In almost every discussion I’ve had with creators about generative AI (GAI), I have said that we should not overlook Big Tech’s capacity for exaggeration and total flops. Because it is possible that AI products may be the next Google Glass due to cultural and/or economic forces that reject their business models. For instance, last week, Digital Music News (DMN) announced a partnership between Amazon and the AI music product Suno for the next generation of Alex+. DMN quotes Amazon’s Panos Panay, SVP of Devices and Services thus:
Using Alexa’s integration with Suno, you can turn simple, creative requests into complete songs, including vocals, lyrics, and instrumentation. Looking to delight your partner with a personalized song for their birthday based on their love of cats, or surprise your kid by creating a rap using their favorite cartoon characters? Alexa+ has you covered.
The first time I read about Suno, it struck me as a gimmick that may not attract or sustain enough market interest to be profitable. Just the example cited above of making personalized birthday songs seems like the kind of thing a household can only do a few times before it gets stale. “Surprise your kid by creating a rap…” sounds like what the kids calls “cringy.” But the broader question posed by Suno is whether consumers want “personalized” music, or whether the whole concept is the just another hubristic statement about the power of data in the arts.
There have been many arguments presented by theorists and scholars that consumer data either obviates the need for creators’ rights (copyrights) or justifies substantially limiting those rights. The general premise is that if consumer data informs creators about what audiences want, this insight lowers the risk of investing in production. Lowering that risk, say the theorists, implies rethinking copyright protection—or even rethinking the nature and value of creators, as Professors Sprigman and Rustalia proposed in a paper I critiqued in 2018.
As argued in that criticism and elsewhere on this blog, the goal of artists and creators is not necessarily to give audiences what they want. While one cannot dispute the market value of certain “formulas,” there is substantial evidence that when producers strive too hard to meet audience expectations, audiences are often disappointed. In short, risk is inherent to creative expression and audience experience.
In every medium and every genre, consumers want to be surprised by artists, and shifting modes of expression reflect artists’ personal responses to contemporary events. In general, the most successful (i.e., meaningful) works are the ones we didn’t know we wanted until we had them. And once these works become part of the vernacular of our lives, we cannot imagine living without them.
By contrast theories about the power of data as a predictor of creative success are founded in a techno-centric arrogance that, to me, is exemplified in a product like Suno. The idea that the consumer wants music to be tailored from a few instructions—“Alexa make me a punk rock song about a guy who lost his job.”—is typical of the kind of “innovation” many technologists would develop by ignoring fundamental reasons we enjoy music in the first place.
As explored in this post about opera, I agree that music, and other expressive media, can be replicated by an AI to provoke emotional responses in human observers. Simply put, if a composer knows that minor chords have a certain effect on the Western listener, then an AI can follow the same rule to produce a “melancholy” tune. But the science of music and human psychology only explains our instinctive, animal-like responses to combinations of sounds while leaving out the rest of the experience.
We cherish our playlists for reasons that transcend the sounds’ effects on our brains—i.e., transcend mere taste. We relate and return to artists or their messages; we store and recall memories in the songs we replay; and we connect to friends and family through songs we have in common. Suno, outputting a bespoke song like a tepid cocktail cannot provide any of that. On the contrary, it omits all those aspects of music that make us care about it, suggesting that its outputs are indeed gimmicks destined to become as dull as they are disposable when the short-lived novelty wears off. At least that’s my prediction.
There is, of course, a more insidious question worth asking—namely whether a product like Suno, especially when paired with Amazon, is less significant as a custom jukebox than it is as a new surveillance device. The use of personal data to micro-target and manipulate people and alter the course of major world events is not science fiction anymore. In that light, is it not conceivable that, say, 100-million people expressing their sentiments to an AI “music composer” will add color to data that will only exacerbate surveillance capitalism? That’s one hell of a way to pervert music.
Photo by: Cm2012
