Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
As artificial intelligence capabilities increase exponentially, music makers are facing the gravity of how this technology will affect their world.
With a simple prompt, generative-AI platforms like Suno can create any kind of music imaginable.
AI-made music can be heard widely — from streaming services to radio stations — and has the potential to replace the people who traditionally compose, play and record music.
RB Blackstone is a musician, recording engineer and computer programmer who has closely followed AI music and its implications.
He has thoughts about how the technology works.
“If something moves you, it moves you. I do think that AI is not necessarily creating music. It’s reformulating different relationships between different things that it's heard — that someone has created at some point,” Blackstone said.
Mack Damon is a producer and the owner of Stone Creek Sound, a recording studio in Helotes, just outside of San Antonio. He records everything from music by singer-songwriters to movie scores. Damon said that AI technology has reached a point where even a trained ear can barely tell the difference between human-created and AI-generated music.
“I mean, I think it can (replicate human-created music)," Damon said. "I’ve heard it do it myself. ... I can’t believe that violin is fake, like it's really, really impressive.”
Damon said he and his colleagues are already using AI music tools for things like track separation and cleaning up existing performances.
"We're trying to figure out a way to use the tools to enhance our creativity, not replace it."
Garrett T. Capps, a progressive country musician and songwriter, is co-owner of the Lonesome Rose Bar in San Antonio. Capps recently discovered that his music is part of a database that could potentially be used to train AI music software, without his permission.
Capps said he wasn’t surprised.
"I kind of just assume that all of my information is already being exploited, like every single part of my life, along with everyone else,” he said.
Capps said he has toyed around with AI but doesn’t really use it in his music.
"But my music is sacred, and it's like, my life. So, I don't want to. I can't even." he said. "It's hard for me to collaborate with people, other humans. So why would I do it with a machine?"
Damon believes that AI could have negative consequences for a segment of the music industry.
"But it does have the ability to displace a lot of creative people, especially those that are in the margins, that are working at a lower level."
He said there are still some things AI can’t replicate.
"When you get two people in the same room, the electricity that happens ... and if hopefully you're able to capture that, that is ... that's the real essence of it."
RB Blackstone said it’s the human element that makes music, and that AI lacks one important thing — the motivation to create.
"Part of what makes new music is people making happy mistakes and trying new things out. Nothing in AI internally is driven to say something, but people that write have something they want to say."
Aside from the creative and business impact of AI music on the industry, everyone TPR spoke with voiced concerns about the environmental impact of data centers — which will be needed to power the future of digitally created music.
