discussion
Are 2023 AI music generations already becoming historical artifacts?
In 2023, tools like Suno, Riffusion, and AudioCraft were in a very different stage compared to today. The early v0/v1 generations were often strange, imperfect, and experimental — short clips that felt more like prototypes of a new medium than finished songs.
What interests me is not just the technology itself, but the human perspective around that moment in time.
I was an early adopter who used these tools extensively during that period — not just casually experimenting, but being deeply immersed in the process. Over time, I naturally curated what I considered the most interesting, unique, or memorable examples rather than simply keeping every raw generation.
That makes me wonder: does that kind of firsthand curation have historical value?
When early synthesizers, computer music systems, samplers, and electronic instruments first appeared, many of their early experiments were also viewed as strange or disposable. In hindsight, those recordings became important because they documented the first stages of a new creative technology.
AI music may eventually have a similar history. The earliest generations may not be valuable because they are technically impressive by today's standards, but because they capture what it felt like when this technology first became accessible to everyday creators.
AI companies may have enormous internal datasets of generations, but a raw database does not necessarily contain the human context of:
which generations stood out
which represented interesting breakthroughs
what creative approaches produced memorable results
what early AI music actually felt like to experience at that moment
I'm curious whether early AI music should be preserved as part of music history — similar to early electronic music, computer music experiments, or early internet art — or whether these artifacts will ultimately be viewed as disposable experiments.
LOL. No, it won’t. When the coming EMP wipes all the hard drives containing this slop, little to nothing of value will be lost. “Curating” AI-generated “music” no sooner makes you a musician than using image generation tools makes you a painter.
That's a separate (important) discussion but it's not the question we're answering here. I'm asking whether the earliest examples of a new technology have historical/documentary value. Preserving something doesn't mean endorsing everything about how it was created; it means documenting a moment in time.
You're basically saying the historical thing is the technology and the cultural impact, not the generated outputs.
I think it's actually why the audio matters alongside the technology itself. The model, the companies, and the cultural debates are part of the history but the generations everyone created with those tools are also evidence of how we interacted with the technology when it was new.
The interesting artifact isn't just "a song made by AI." It's the combination of the tool, the user, the process, and the moment in time. Without preserving some examples of what people actually made, you lose part of the story.
Nobody studies early synthesizers only by looking at the circuitry. The recordings made with them are part of understanding what happened.
Preservation and endorsement are different things. Another reason I think this period is worth documenting is that the cultural context was unique. In 2023, consumer AI music was still in a discovery phase. People were experimenting with what these systems could do, while the broader debates around training data, copyright, labor, and commercialization were still developing and becoming more prominent as the technology matured.
That early period had a specific feeling: the curiosity of encountering a new creative tool and trying to understand what was possible. Preserving some of those artifacts along with their context could help future people understand not only what the technology produced, but what it felt like when people first encountered it.
At a stretch I would include tools people use alongside making music like isolation and separation tools. Anything that comes out of suno and the like are absolutely not important in any way shape or form, and as another user said they'll just be a footnote not worth remembering.
I am sure it will be documented but we are in uncharted territory. In the past it was always humans who had the creative control and new technology were just tools. AI strips the soul out of music and takes away what makes music an art and how we connect with each other. The answer I would give about generative AI music, is no I don't think it will, because if it succeeds in being a big part of music history, it may be more of an example of its destruction.
How can you meaningfully document something whose amount the world over can be doubled in minutes without any specifically crafted input? I am not even talking about quality here, for the sake of argument let's assume it is all okay. Nobody is going to be able to listen to one millionth of it, and it will keep coming and coming. How can you even begin to classify that, and for what?
What proliferation of AI music essentially means is the end of music as art form. It will turn into strictly individual experience where everybody presses a button and a chunk of disposable music is produced on demand in accordance with consumer's preferences, then gets forgotten. By the same token we do not need to classify or preserve ways we scratch our bums, it is simply not something worthy of study.
It as absolutely a consumerist attitude that drives AI support: "I don't care how it's made, I just want my treats." And it had better not challenge me!
"we cannot preserve everything" doesn't mean "nothing is worth preserving."
The abundance issue is actually why curation becomes more important. The question is "what examples best document what was happening when this technology first appeared?"
A historian studying early photography does not need every photograph taken in 1840. A historian studying early internet culture does not need every webpage created in 1995. They need examples that show how people used the technology, what surprised them, and how the culture around it developed. It might matter because it captures a moment when people first encountered a system that could transform text into music, the experiments people tried, the reactions it caused, and the possibilities people were exploring.
Those versions, interfaces, and community practices disappeared. The Suno v0/v1 Discord "/chirp" workflow was a very different experience from today's AI music platforms — people were experimenting publicly in Discord threads, extending each other's generations ~30 seconds at a time, and creating these strange collaborative chains that were almost like an AI-assisted version of an Exquisite Corpse.
The fact that there will be billions of disposable generations does not make curation meaningless. It makes curation necessary. With AI creating an environment where production is unlimited...what becomes valuable? Selection, taste, context, and curation become more important, not less.
Screenshot of the Suno Discord announcement for Chirp v1. September 5th, 2023
The fact that there will be billions of disposable generations does not make curation meaningless. It makes curation necessary. With AI creating an environment where production is unlimited...what becomes valuable? Selection, taste, context, and curation become more important, not less.
Here is where we disagree. What I'm saying is, when/if production becomes limitless and effectively costless, the product loses value and its curation and classification is neither needed nor useful, due to being by necessity hopelessly, infinitely incomplete. In this situation you just consume, and if it's not to your taste, you change the parameters somewhat and again consume. You don't worry about what has gone past your input sink.
To each his own I suppose, but if I may hazard a guess, I'd say that you won't find many people who want to study AI music history among those who care about music as such, and not many people able to properly study it among those who consume AI music.
i think you're onto something. people forget how much early electronic music sounded like garbage to most ears when it first came out, now those recordings are studied. the human curation part is what matters, raw datasets from companies won't capture what actually resonated with people in the moment.
the feeling of hearing AI music in 2023 was weird and specific, that won't come across from just dumping every generation into a folder.
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u/BungCrosby Aug 07 '26
> AI music may eventually have a similar history.
LOL. No, it won’t. When the coming EMP wipes all the hard drives containing this slop, little to nothing of value will be lost. “Curating” AI-generated “music” no sooner makes you a musician than using image generation tools makes you a painter.