back to article Big Music goes mad for chat bots and AI

The BPI has embraced the post-human era, with a report of the use of AI in music by consultancy MusicAlly. “AI is enabling the creation of hyper-personalised playlists using contextual data and deep analysis of the relationship between songs, while artists and labels are now using chatbots to engage fan-bases in campaigns,” we …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    "The report does caution that the bots may not be very intelligent."

    Neither are the artists... if they actually fall for all this marketing crap....

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: "The report does caution that the bots may not be very intelligent."

      My exact thought.

      It does not take a lot to teach a bot to gyrate (or thrust) its navel to comply with the entry requirements for a music video channel. +/- some leather pants.

      So the fact that the bots are nowhere as intelligent as needed for other industries is not an issue.

      Yeah... Can't touch this.. gyrate ... Can't touch this... gyrate... Hit me baby one more time...gyrate...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "The report does caution that the bots may not be very intelligent."

        It does not take a lot to teach a bot to gyrate (or thrust) its navel to comply with the entry requirements for a music video channel. +/- some leather pants.

        Well, we had a Reg article t'other day on AI music composition. So, combine the limited real intelligence for music, taste, singing, the fact that most "fans" only ever encounter the "artist" via a screen, throw in some CGI and the fairly luscious graphics capabilities at our disposal, and Voila! The fully synthetic pop star - music by AI, movement by AI, appearance AI, and of course, every fan could have interactive on-line chat (or worse) with the "artist" AI. Have the same AI maximise revenues by customising the artist appearance for different markets, or even individually (Helen Mirren for me, please!). No need for producers, scouts, A&R, producers, men with cigars - the only need for a meat sack is to pay.

  2. fran 2

    What will Hardwell's chatbot response to "Your music is an abomination" be

  3. Alister
    Coffee/keyboard

    Microsoft’s chatty bot Tay became a sex-obsessed Nazi in just 24 hours. Normally it takes years of toil in the music industry to achieve that.

    Thumbs up for this, but see icon

  4. TheProf

    So much in this article to mock.

    Really, it's going to take me so long to stop laughing that it'll be out of date before I manage to put anything else in print.

    1. m0rt

      Re: So much in this article to mock.

      The point is - people want to make shed loads of money, drive up hype to help faciliate this, and reduce expenditure.

      This is the driving force on the net.

      So whereas all this is funny/sad and a damming indictent of humanity, is is also inevitable.

      Until there is actually a non-biological intelligence formed that decides we aren't safe to look after ourselves and does bring about the end of Our Right To Be The Most Important Thing In The Universe™

  5. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Are you saying today's music is not yet AI-generated twaddle?

    Could have fooled me.

  6. Mage Silver badge

    Report expresses caution

    "“Most chatbots aren’t really artificial intelligence in the purest sense of the term: they’re more carefully scripted question-and-answer programs capable of serving content.”

    Or indeed they are not intelligent in any useful sense. Not really AI in any sense. The original Eliza was meant to be a prank, a joke.

  7. D@v3

    "Most chatbots aren’t really artificial intelligence"

    No chatbots are really artificial intelligence.....

    1. Diginerd

      Re: "Most chatbots aren’t really artificial intelligence"

      Eliza is smarter than your average starlet...

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Terminator

      Re: "Most chatbots aren’t really artificial intelligence"

      All chatbots are really artificial nontelligence!

      We are going where Neal Stephenson writes about (here is him clearly having learnt from Stanislaw Lem, writing in "Anathem"):

      “Early in the Reticulum-thousands of years ago-it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information,” Sammann said.

      “Crap, you once called it,” I reminded him.

      “Yes-a technical term. So crap filtering became important. Businesses were built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the Reticulum. But it had to be good crap.”

      “What is good crap?” Arsibalt asked in a politely incredulous tone.

      “Well, bad crap would be an unformatted document consisting of random letters. Good crap would be a beautifully typeset, well-written document that contained a hundred correct, verifiable sentences and one that was subtly false. It’s a lot harder to generate good crap. At first they had to hire humans to churn it out. They mostly did it by taking legitimate documents and inserting errors-swapping one name for another, say. But it didn’t really take off until the military got interested.”

      “As a tactic for planting misinformation in the enemy’s reticules, you mean,” Osa said. “This I know about. You are referring to the Artificial Inanity programs of the mid-First Millennium A.R.”

      “Exactly!” Sammann said. “Artificial Inanity systems of enormous sophistication and power were built for exactly the purpose Fraa Osa has mentioned. In no time at all, the praxis leaked to the commercial sector and spread to the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies. Never mind. The point is that there was a sort of Dark Age on the Reticulum that lasted until my Ita forerunners were able to bring matters in hand.”

      Also ... that shutterstock photo!

      "skeptical_hipster_with_phone.jpg"

      Looks more like

      "captain_nemo_slightly_disgusted_texting.jpg"

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    (The end of choice)

    It'll suffer from the same problems this sort of approach always has: no matter where and what you start with, you're never more than 5 recommendations away from Coldplay or Lady Gaga. Everyone is funnelled towards the same tired old pap. Twenty years ago, it would've been Michael 'not the ideal childminder' Jackson and U2.

    Like Insomnium? You'll love Biffy Clyro! Like Biffy Clyro? You'll love Coldplay! Like Coldplay? You'll love Runtime exception: maximum stack depth reached.

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