Is AI Really The Death-Knell For Creatives?

Watch the video version here!

There is a lot of concern over AI in the creative industries - how it's going to steal our jobs, how it will devastate the economy. Just a quick search on YouTube for AI-related topics yields results like "AI Will Trigger Global Collapse by 2027," "The End is Near," and "These jobs won't exist in 24 months—I tried to warn them but we've already lost control!"

And creators like Rick Beato have been posting content on just how well AI can create an artist, write and perform a song, and now it can even mix, master, and prepare it for release. So should we be concerned?

I don't think so. And here's why.

The music we make is human; it conveys emotion. This email is human, and hopefully, it conveys my emotion. And, whilst AI can already do a fantastic job of creating it for me - where's the fun in that? And you as a reader (or viewer if you're watching the video version) will see through that really very quickly!

But let's side-step for a minute, away from the music world, and look at a parallel universe - the film and video community. While the general opinion in music land is that AI is going to kill us all, the video lot are embracing it with open arms. And right now, it has huge novelty value with tools such as Google's VEO3. To be able to simply type in a prompt and have a video created in seconds is great fun - we did it on the intro to our video with George Lever, faking a news report of a cave collapse caused by me in Cheddar Gorge.

But we actually went in and removed that a week or so after the video was created. Why? Because 70% of the people who watched that video clicked off in the first two minutes. We thought it was funny, and it had great novelty value when we were creating it, but you didn't. You clicked off and went and watched something else!

And the same is true of a lot of the shorts-based AI-driven YouTube channels that are popping up. That one that created fake videos of camping and caravanning holidays was great for the first couple of weeks, but a lot of that was down to the shock of the videos looking so photo-realistic. The novelty has now worn off, and they're already a bit boring, even though they were prompted by the creativity of a human.

And there's another problem. As AI is currently trained on existing content - and a lot of that is now being created by AI - it's all getting a bit vanilla. AI is creating content based on content it's created - it's almost like it's becoming inbred! And that, again, makes it easy to spot from a mile away - unless it's prompted by a truly creative person who really knows what they're doing.

And that's the thing. The human element. I use AI every single day, but I use it for corrective and administrative tasks - to save time. And that's where, for the moment at least, its strengths lie.

If I can create a Dolby Atmos mix and AI can export it to the exact requirements specified for delivery, fantastic. That saves me hours of faffing around with boring tasks. If it can print a full mix, an instrumental mix, a vocal-up, and a vocal-down, and do it in exactly the way I would, then bring it on. That buys back time for me to concentrate on the human element of my job.

It's also great as a learning and inspirational tool. I don't want it writing my song, for any other reason than to see how well it can actually do it, but I will allow it to give me inspiration for a lyric I'm stuck on or suggest some chord substitutions to help build the last chorus.

So where does this leave us? Well, I was an AI skeptic until I started actually using it. And of course, it's based on technology - and that technology is rapidly evolving, so it will change by the time you've read this. But I'm not worried about jobs in the creative industries—quite the opposite - I think it will bring us greater opportunities.

I don't hire the songwriter for the song; I hire them because they're the songwriter they are. I don't hire the drummer to metronomically play the part on the charts; I hire them because of the drummer they are, knowing they'll add their personality and emotion to it. If you're a successful mix engineer, people hire you because you're you and for the unique skillset you can bring to the table. The human element is so important to what we do and, while generic pop that 13-year-olds listen to can be created entirely by AI now, when those kids get a bit older and you play them real music, created by real people, their minds are often blown.

I was watching the BBC Proms on Saturday night. The National Youth Orchestra was performing music from John Williams' Star Wars score and The Planets by Holst. There can't have been anyone older than 18 in the 160-piece ensemble, and the performance of that incredible music was one of the best I've ever experienced. The passion and joy on those kids' faces as they animated that incredible music was an absolute pleasure, and the emotion the conductor was able to project into that orchestra - and therefore the performance - was nothing short of incredible.

AI can replace a lot of things, but I truly believe it won't replace that. The best time to be creating music is now. Grab every opportunity you can, use the technology available to us rather than fear it, and go to sleep at night safe in the knowledge that it's clever... but it ain't you.

And if it kills us all, then I apologise in advance!

Get creating, be kind, and I'll see you next week.

Lots of love,

Mark