Well, it happened: I was fed an AI-generated song on YouTube and didn’t immediately clock it as AI-generated. The thumbnail was clearly not of human origin, overly detailed bits transmitting that familiar uncanny feel.
Waiting for the video to load, I noticed the “artist” had only seven subscribers. Then the music started, a zydeco beat. Outside of its native southwest Louisiana, it’s a pretty obscure genre. (I only know of it because a Zydeco band visited Oberlin College the one year I was a student there. It’s amazing stuff.)
But Mr. Zydeco was not alone. A rugged voice started us off, smelling of the whiskey of country music. Soon a country-rock drumset established the beat, a pedal-steel guitar twanging out bends and cries.
Here I must return to that overly busy thumbnail. It, too, crammed symbols together with the abandon of a being that’s unaware of cultural history. (As it is.) Aliens, treehuggers and weed were paired with wooden signs of affirmation typically only displayed by women over 60. Each element contradicted the one next to it. It was incongruous with itself and certainly incongruous with the music.
Why it struck me
Honestly? It was an entertaining song. I wouldn’t say it was good: The lyrics were disjointed and dull, the singer was fuzzy, and it went on much too long.
But its mad cultural transgression really stood out. The way it ignorantly mixed genres and cultures… at first it struck me as disrespectful. But then I remembered: It’s an AI. It can’t show respect or disrespect. So perhaps it’s useful to see it instead as a truly culture-blind approach, the kind those who believe in equality (as I do) have yearned for.
Not that it’s either of these things. We’re looking for colour, but what colour is the number 11001101? We crave judgment and meaning, but there’s no there there.
However! People growing up in this environment are influenced by art around them, just as my generation was, and every before that. The AI piece I ran across was context-blind; all art depends on context. Will we find a new basis for artistic meaning?