every other day, and I thought it’d probably be another one of those ideas that never actually happen. Which then inspired me to take the idea of ideas that never happen and actually do it. So I created a fake band, a fake album name, and created a song.
Band Name: Trading Electrons
Album Name: Files of Ideas That Will Never Happen
Debut Single: Electrons in the Void
For the first song, I got ChatGPT to write some lyrics. I gave it the following prompt:
“Create lyrics for a song. The song will be in the form of Industrial Cyber-punk (I chose that because I think it suits the technology) – something like Nine Inch Nails. Make the lyrics about all the ideas we have but never get around to doing. Make it feel like a modern tech version of an anti-corporate protest song. Make it clear in the lyrics that despite all the tools at our disposal and the digital deluge of possibilities, it isn’t worth pursuing, it’s all a hoax and just to embrace nothingness. We are still part of a machine – we are just atoms. We have no control. Make it less than 100 words.”
Ideas float, like cyber smog, None will happen, life’s a cog
Stop the dreaming, it’s all a scam, Fade to black, slam the sham
This song’s a glitch, a digital ghost, Another boast, another toast
Belongs in chats, not in code, Evaporates, crashes the node
Makers grind, they’re the machine, Don’t be that drone, stay unseen
Overpromise, never deliver, Just molecules, data slivers
We’re electrons in the void, It’s not our fault, we’re just annoyed
Life’s a glitch, dreams corrupt, Let it crash, don’t disrupt
To be honest, I really dig the lyrics.
I was a bit stunned actually. Then I took these into Udio and got it to create the music. I asked it to make the singer’s voice a little like Trent Reznor – and to feel like it could be for a soundtrack of a cyberpunk sci-fi movie.
The musical style prompts were as follows: cyberpunk, industrial – other influences can include; Rock, Industrial & noise, Post-industrial, Industrial rock, Industrial metal, Industrial, Metal, Post-punk. Make it fast-paced with electric guitar sounds as though they are running through computers.
You can listen to it here:
I also created an Album Cover using Dalle for my fake AI Band using this prompt:
“You are an album music artist and this is your brief create your album cover for this: brand name ‘Trading electrons’ Album name: files of ideas that will never happen”
This is what I got.
I even asked LumaLabs to create a 5 second visual for the song with the prompt: Ideas float like cyber smog – Below.
This is some feedback I got from a client on my my Keynote on AI –
“It was best keynote I have seen in 20 years – it was that insightful.”
It’s a revolution – Get me in – Don’t miss out!
Business Implications
Writing (literally) this music was free and simple. These tools aren’t going to get a little better, they are going to be better than you can possibly imagine, fast. Maybe I should start creating the entire album?
Of course, this leads to many questions:
- Is this my song?
- Did I write it?
- Who owns it?
- Can I make money from it?
- Will others get similar songs from similar prompts?
- What does this mean for music and the industry?
- Will we create our own music or will AI just create what we like for us?
I feel like there are a thousand more questions like this, and I can’t see us having the answers any time soon.
Many people said that when AI arrives, humans will do the creative stuff.
Here’s a revised thought: AI will be able to do everything we can do.
But maybe we’ll value human creativity more, not because it’s better, but because a human did it.
—
Keep Thinking,
Steve.