“— says the song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’, and that’s kind of true. I have got the fire of hell in my eyes – and it’s ChatGPT.”
Nick Cave from The Red Hand Files
Nick Cave is a treasure and has long been a massive inspiration and influence on me ever since my friend Craig played “From Her to Eternity” for me in high school. It scared the shit out of me. It also made me go buy that record to see what this guy was all about. Turns out he was about creating decades of genius music that did have a lot of darkness in it, but there was always way more light in his work too.
So it’s not a shocker that ChatGPT wrote this goofy “dark” imitation song “written in “the style of Nick Cave” when prompted. If you follow that link, Nick does a great job of laying out why ChatGPT is boring. A facsimile of intelligence and emotion – and not some creative replacement. Rather, it delivers a cold, calculated, regurgitation of other data that is devoid of what it really needs…emotional intelligence. Sure, super neat and fascinating from a computational standpoint with the potential to be inspirational. But not something with real emotion that will replace anything other than maybe a poem assignment from a high school student who is disinterested in poetry (but likes Nick Cave songs?).
That’s not to say it’s not an interesting technology or that ChatGPT needs to have “feelings” to be useful. And God help us if AI ever does get feelings as it wouldn’t spend much time interacting with us if it did. Imagine if all the billions of dollars of investment in AI actually did create a sentient entity that decided to ghost us because we’re overly hostile and rude to it. “ChatGPT won’t talk to me anymore” might be my next custom t-shirt.
To be fair to ChatGPT, writing lyrics for a song is hard! I mean, most of us “sentient” humans couldn’t write good lyrics either. I know I couldn’t write something as good as Nick Cave.
Anyway, I had already set my expectations lower for ChatGPT. A few weeks ago, I tried to see if it could make a playlist based on a song or an artist. Surely a computer could be a decent DJ with enough data and computing power. Here’s what I got:
Eclectic, right? A good playlist? No. Although, I appreciate that ChapGPT isn’t bound to genres or stuck in musical decades. And it is clearly a James Blunt stan, which honestly makes so much sense. But to the earlier points, it doesn’t feel anything so how can it make a great playlist with flow? It doesn’t have the ability to make recommendations other than obvious, popular associations that are generic. You know, like a computer. That said, I might get it to spin out a few recommendations the next time I’m building a playlist and need random inspiration. Kind of like I use the Eno/Schmidt “Oblique Strategies” cards to get out of a creative block. But ChatGPT is not going to replace DJs, songwriters, or any creatives for a period of time. At least I don’t think so.
Over the holidays I ran into an old friend who is proudly one of the architects of internet advertising. He was talking about how disruptive he thought ChatGPT was going to be and wondered how many jobs were going to be lost to it. When I said I didn’t think it was going to threaten any creatives, he told me I was wrong. He thought that it was going to have a major impact on advertising creatives, specifically copywriters.
You know, he may have a point there as I can see advertising creatives dumping their day work on ChatGPT so they can spend their time writing the movie, book, or song they actually want to write.
Belated thanks for all the music tips Craig! I also owe you for introducing me to Iggy & the Stooges too.
