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There’s no doubt that the advancement of technology has created some terrifying yet weirdly exciting things in the world of entertainment.
One of the more terrifying things that has happened is the advancement of AI and the ways it is integrating into our daily lives.
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It all started with some innocent apps that manipulated our voices to sound like our favourite celebrities, then came the pictures manufactured by an AI generator, which depicted all black rock festivals or fictional people from various decades and, now, we are at the very beginning of AI's replacement of creative jobs, with AI-generated songs in the styles of some of our favourite artists.
On a random day earlier last month, a song began to circulate. What sounded like an effortless collaboration between two popular American artists was eventually found out to be nothing more than an AI manipulation of their voices.
The song, titled Heart on my Sleeve, by Canadian rapper Drake and Canadian singer The Weeknd, hit social media with a bang.
To date, the song has more than 300 000 views on YouTube and hit 600 000 streams on Spotify before being taken down.
It's no secret that those numbers are far more than most musical artists even dream about, and it happened on a song that technically doesn’t exist.
The integrity of artistry is being threatened at its core, which is strange to think about when we consider the deeply personal nature of the creation of art.
There is, however, something to be said about New Age pop culture and the music that has populated our search engines within the last decade.
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We’ve all heard the statement, “they just don’t make music like they used to anymore”, a saying which may hold more weight than we realise.
The modern-day pop formula is far less creative than it used to be, with songs such as the 2012 hit Harlem Shake by Baauer at the forefront of a major pop culture trend, or even the almost pointless song Selfie by The Chainsmokers, which created a pop moment that influenced a generation.
In 2021, the world caught wind of a TikTok song that blew up from singer Gayle, called abcdefu, which gave way for myriad pop songs with childhood lullabies at the centre of their popularity.
What’s even scarier about this phenomenon is that both Drake and The Weeknd are among the most popular musical acts in the world, both multi-Grammy award-winning musicians, who have helped shape and cultivate the space for various subcultures.
If they are falling victim to the expansion of AI-generated art, what more for the musicians and artists who are underground or fly under the radar, and will they ever get a chance to prove themselves before AI-generated art takes over the industry.
Art has always been a personal saving grace. I recall growing up and only finding solace for my teenage angst in music. A
big part of why this medium of art touched me so much was listening to these real people, reciting so eloquently how they felt about the world, love and the experiences that shaped them, and this is something that AI simply cannot do.
The difference between AI and humans becomes smaller and smaller every day.
It seems we all move with the uncertainty of whether this speaks volumes for the potential of AI, or whether it says more about the collective mindset of the human experience and our evolution.
Perhaps the only saving grace of Heart on my Sleeve is that it was written by an anonymous TikTok user only known as Ghostwriter977, a ghost writer who is thought to be a real person behind the pen – giving way to the possibility that the song may be a publicity stunt issued on behalf of the artists.
An article published by The Verge called it “a fluky viral hit, a sloppy stunt by a crypto-adjacent startup, a revenge prank by Drake himself”, an idea only verified by the world of conspiracists.
Heart on my Sleeve could be the first of many legal battles between humans and generative AI art.
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There is a popular saying that goes: “There is nothing new under the sun.”
However, I think we’re on the precipice of something new, something we only see in the movies.
Through it all, there are only these pertinent questions that remain: What will become of our new world and what will become of our creative industry in decades to come?
