Artist in the Machine. On Music, Humanity and AI | Lecture by philosopher Anco Peeters and live act by artist Jan Modaal

How then does AI fare in the creation of music? Here, Peeters mentioned many aspects. In the first place, contemporary AI systems are generative, which means that they are able to learn to recognise patterns, and subsequently to construct a certain generalised output. This, he said, allows them to be used with relative ease, even by people who have not created the AI (easier than it would be to learn to play the guitar, for example). But there is also a problematic aspect. Not only do the creations of AI lend themselves to the creation of “fake news” (as AI had been used to make a song that appeared to be created by Drake and The Weeknd), they also seem to lack inner meaning, leaving us with feelings of “Unheimlichkeit”, he explained.

Taking a step back, Peeters then reflected on the process of making music in general, and the influence of AI on this process. Certainly, AI can provide artists with “base loops”, as building blocks from which to create music, which allows the making of music to be more “democratic”, available to everyone.  But, Peeters asked, is that something that we want? Does that make the music made more original? Additionally, he questioned the inherent plagiarism within AI products; must we not speak of its creations as a “stolen voice”? What about remastering old music tracks from the 80s, does it still resound the same emotional ambiance? After presenting this manifold of perspectives, Peeters expressed his final verdict: AI lacking inherent meaning, and tends only towards the familiar and the non-unique. As such, he argued that it is only in collaboration with humans, that AI can be “creative” in any sense of the word.

Jan Modaal’s Musical Odyssey with AI

After this insightful discussion, the artist Jan Modaal put up a performance in which he collaborated with various AI systems. At first, he asked “Chat GPT” to construct a novel song (text and chords) about “feeling algorythms”, for him to perform. Immediately, it could be seen how AI lacks originality, as it simply provided a text on the melody of one of the famous Dutch artist Guus Meeuwis’ songs. After a revision of the prompt given to the AI, a renewed version rolled out – this time less familiar. This gave rise to a playful performance, in which Jan sang and strung his guitar as if this song was his own. Using the AI-application “MusicFX”, he then spiced up the show, with its ability to generate beats and music loops on the fly. Do you want to mix various irreconcilable music styles? That’s no problem. In engagement with the audience he demonstrated that one can even instruct AI to create something that is to sound like a “fact checking” score, whatever this is to mean. Whether the AI was successful in this remains to be seen...

What Do We Want From AI’s “Creativity”?

During the final part, Anco Peeters and Jan Modaal engaged in a conversation with the host and the audience. What made this discussion interesting, is that it allowed for two vastly differing perspectives – that of philosopher and the artist – to meet each other. Jan put forth that AI has passed the “Turing test”, for he really liked some parts of the song text that the AI had generated, but he also recognised that he noticed a distinct “signature” in each of the AI’s creations. All of its outputs inescapably resembled each other. Other topics discussed were that of public fear, and whether artists are and should be worried about AI or AI-enabled competitors. In this light, Peeters expressed his concern for Big Tech companies to reduce the quality of music in favour of an increase of net revenue. What was also questioned is where creativity lies – is it in the intention of the author, or does it belong to the interpretation by the listener? Finally, the audience took part in the discussion, adding additional perspectives: Do we visit musical concerts principally to see an artist perform? Or do we simply want to have a good time, such that the artist itself is not as important? Ultimately, the answer to questions such as these depend on the situation and one’s personal motivation,  both agreed.

A review of this programme is also available in Dutch.

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