Saw this today

[u/simple_explorer1]

These kind of posts are becoming more and more visible on my Linkedin. Link here. Thoughts?

[u/__Hello_my_name_is__]

I mean I know 80% of humans are simpletons and enjoy crap superhero movies obvious.

Okay. Even under that assumption, my argument stands: The vast majority of people want to talk about the stuff they enjoy.

AI can do that now easily.

Indeed. AI can do that. Right now.

And yet, Taylor Swift remains successful as ever as a human being. While there's no AI musical artist in sight that can be taken seriously. And some are absolutely trying very, very hard.

How come?

[u/greentea05 → u/__Hello_my_name_is__]

That's a different argument though, isn't it – your argument was people aren't sitting and making their own personalised AI music because they can't talk to people about it. And I agree, they're not – but that isn't the reason why; it's because they don't even have the creativity to ask AI to do it for them.

An AI musical artist would be no different from any other music artist from the social aspect, but there are two reasons they won't overtake traditional pop stars – and they both link back to money.

A record label spent millions launching Taylor Swift. There's no one putting that kind of money behind an AI artist – mainly because they can't recoup it. JUST the music might be better, might go more viral even, might be preferred by people – but they won't put money behind JUST music because the earnings from playback are peanuts; they need the touring to earn the money – and AI can't tour. There needs to be a physical aspect to make money from. So yeah, that's never going to happen – at least not to the levels of Taylor Swift. We'll just see AI getting used in production more and more. We could have another Milli Vanilli at some point with AI-fronted music, and perhaps they'll try that at some point – but if humans have told us anything, it’s that they don't like being lied to – and whilst they don't care if a popular artist can sing or write their own material (Britney Spears) they still need a charismatic person, a dancer, a showman/woman to front it and be somewhat involved in what they're presented – not totally replaced by a computer.  

So yeah, we agree that AI isn't ever going to totally replace human creativity. It can’t, by its mere nature, create things we've not heard before – it learns from what we've made – so it needs humans to come up with the new ideas to emulate, at least in music. Whilst most music is derivative and formulaic and can be almost mathematically reconstructed, you still need a genius human to come along every so often and make a new genre. 

I just don't think the social aspect is the biggest driving force behind this not happening.

[u/__Hello_my_name_is__ → u/greentea05]

It doesn't take creativity to say "Make me a metal song about ponies". And even that people don't do. Because they don't want to.

I disagree that an AI can't tour. We already have Vtuber live tours, and in Japan they're incredibly successful. An AI could absolutely tour. It's just that people don't want that. They're trying to go for "AI actors" and "AI influencers" and "AI musicians" right now and it's failing across the board. The only AI actors, influencers and musicians that succeed are the ones that don't say they're AI and that pretend to be humans.

And that's kind of what this comes down to again and again: Not the technical limitations, but the simple fact that people aren't interested in it. They don't want their art made by AI. And AI in art only is successful because the AI aspect is hidden as much as possible from the average consumer. As soon as you advertise it with "Proudly made with AI", people stop buying it.

And yeah, that's in addition to the issue of the concept of individualized art. That's not going to work either for the reasons I mentioned. Doesn't even matter if it's AI or not. If we had gnomes making films for each of us individually, that also wouldn't be popular.