I was sitting there minding my own business and Merker Miyagi sent me a Reel showcasing three artificial intelligence tools that will change how podcasts are edited. We’re talking what I took 6 hours to do the other day, will probably take no more than 15 minutes.
I’ve seen what I perceive as bizarre pushback against AI appear out of nowhere. I understand the fear people have, but they always show up so late.
People are losing their minds over Midjourney or ChatGPT, but by the time they cared it was already ChatGPT 3. When people made AI songs in the style of Eminem two years ago it was lit, but now that Kanye West is covering everything it’s scary?
My AI journey started way back
As is the case when writing about my former day job life, contracts bind me with a degree of silence. I can’t write about the specifics of anything I did, but I can tell you in general terms what I’ve done.
Working for the customer service department I was responsible for optimizing flows to improve deflection. I would map out the journey our users took, I mean flowcharts with every choice, and identify where we could improve things.
I would focus on writing content for the knowledge base that answered questions before a person needed to talk to us. As technology advanced, I had this vivid moment of clarity, while using DistroKid support of all things.
I sent in an email, and it used a basic AI styled tool (from Zendesk) to answer my request recommending the right knowledge base article. This actually answered my question, but the support guy in me was like woah. I started learning a lot about chat bots, and how AI would impact the universe of customer service.
The other day I applied to a job entirely via a chat bot. Stuff has come a long way. Done right, you’d have no idea you were talking to a chat bot for 80% of cases, I personally know how to set up a chat bot to convince you. It’s just predicting conversation flows.
This isn’t exactly AI as we know it, but since 2016 I’ve been watching this all evolve via customer service.
Social media sentiment analysis
People often question whether a bot or AI tool can understand context. I spent a couple of years playing with Sprout Social’s sentiment analysis tool. I promise you Facebook knows nine times out of ten whether or not you were joking.
The problem is not all jokes are allowed on Facebook, so people get confused. I’ve managed a Facebook Group, making the decision to allow a joke or not is tricky. But people push boundaries day in and out, free speech is only sort of free, even in the USA.
Back to sentiment analysis, when I would search the internet with Sprout Social, it not only found social media posts that matched my keyword query, but it also told me the tone.
It was usually able to identify correctly if the message was positive, negative, or neutral. If it guessed wrong, I was able to course correct it and change the setting.
Every time me, or anyone else, corrects it the algorithm gets smarter.
There has a been a good 10 years of people like me, teaching these bots for business purposes. This means these AI tools are so ingratiated into the technology we rely on that it’s literally too late to stop it.
Already the conversation should be about newer things like government surveillance, but alas graphic designers are mad they are going to lose a bag. Fair enough, this affects me professionally as well, I am a writer.
People are already algorithmic
A funny thing happened in commercial art over the last while. People just started acting like AI bots that source other people’s creativity and copy it. Maybe corporate art has always been like this.
Having watched how professional websites get made (I mean for corporations, not a Wix site) where they design and host it all themselves, I saw how it works.
Tracking gets added to every page. People run tests on everything, from colours to copy and then let data decide what will have the best results. So basically, creative choices for a business are a series of specific binaries where data determines the decision making.
Arguably machine learning works the same way. It faces choices, measures results and improves based on the success criteria.
I’ve written copy for emails and websites. The flow goes:
Identify competitors
Watch their content
Copy what is successful but change it enough to not plagerize
Match that to your brand guidelines
Publish
Sorry to burst your bubble but a lot of the creative choices made by creative professionals are basically just algorithm over art.
Honestly, a bunch of music I hear from humans may as well have been written by bots. People are blatant about chasing a specific algorithmic sound. Or maybe they just want to copy their heroes, is there really a difference?
I’m not afraid of AI creativity
This blog isn’t going to rank on Google because I’m choosing style over keywords. I wrote so much content in another voice to match what the almighty algorithm said was fire, that it’s important to me to have freedom here.
I am also a specialist at organic marketing. I understand my target audience and have faith that given my place in the Montreal Hip Hop scene I can spike this blog to enough website visits that Google gets what we do.
I can open ChatGPT right now and have it write this very blog I’m writing. There is enough content on this website that it could manage to emulate my tone convincingly. On a technical front, the chat bot can inevitably outwrite me.
What I think adds some charm to my blog, is if you know me you can hear my voice as you read this. I try and write similar to how I speak on purpose. The part where your exposure to this blog is probably from some adventure in my life, means that as long as I keep living, I can keep promoting myself as a living art piece through my words.
I’m already not the best artist in my city. I’m already an underdog competing against people with more experience and resources. All that being said I am willing to endure and collect fans over time. AI cannot stop me as I’m already comfortable with failure.
But I can still work with AI to make up for my shortcomings.
AI is currently unable to sweat on you
This may sound gross, but I’ve sweat on a whole bunch of people this last year. Many times, when I perform, I end up shirtless and sweaty. Then people approach me after and it is what it is.
When I first geeked on AI and thought virtual reality would replace everything fast I was told by everyone, naw B, real life is unbeatable. My experience with marketing has shown me that the internet is made up of real people, that don’t behave the same way in person.
People may spin songs or share content but the ones who are at your show remember you. When people see your face and physically touch you in some way (don’t be perverts, you perverts) there is something special that does not happen online.
I believe in online relationships and connections. As an example, I’ve only met Peter West of Northern Beat Society once in real life and consider him a close friend. However, meeting him in real life made things feel like they levelled up. We hit the next evolution in things.
AI will certainly dominate certain strategies. I don’t see how humans can outperform AI when it comes to paid ads, or what #’s to use. I see it like any part of this you don’t care about, AI will be helpful.
AI cannot however go perform at the show for you. It could probably fake the video, but there are simply parts to this game that are human.
What I think happens next
There will be a shift to the imperfect and a voyeuristic desire to peep the creation process. Okay fine I’m the guy who went live on Twitch and freestyled a pickle song. My bias aside, it’s a phenomenon appearing across all social media platforms with artists of all tiers.
You see people leaking their own music in Instagram stories. They go live on any of the platforms and play stuff they just recorded. Beatmakers are just cranking out beats for tips all over.
You see on TikTok the push for rappers to do impromptu freestyles as they stich their bars to a beatmaker enthusiastically head bopping. In a world where AI tools can make our favourite artists sing songs from our other favourite artists, people aren’t going to trust final products.
While we bump pop music all over, we all know how produced it is. We don’t necessarily care in those moments, but when you have the video of that artist in the studio making the song in your head, it adds charm. You reconcile that the produced product is backed up by an artist who can in fact create that music as you’ve seen proof.
I think people are going to need to focus on having content available that proves they are artistic. Whether it’s live footage that sounds dope, or you write a song live, they will need some validation point you aren’t just using AI.
Why will it matter?
When it comes to cultivating a fanbase, you are selling a lifestyle more than you are selling your music. We present our ideologies and belief systems into our branding (even if you don’t focus on it) and this attracts our tribes. The people who support you, will want to support you.
I think the kind of person that supports underground art will care about this kind of thing. Most people will be cool with AI in art production, but artists are going to have disclose how much. My prediction is that while streaming numbers will be dominated by AI music, merch sales and live show performances on the smaller scale will be dominated by “authentic art”.
Half the damned independent fanbase on the lowest tier is artists or close friends of artists. It makes it super hard for people in this sphere to make highly marketable music since they cater to an audience that understands the nuances of music, but this group is going to reject AI the quickest.
Or at least they will have more respect for, and with dollars, support the artists who don’t rely on AI to create art more. This will have a cascade effect on things where, who knows. The profitability of a scene of peers is questionable, but I think it will have an impact on how most people starting off are received.
Unless you go viral, but that’s a whole other story. Mostly you start in the super underground scene.
I fell off but I’m getting back on
Sometimes you go from ahead of the curve to playing catchup. In a lot of ways, I feel like I must relearn stuff I learned 6-7 years ago. My specialties got outdated as the world started moving faster and my mid 30’s got me fighting stagnation.
Thankfully this process of learning is simple. It is however scary. Watching something that took me 6 hours get reduced to a button click is wild. The future of entrepreneurial endeavours may be gatekept by who can afford the AI tools to do jobs faster.
If I can edit your whole podcast for 50$, you are going to want to pay me. If I must do it by hand that number would be way higher, but AI allows for the price to drop significantly creating more volume.
I’m grateful I’ve had the last few months to rediscover who I am and what I want out of life. The fairy tale is over and it’s time to get back into the thick of the grind.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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