Bowie & T.Rex producer Tony Visconti: "Artists who use AI should step to the side and let real artists do their thing."

[highplainsdem]

Amen.

New interview with Tony in Music Radar:

https://www.musicradar.com/artists/david-didnt-seem-happy-about-it-i-told-him-he-could-come-with-us-but-he-declined-tony-visconti-reveals-bowies-reaction-to-holy-holy-the-supergroup-that-would-be-performing-his-songs

“David didn’t seem happy about it. I told him he could come with us but he declined”: Tony Visconti reveals Bowie's reaction to Holy Holy, the supergroup that would be performing his songs
Features
By Jamie Sefton published 10 hours ago
Visconti joins us to talk Holy Holy's farewell tour, working with Paul McCartney and why AI is "clogging the arteries" of the music business


Tony Visconti is a true music legend. Since the 1960s, the American-born record producer, arranger and musician has worked with an incredible array of artists, including T. Rex, Morrissey, Adam Ant, The Moody Blues, Wings, Sparks, and Thin Lizzy.

Visconti's most famous collaboration, of course, is with David Bowie, who he partnered with as a producer on iconic albums throughout his career, including The Man Who Sold The World, Diamond Dogs, Low, Heroes, Heathen and his final project Blackstar, which earned a Grammy award for Best Engineered Album.

-snip-

David Bowie was always interested in technology. Famously, he accurately predicted the impact of the internet on music and culture. Now it seems we’re in the midst of another earth-shaking shift, but do you think David would have been similarly intrigued by AI - or do you think he would have been more cautious of its dangers? What are your thoughts on it?

“I don’t really know. It would be speculation. I am not a fan of AI. I am a fan of I, in other words, ‘intelligence’, something humans have used for a million years. Artists who use AI should step to the side and let real artists do their thing. There is too much amateur music being released that clogs the arteries of the music business.”

Much more at the link. No paywall.

[OC375]

1. If it's good enough to replace anyone else, it's good enough to replace you.

We all need to come together on this. This "real artist" exceptionalism and "business" angle doesn't help. Just makes me want to say "Meh, join the club, elitist."

There are real people who consider themselves "real artists" in their own right being squeezed out at all levels and places, business be damned! I empathize, truly, but I detest exceptionalism. I'll buy you a beer, but enough with the sacrosanct artist crap.

[highplainsdem]

2. The ONLY reason that music generators like Suno work is that Suno stole all the copyrighted music

they could steal. Oh, and writing about music, too, since without those descriptions of music, the AI can't link a text prompt to anything.

There's nothing elitist in saying that real artists, real musicians, deserve more respect and attention than wannabe artists and musicians writing prompts to have fancy autocompletes trained on millions of artists' stolen work spit something out for them in seconds, in a pretense of creativity.

I don't want to see anyone losing work to the fraud that is generative AI. Tony's a nice guy from a working class family, and many of the artists he's worked with came from poor families and really had to struggle to succeed.

He isn't an elitist. He wants to see human work and talent recognized and rewarded. The amateur music he's saying clogs the industry is the tsunami of AI slop tracks, now a huge fraction of all the music released every month.

Editing to link to a Reddit thread. Fake music, AI slop, is now 40% of all songs uploaded every month:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SunoAI/comments/1r0it0d/ai_music_distribution_now_accounts_for_39_of_all/

This is especially unfair for young musicians starting out. Just as the flood of AI slop books on platforms like Kindle hurts real writers who are self-publishing.

Just as the flood of AI slop on YouTube hurts humans doing their own work to create videos, while AI users rip off other people's work to have AI churn out multiple videos a day.