Nick Cave declares AI in music as “unbelievably disturbing”
Nick Cave has again shared his fears about the possible intrusion of artificial intelligence into the creative industries, which he thinks will have an “humiliating effect”.
While AI has grown rapidly over the last two years, and been used as a tool to assist people throughout plentiful walks of life, including the music industry. Every day, swathes of AI-generated music are added to Spotify, and although artists are yet to be replaced, Cave is worried that this won’t be the case forever.
“Its intent is to completely sidestep the sort of inconvenience of the artistic struggle, going straight to the commodity, which reflects on us, what we are, as human beings, which is just things that consume stuff. We don’t make things anymore. We just consume stuff. It’s frightening,” Cave said in a new interview with The Australian.
Although Cave’s manager has told him not to worry “because people will want the real thing”, he’s less than optimistic that’ll be the case. “I’m an enormously optimistic person about the world in general, but I think the demoralising effect or the humiliating effect that AI will have on us as a species, it will stop us caring about something like the artistic struggle that we will just accept what is fed to us through these things.”
Cave then said that he sees humans “becoming in awe of the banal”, and then highlighted the AI music generator, Suno, which he labelled as being “utterly banal” with “no soul or spirit”. The Bad Seeds leader does confess that he believes services like Suno might be able to make “good” songs, he finds it “quite terrifying” as a concept.
Furthermore, Cave is also fearful that the use of technology is making bands become lazy by using ChatGPT to assist with lyrics which is helping the switch happen “effortlessly”.
The Australian concluded by saying, “I find it all unbelievably disturbing. I’m not worried about my own job or something like that about being replaced or something. Just what it’s saying about us as human beings.”
Cave’s latest comments on this subject arrive after he used ChatGPT to write a song as an experiment last year.
Furthermore, during a conversation with the New Yorker in 2023, he said: “AI may very well save the world, but it can’t save our souls. That’s what true art is for. That’s the difference. So, I don’t know, in my humble opinion, ChatGPT should just fuck off and leave songwriting alone.”
While discussion around AI in music has died down somewhat recently compared with 2023, Cave’s latest remarks show that he remains fiercely against the idea of technology interfering with a human art form.
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