AI: stopping the band getting back together?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made headlines before with regards to the creative industries. For some years, AI tools such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), have been used with great success in machine learning to create photographs that have realistic characteristics. Controversially used in recent years as a method for generating ‘DeepFakes’.
In 2021, redeployed to research how they could create songs, Google’s Magenta (a research tool for AI in the creative process) used GANs software to generate a ‘new’ Nirvana song – some three decades since frontman Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. The repercussions for the recorded music industry are substantial, and this isn’t the focus of this thought piece. However, how could this be used in live entertainment in the future?
Stuart Russell, the esteemed AI academic, argues that if there is one thing computers are good at, it is doing something a million times over. Therefore, if AI programmes can write entire songs, it is conceivable that they will be used to ‘perform’ individual tracks as part of a concert repeatedly as part of a tour. This would be most prescient in tours that have a large band or orchestra, where costs are high for touring and having computers play the exact sound expected of a single string instrument will be less noticed.
What implications then does this have for support musicians, and in general the age of ‘the band’? Specifically, if it is expensive to tour many musicians and the means exist to have some of them recreated digitally using AI, it is possible that some promoters and managers will see this as an opportunity to maximise value for their clients and reduce costs. Moreover, if it becomes rare to see entire bands perform, there is likely going to be a premium to see bands over individual artists; much in the way it is to see ‘heritage rock acts’ perform today. Therefore, the age of the band could become rarer and more of a premium.
Therefore, as technology such as Google’s Magenta makes the age of an AI-enhanced live event more likely, managers and music industry executives should be mindful that it needs to go hand in hand with effective job design. Bands hold a special place in the contemporary music scene and technology shouldn’t focus on re-writing and developing new AI written songs that could replace future musicians, but on how it can enhance the human music-making process. This requires music industry executives to pass over the quick return and look to the long-term future of what is best for the industry.
