Country singer Randy Travis released a new song today (May 3, 2024). However, almost 11 years ago, he suffered a stroke and lost most of his ability to talk/sing. AI is what made this new song happen. My question, are you okay with hearing new music from artists like this, or even those that are dead? Because that’s what I foresee happening.
Have a lot of mixed opinions on this.
Reasons why I'm okay with it:
It's his imagination that came up with the song. His choice of instruments, melody, etc.
It's not posthumous.
Reasons Why I'm not okay with it:
Most artists are credited with a song when they themselves perform or sing it. Otherwise, it's just someone else performing their song. And then they'd get writing credit, it's not their song.
However, musicians like Daft Punk sample sounds to create their own music and may or may not have an actual singer performing lines in a piece. But the piece is credited to Daft Punk. So, if the singing is entirely AI generated, or generated sounds composed in such a way creatively to sound like singing... would that be credit to the act composing it (Daft Punk) or the technician who created the software that creates the sounds used for the voice?
Now, this sounds like it's his voice was fed into an AI process and used to create the sounds for the lyrics. So, it is his voice. And it's his music. And he's still alive. So, why does it feel to me like it's still not his music then?
I'm not sure if I'm just being petty or if there's something else I'm overlooking. But, I'm not liking this primarily for the way it will invariably be used throughout the industry. The writers guild strike already basically outlawed the ability to use AI to write scripts in movies and TV in Hollywood. I feel like this should happen with recording as well. But there isn't such a stance here.