YouSuck: MetalSucks Readers Really Don’t Like A.I.
Like it or not, artificial intelligence has seeped its way into the music industry. Countless A.I. “artists” flood Spotify, album covers are procedurally generated, and production professionals have adapted the tech to handle some of the more menial parts of editing. All of that was inevitable.
But what about A.I. in metal? We asked you guys what your feelings were on the matter and we got possibly the most predictable outcome — you really don’t like artificial intelligence in our genre. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, as we’ve seen the backlash bands like Deicide and others have gotten for utilizing artificial intelligence in their final product.
As you can see in the chart below, a vast majority of respondents said “fuck no, music needs a human touch.” That’s not surprising at all. Nor is it surprising that only a dozen people said A.I. is the future (even though it sadly is). What was interesting, however, was the “grey area” option that landed in second place. In that instance, I asked people that chose that option to comment, so here’s some of those statements.
One person without a username said, “Bands experimenting with AI for album art I can understand, as they’re testing the sandbox to see what if any match to their vision they have in mind. Obviously real artists and photographers are irreplaceable, but there’s little harm in just seeing what it can do. It likely will become a problem when it becomes the primary or sole regular resource.” A nuanced and thought through comment on MetalSucks?! Who’da thunk it?!
Over on the Instagram, we got some very interesting takes as well. User @zeperias said A.I. in metal could exist, but that there needed to be a “separate classification away from real music and absolutely zero copyright laws in its existence. It would be interesting to hear what an unemotional piece of coding can deem as music.” Another user, @abluntstop said, “since Metallica, everything after that is basically generative A.I. since [everything is] a regurgitation of the same riffs. Since A.I. is an algorithm that just puts riffs together and slapping lyrics over it, it’s the same process.”
Even though the voting period is over, the conversation’s going to rage on for years to come. Feel free to comment below and let us know what your thoughts are on A.I. in metal.
