Shri Khalpada, as a technologist and musician, thinks through his mixed feelings for AI-generated music.
A tool that jumps straight to the output short-circuits all of that. The output arrives before any discovery can happen. This treats creativity as a productivity or “content creation” problem, where getting to the output as easily as possible is the goal.
There are of course parts of the music making process that are tedious and frustrating. An experienced producer sketching out an arrangement quickly or using AI to test a melodic idea before committing to it would be helpful. These cases straddle the line between a tool that helps us make music and a tool that generates it for us. I think these use cases can be much more straightforwardly helpful.
The essay includes samples of AI-generated music against human-made music, and like writing passages, it is difficult to pick which is generated.
However, as Khalpada argues, making music is more than a factory churning out songs to fill space in elevators.
My kids take piano lessons and they often have to struggle through new songs before they get it right. Sometimes the songs are more difficult than usual, so when they finally get it, the joy and sense of accomplishment is multiplied. The thought of replacing that with a magic machine that spits out music with zero traction just seems wrong.