Curious, I tried to watch that music video and was creeped out within 10 seconds. It’s terrible! How could this ever be more popular than actual artists performing?!

Reminds me of the Star Trek: Voyager episode (yes, nerd, I know) where the Doctor accidentally introduces singing to aliens on a planet that had no concept of it. He essentially becomes an idol, everyone goes nuts for him…but the aliens have better technology, so they pretty quickly essentially develop their own AI singers and his star fades pretty quickly. It’s all synthetic in the end, but it “panders to the masses” and thus loses the heart and soul of music by performance – which I assume was the point the episode was trying to make. Does seem relevant here!

This jangles my ethics alarm bells in a big way, just like deepfake stuff. I’m glad the article actually raises some of those questions. I think what disappoints me about impressive technology sometimes is that it feels like “medication to manage the side effects of the other medication I’m already taking”. In the case of this AI, I wish it actually addressed and did something about toxic fan culture, rather than create something that would be immune to some of the harms of that culture. Uggggghhhhhhhhhhh.