On Smart Things | Music | Ant Smith

I said to my wife, about my latest track Smart Thing, that this is my contribution to the great Ai in Art debate and she responded with "Yes, but I don't know what you're saying"...

So I thought I'd say it again, in words.

Not that I expect to make things any the clearer because I don't believe that creation, necessarily, has a wholly rational and logical basis - because creativity is a reflection on the human condition which itself is chaotic and irrational. Art is never about stuff. It is stuff. What it happpens to mean to me (as the artist) will never be the same as what it means to you. And that's okay.

In fact, there was no predestination in this work. I didn't sit down and decide on some line of propaganda to promulgate. I just did what I could, what felt good, until I arrived at a point that felt somehow complete. In essence representing myself without filter, rather than some crafted version of who I think I might like to be. Because this is what humans can do, that machines cannot.

Be ourselves.

I made some software (The BeatMaker) to help me create drum tracks (or actually, rhythmic patterns be they for drum or other synth based tracks) - no Ai involved at all, just a machine that helps me lay down accoustic events as MIDI streams or files. I then voiced these in a DAW using VST instruments to create what I like to call music. The kinds of rhythms and melodies that constantly spark inside of my head. Realised by the artifice of software machinery. I don't think there is any real danger that proper musicians will hate me for this - because they have the advantage of being able to do it all, oh so much better than I. For over half a century now we have democratised music making through synth technologies so that bedroom producers don't need string quartets in the Albert Hall to engage in the freedom of creative self-expression.

With real musicians working alongside, within or in fact emerging from this creative aether.

Without, over much, conflict.

But then came the Ai-bots.

Two kinds, Assistive and (drum roll) Generative.

Assistive Ai insinuated itself into our lives with just some low grumble. Better de-noising and selections for the photographers. Improved audio clean-up and pitch isolation for the musicians. Tools that enhance, more than replace, high-order human skills. Tools that brought previously unattainable workflows and processes to the domestic desktop. So that it becomes experience and vision that demarcates our efforts more than opportunity and commerce. With no-one really feeling their jobs were at risk. And with the Ai never really being in charge of the results arising from its decisions.

I used ozone 12 elements to help me with the mastering. This is definitely a way more opinionated Ai-bot than say a noise-reducer, but still only works with the data it is given - it doesn't invent any samples. I imagine it could be quite irksome to real sound engineers who have spent their lives protecting their golden ears, but you know what? If I had the opportunity to be making commercial releases, I wouldn't use it. I'd prefer the unique signature that another human being brings to the game. But then I would use way less MIDI too, prefering a human drummer to bring the humanisation control to the beat patterns. But those people aren't available to me, they're all too busy making a living doing stuff I can't afford. This kind of Ai assistance only threatens ego, not commerce. But there is a tension as the assistance offered gets better. The tension not to be just mediocre at these tasks.

Anyway, having enlisted Ai assistance in the mix, after self-composing the track, I felt that I had something that was mine, all mine. I didn't in anyway feel that I had not made this thing. I did feel that I had not made it as good as it would have been with the help of real drummers and real sound engineers, but that nevertheless, I had made it myself.

Yes, I feel totally culpable for this Smart Thing.

As an instrumental though, it didn't feel complete to me. It was a nice noise (to my ears) but not actually an intelligible communication of something. It needed something more (more is more when it comes to making music tracks to my mind).

So I leant in to the disquiet I always have when, as a non-musician, I try to make music. This whole question of 'is this me or is this the machine'. Basically, is this even a valid endeavour?

I decided to make the whole track an exploration of the man vs machine tussle.

This concern was already baked in when I decided to make the rhythm an 8 over 7 pattern (an 8/8 kick beat with 7/8 tom rolls) rather than a more fixed and simple 4/4 - deliberately imposing a human rhythm (my rhythm, and I am a human) over a mechanical instrument. So I created a narrative to reinforce this thinking.

I injected more Ai, more machine, into the composition by using the online Ai voicegenerator.io to create the vox.

Now, there are only 7 words in the lyric:

I could have very easily used my own voice, but I wanted to adopt the frisson that all forms of generative Ai brings with it right now.

The thing about Generative Ai is that it pretends like its just Assitive Ai on speed, but actually its less than that. Way less.

Where as Assistive-Ai genuinely helps us to do more, to do better. Its Generative devolutionary (inbred?) cousin is all about ensuring we do less, do worse.

Given that this ever changing world in which we live in is ever changing, to do the same is in fact, to do less. Yesterday's innovation is tomorrow's old hat.

And given its nature, Generative Ai can only ever - at best - do the same. Do what it has seen before.

But it doesn't know. Of all the things that it has seen, it doesn't know what is good and what is bad. What was then and is not now. I guess the idea is that if it sees everything then it sees the best of things. But the truth is it doesn't know. So when it sees everything it thinks the common thing is the best of things. BUT the common thing is, pretty much, the lowest common denominator. Pure Generative Ai can only ever help us sink to the bottom. Because most stuff we make (and feed it) isn't great. Most stuff is at best mediocre, oh and the world is awash with porn. The only way we can give Ai enough stuff that it can even work, is to feed it a load of sh!t. And porn. And nowhere near enough, rights protected, best of humanity.

And so, it becomes just a mirror or our own depravity.

It can ultimately only show us our ugly side.

Even in its depictions of beauty.

I asked SD XL to draw beauty:

8 out of 10 times it gave me anorexic white women in garlands of roses (the other 2 times I just got the roses) - it was like looking through a copy of The Amateur Photographer from the 1980s. I won't labour the point by explaining why this is NOT an agreeable depiction of beauty, I think its rather obvious. But simple exercises like this really show up the inherent dangers of Generative Ai. And I do mean dangers. Not just laughable foibles. Imagine basing all of our creative output on such outmoded thinking. Regressive in the extreme.

Since the whole track is about man vs machine I decided to make a slideshow video that used the inherent devolution and depravity of Generative image Ai as a kind of political statement. I chose a visual narrative that pitted humanesque musicians against terminator style battle-bots, for the hell of it.

My prompts to the Ai included words like: half-robot, exposed steel, blood, gothic horror and large breasts (for the girls) or crotch bulge (for the boys). I definitely did not ask for mutilated breasts or guns for cocks although I got plenty of that in the mix.

All in all I think its a pretty fair reflection on where we are at with Ai, and an honest reflection of where we are at as a society - remember it can only show us the things it has seen.

I think the Ai takes jobs threat is a bit of a smokescreen. Assistive Ai might threaten mediocre engineers, but honestly get a different job. Maybe they threaten the experience ladder, if Ai does the introductory simpler work where do tomorrow's engineers get their experiencce? That's more a question about the nature of capitalism than of technology though. We've seen the erosion of apprenticeships in all other industries. Ai is not the battleground for that concern.

Generative Ai might seem insanely poweful in its novelty - but its only real power lies in producing the same old slop. It is inherently regressive, and that can't be fixed. Even if we trained them on only the best of humanity's creativity (and we cannot) they can never take a leap of faith. They might help us squeeze every useful drop of how we currently think, but they will never invent.

Art is a human residue.

The machines won’t kill us (probbably), but if we delegate over much, we may find ourselves redundant in our own experience.

I hope that it is this that my track and its accompanying video is saying.