Image created using DALL·E 3 with this prompt: The future of rock and roll. An AI guitarist stands in front of an adoring crowd who loves his music. He is a rock star. Bright, colorful, exciting. Aspect ratio: 16×9.
On the second episode of Rosie Bennet’s new podcast, Fret Not, legendary guitarist Brian May (Queen) says he believes this year could be the last when we can distinctly identify a song as composed by a human.
He’s right. AI-assisted content creation is now a fact of life, and it will soon become as impossible to avoid AI assistance as it is to go “off the grid.”
Unsurprisingly – because Brian May is, well, Brian May – he also said, “In a way, we’re all plagiarists; none of us creates in a vacuum. Every time now when I’m creating something, I think, Where’s this coming from? Is it something that I heard? Is it something I felt spontaneously?”
His brutally honest statements highlight the crux of the AI training debate: how do human plagiarists – “Do a Victor Wooten slap thing in the turnaround. You know, make it ‘Wootenesque.'” – and AI “plagiarist machines” (as many generative AI and music-focused autonomous agents have been called) differ?
Humans learn the same way AI learns; we listen or read and do our best to copy. Humans are the best mimics on earth, and the result of our mastery of mimicry is that most of what people produce as original content in our modern world is “inspired by” preexisting work. It’s interesting to hear people complain about AI doing a similar thing.
There are very big feelings on both sides of this argument; I just liked listening to Brian May talk about it in a reasoned way. BTW, I didn’t know Rosie Bennet’s work until I saw this episode. She’s awesome.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.