With D’Addario shot down for (supposedly) using AI-generated music in a product demo, and female content creators replaced by horror-doll avatars, the knives are out again for the technology of our times. Giving you the news in quickfire conversational style, it’s… Fret Buzz.
Good to see AI in the headlines, for a change. Has it done something astonishing to elevate human existence, like curing cancer or restoring the dolphin population?
Don’t be silly. It’s just stepped up its dead-eyed mission to decimate the arts sector. And given musicians a few new reasons to march on the gated communities of Silicon Valley’s pallid, god-complex princelings.
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But what does this have to do with D’Addario? Don’t they make good, honest guitar strings, not insidious lines of code that will lead us to fiery armageddon?
You’re right: D’Addario does indeed produce some of the very best strings in the world. However, its PR crisis management needs a little work.
I mean, how much scandal can a G-string generate? Actually, don’t answer that.
It’s all kicked off over a demo video for the new NYXL HD strings. With the blogosphere accusing D’Addario of creating the music using AI, the firm’s scattershot, flustered denial – issued over several days – seemed oddly unconvincing, like a frosty-faced Mötley Crüe insisting they honestly have no idea what happened to that attaché case full of cocaine.
Sounds pretty mortifying. What else has AI been up to lately?
Everybody’s favorite semi-sentient technology is keeping busy. Of course, there’s AI’s ‘day job’ – stealing musicians’ copyrighted material to train its models, spewing soulless dreck across streaming sites and making a career in music financially unviable. But its latest trick is lifting the videos of (mostly female) content creators and repurposing them in various dystopian ways.
This conversation is about to turn from flippant to quite dark, isn’t it?
Afraid so. In June, GW reported how some of the world’s best-known online players – from Sophie Lloyd to Larissa Liveir – have seen their videos replicated in minute detail with an AI-rendered avatar in their place. Seriously, check out the AI facsimile of Sophie Burrell’s Sultans Of Swing, with an eerily glossy Bratz doll pulling the exact same shapes.
I’ve just watched it. That thing should be killed with fire.
What really stings is that the AI version clocked 17k-plus ‘likes’ that by rights belong to Burrell. But it gets bleaker. Ukrainian guitarist Tanya Yakimova has reported her likeness being used to scam fans and generate deep-fake AI porn. Given all that, Bud Cole’s recent comments on AI were about as welcome as pubic lice on a tourbus.
The Fender CEO? Surely he’s keeping his head down after that Strat lawsuit debacle?
You would think. But he’s just compared cover bands to “a sort of analog AI” (although he’s since rowed back, a bit). Which is totally missing the point.
You’re going to tell me why, aren’t you?
Every human musician – even if they’re covering an old song – has their own individual, imperfect, messy thumbprint, and an emotional impetus behind what they’re playing. AI understands nothing of glorious human fallibility. It’d probably take Jimmy Page’s classic Heartbreaker solo and fix the bum notes.
Is there any good news here?
Only that maybe AI is so busy defrauding musicians that it won’t have time to take physical form and force mankind to toil in a choking warren of copper mines. You have to look on the bright side, right?
