How AI Is Affecting Music Through The Perspective Of Dani Filth From Cradle Of Filth
"It's soulless and dangerous." This is how the vocalist would describe the impact that artificial intelligence has over music and adjacent art sectors. “It affects the entertainment industry, whether it’s music, art, theatre, film, and it’s going to affect all walks of life as well,” Dani Filth mentioned.
In a recent interview with Spain's Metal Journal, the Cradle Of Filth's frontman shared his thoughts on AI’s prospects, but also pitfalls associated with its use. The musician raised awareness on the undeniable impact that the technology has on human connections and overall creativity.
When addressing the importance of songwriting in the eyes of the band, Dani was consequently asked whether they would “consider using AI as a tool for that? Do you see it as a help or a threat? Helpful or dangerous?”. Dani explicitly said that he sees it as “dangerous” and recalled a disturbing experience concerning AI music-generation program: “I have a friend who is a computer programmer. He writes code for computer games and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Last January I went to his house for a meal and he showed me something that scared the crap out of me: a very new program at the time where you could literally type in everything. You could type in what kind of music you wanted, what the lyrics should be about, how you want the video to look, the genre, the style… you put all this stuff in and five minutes later, you had a song.”
Going further, he went on saying that AI-generated content feels “soulless”, emphasizing the discrepancy between the thorough process of human artistry and the instantaneous results that AI offers: “The problem is that it was soulless, because essentially what they do is they collect bits of information, millions of them from the web and they combine them very quickly. And what they do is they learn from it. I know artists who are AI creators and the longer they do it, the better it gets. For example, a painter or a band who spends a year writing an album, recording it, putting all the visuals together, releasing it... these things can be done almost instantly. It affects the entertainment industry, whether it's music, art, theatre, film, and it's going to affect all walks of life as well.”
Dani also highlighted some benefits, such as aiding disabled individuals, but in the end, he mentioned that any positive nature will be shaded by the downsides: “Everything has benefits. There will be disabled people who will benefit from using AI. There will be things that do the work for you and make it easier for you. But that's not the point – it's going to make the human race lazy. Look at the way people are consuming music today. We just have access to everything. There's no soul searching. Now you don't have to go to a record store and find an album. A fond memory I have involves a record store called Sun Records, in Madrid. I was looking for certain records for as long as I can remember. I had them on vinyl when I was young. One by a band called Blood Money and one by Agent Steel. And I knew that somewhere there had to be CDs of both of them. I walked into the store and there they were, the two albums I’d been searching for years on CD, literally side by side. There was something very spiritual about spending the time going from store to store looking [for an album you really wanted]. Now you just have to press a button and I think you lose the ability to enjoy things as much. I think discovering bands, growing with them and having them be a part of your life is also important.”
In the end, Dani concluded to label AI as dangerous: “I think it is a danger. And I'm not talking about Terminator robots and Skynet, although that could be a problem eventually, but I just think, for people's spiritual growth, for the replacement of hard work of artists in whatever they do, whether it's music, radio, TV, film, anything, I think it's a bit of a problem.”
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