I’m not sure anyone would characterize me as an “AI-adopter.” After all, I’ve written a lot about the dangers of it, and I remain somewhat unconvinced that it will be an overall positive force for humanity. It will almost certainly wipe out many people’s jobs in the near-term period and, if left uncontrolled, it could potentially wipe out humanity itself.
That’s not just my opinion, either.
But the reason I hold the views I do is because I don’t take someone else’s word for it. I use the different tools. I regularly test out prompts on ChatGPT and Perplexity. I’ve tested AI voiceovers with ElevenLabs and videos using HeyGen. I’ve used AI for sentiment analysis on surveys. I’ve tried to test out its capability in writing subject lines, headlines, and website copy.
It’s a big part of something I tend to believe overall: Regardless of your feelings about a technology like AI overall, in order to understand what’s happening, you have to experience it yourself.
Trying Out an AI Music App Called Suno
Recently, I downloaded this app called Suno. Have you heard of it? Musician and producer Rick Beato recently demonstrated the power of this app on CBS Saturday Morning. Together with the CBS crew, he wrote a quick prompt, and he created Sadie Winters, a fictitious indie singer. The app then “authored a song by Sadie Winters” in less than 15 seconds. (You can listen to what was created in the link above, but as you can imagine, it created quite a stir.)
So, what did I think?
By way of introduction, I should mention that I was once in a band. Not a very good one, but I could play a few songs and have a basic understanding of song structure.
At first, I tried it for free. I crafted a song about a particular incident that happened in college for my friends from Penn, then a parody of my wife’s love for fuzzy animals. I gave the AI specific information that I wanted included, as well as the style (female/male singer, rock, folk, bossa nova, etc.). Suno wrote the lyrics and the melody in 15 seconds.
I was honestly floored.
What it produced was both funny (it literally labeled the songs tongue-in-cheek, even though I didn’t prompt for such a thing) and complex. It was as if a professional musician had read my mind and translated my thoughts into music.
So, then, I said, “OK, what if I write the lyrics to a song and buy a subscription?” So, I did. I uploaded the lyrics I wanted. And gave Suno a prompt with some basic instructions:
“Make it all piano. No guitar. Female indie lead vocal. Start slow in a folk type of way and build steadily toward the end with drums, and make it faster. Do a unique bridge in the middle that changes keys and goes back to the original piano. The song should be called Bridge Collapse.”
As you can see, there was nothing revelatory in my instructions. Here’s what it produced: https://suno.com/s/L8AQHhC3F4eJAw4k
(Don’t like that? Is bossa nova style better: https://suno.com/s/vcAnCf9fpicxUKTW? It can do that too.)
If you take a listen, I’m guessing what stands out is that you probably can’t tell this isn’t a professional musician/band. You can’t tell it’s a machine. To me, it has more hooks and transitions than most pop songs generated by humans do these days.
If I had really created the song (from end-to-end) and not used a machine, would I be proud to put this out? Well, yeah. It’s more nuanced and complex than frankly anything I could create.
What’s the Role of Human Creation in a World Like This?
Are humans still needed to refine and make things exactly right when it comes to the end product? Yes, the AI isn’t perfect. And it doesn’t always “nail it” (although, more and more, it really does). Let’s face it, the machines are getting VERY creative now.
We’ve already started using the Suno app for background music for different videos we do for clients. We don’t pay the cost of licensing music or passing that on to a client.
As a real musician, you can certainly work with Suno to upload your own melody from, say, a guitar or piano, and then have it help you work out a full song, as well as upload your own lyrics as I did. But my guess is that most “real musicians” would find this Suno app to be anathema, a shortcut to the real thing.
And scary.
After all, in a field that once had all the hallmarks of never being roboticized, if a listener can’t tell the difference between human and machine now, what’s the value of human creation? In any of the arts? Design. Music. Film. Writing. I listened to “my own creation” several times, thinking to myself, “I could play this song more than once.”
Is it good for us?
Well, we personally save money on creation. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Money. We produce something in which we don’t pay to license music or pass that cost on to our clients. We can refine it to exactly what we want or need, and it has no marginal cost to us. That’s a win. A short-term win but still a win. For us.
Is there a cost?
Yes. For sure. All those people who might have earned a royalty on that music don’t get paid. All the people who write songs (without a machine) and do it for a living are suddenly competing with AI that never sleeps. A machine that can write and produce songs in any genre, any voice, any style. If you think more broadly, the same goes for everyone in the arts. The value of what they once produced for a fee (sometimes a substantial fee) inevitably goes to the cost of electricity (what it takes for a machine to do the equivalent).
Having now witnessed this by using this app, I can almost say that last statement with relative certainty. I don’t know exactly when. But who does?
Understand Where AI Is on Nuance, and You’ll Understand What Kind of Threat It Is
Sometimes, I have debates with friends about the impact of what AI will be. For a lot of people and companies, the exercise is a bit theoretical. They read about this or watch that, but they don’t ever dive into using it, whether that’s a lack of true curiosity or an ideological stance.
The problem with that, I think, is that it means people end up missing a key aspect of AI: In the last year, AI has come ever closer to being able to replicate what makes something really human:
It’s nuance. (Both understanding it and expressing it.)
Human beings have it. When AI starts getting good at that nuance, AI will start “nailing it” all the time, as you might say. It’s at that point when the usefulness of humans in such a world starts to decline.
Here’s the thing, though. You can really only understand where AI is on that nuance scale by using the tools today. In the short term, any AI tool will likely help you be more efficient. But in the longer view, using the tools today might just be the one thing that will help you remain relevant (both as a company and as an individual) in a world dominated by machines.
