CAN AI GET GOOSEBUMPS FROM A PIECE OF MUSIC?

Being in the career I'm in, there's naturally a lot of trepidation about the devaluing of music, writing, art and creation across the board of humanity as a result of AI. Already in the music industry we are feeling the impact. 44% of uploaded streams to Deezer worldwide, for example, have been found to be completely generated by AI. You may be shocked (I was, this is my living remember), but you’ve probably almost definitely consumed this soulless ‘content’ if you use Instagram or TikTok or listen to well-known Spotify playlists. And by soulless I mean that it was created without the presence of a soul and thus any true feeling.

I asked Gemini (the AI that I use a lot in everyday life) the following question:

“Is there any capacity that an AI model could feel a piece of music? By feel I mean the emotions created in humans that give us goosebumps, for example, when we hear something that moves us emotionally. I want the facts but I’m also interested in your opinion on this philosophically.”

Gemini’s first reply:

“No, AI models cannot feel music or experience goosebumps, as they lack consciousness, a nervous system and emotions. They process music entirely as mathematical data, though they can highly accurately predict and simulate the structures that trigger these emotional responses in humans.”

Note the emphasis on ‘simulate’ in that reply.

And then Gemini’s personal ‘thoughts’ on this:

“As an AI, I do not have personal opinions or feelings, but looking at the theory from a cognitive and technical standpoint, the concept of AI ‘feeling’ music highlights a fascinating philosophical divide.”

And there lies my point. I’m sure all producers and writers presume that what they are creating has soul. Feeling. Their soul and their feeling.

So anyway, I’d read on the Ivor Novello Instagram that there’s a link you can follow which has a huge (but not complete) database of all of the songs they could identify which have been ‘scraped’ by AI in order for it to build algorithms that can produce songs, music, lyrics and styles from what it has learned, from music made by us, the owners and producers of such content. I went to the site and entered my name and also Freaks, the band that Luke Solomon and I made so much music under. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SONGS! And that was just the basic search. Our whole body of work. So this means, just to clarify, Suno and other such AI music-making ‘tools’ are using our intellectual property, our soul, our vibe, to go and make a fucking fortune, and I mean billions, with absolutely no remuneration to the original creators and contributors. (Update: recently this does seem to be getting a load of publicity and, quite rightly, this subject is causing fireworks.)

So yeah, this is a seriously worrying trend which has had me ruminating on the whole situation. Anyone who can type can now prompt a full song created from musical algorithms produced by an AI whose ‘styles’ and ‘taste’ were scraped from mine and millions of other people’s music.

This isn't just an industry statistic to me either, it’s personal, because it’s literally poking my day job, including mastering. AI mastering is plastered all over everywhere, offering instant results to get your track to release standards. I’ve been mastering music for nearly 20 years now, both for my label MFF and also as a service to close allies and friends, and professionally for about 10 years. Usually, when I sit down to master a track, I’ll just listen, and it takes me a while to digest, listen and picture it being played in its target environment. Then I start to EQ, not following any presets, just fucking with the levels and multi-band compression, etc., if needed. I leave the obvious limiting and loudness until the very end, otherwise what you add loudness to is something that shouldn’t even be there. With 99% of the tracks I master, there is a sweet spot, where I find myself immersed, with my head nodding subconsciously. I know for a fact that this sweet spot is found by me as a result of thousands of hours of experience dancing, playing and feeling this music. AI just doesn’t have the emotional capacity to ‘feel’ when that bass frequency that maybe sonically shouldn’t be there is actually bringing the heat to the whole vibe. AI has no bumps to goose.

Anyway, the point of this article is to try and put AI into perspective as a truly amazing tool without allowing it to take over completely or become a folk devil. It’s not going away. Whether we like it or not, the cat is well and truly out of the bag and it’s still in the early stages. No one knows what level we will integrate with AI, and I am not against it totally. It’s progress, evolution even. I use it every day for organisational purposes, coding, website building, and many of the sound plug-ins I use to analyse and create music use AI in some form to help me get my results. Really, really useful stuff. But I will never, ever ask AI to write me some music or provide an instrumental solo or even vocal, because I know that the style (and faux soul) it delivers was probably nicked off someone who isn’t getting paid for it. What I’m against is the out-and-out creation of music by AI because it’s not by AI, it’s actually by us humans over generations of work.

Personally, I cannot understand why anyone who calls themselves a musician, producer or writer would be happy entrusting their passion to a very clever machine except to make money from their output only. But then I never got into this for the money, and this is still true today. For me, 90% of the fun and reward of making music is finding and discovering that hook, or recognising a happy accident; the challenge, the work (which I love!), and if I’m not capable of doing something I want, I either learn or there are millions of super-talented humans who can sing, play music and instruments who have spent a lifetime getting good at it.

My hunch is that AI will become a part of absolutely everything on Earth, and from an artistic perspective, if we don’t set our own boundaries as regards what is created by us and what is being completely created by AI and only presented by us, we’re cooked. Lines need to be drawn, in ink, not vectors. I know where my bread’s buttered.