I'm not anti-AI, but I strongly believe the human element of music can be imitated but not fully replicated. Listening back to that song I can hear the attempt to stylistically play slightly off-beat to get the feel of a band playing without a metronome. The auditory illusion is there, but it still sounds off. Playing behind the beat is a feeling; it's not a calculation.
As a drummer keeps time, the band reacts by looking at the drummer’s hands and the sway in their posture. A drummer intensifies their playing as they respond to the feeling of air being pushed from guitar cabinets. A lead guitarist looks back at their friends and smiles when they are about to play that sweet lick that the bass player likes to play along with.
These are just simple examples that make all the difference when you listen back. I also can't imagine paying hundreds of dollars to go see an AI "perform" this solo at a concert. When I listen to music, I'm remembering the moment, the feeling, what the artist was doing to create their art. So still... no thanks!
Anthony Marinelli (guy behind MJ's Thriller synth jams) and Tim Pierce (accomplished session guitarist) riff on this https://youtu.be/OzuADujnEhQ?t=1205 recently. This whole video is a treat, as are most of Marinelli's.
When I see AI salesmen thinking they can attack into art, I think they naively see it as inherently imprecise or arbitrary, and they think because their technology has these properties it will easily cross over. This is going to lead to a lot of faux pas (remember NFTs?); it would be prudent to attack problems where some kind of correctness can be mechanically judged... OCR and software development are reasonable verticals at opposite ends of complexity to focus on, and pursue artistic rendition in a more experimental way letting artists approach the technology and show how it is useful.
These things won't replace rock stars, they will (or at least want to) replace the vast majority of the industry which is tv shows, movies, ads, etc, which the disclaimer as the end alludes to.
The thing I notice time and again in all this is they want you to believe technology is displacing labor at one end but there's usually a lot of retraining consumers/society to accept something qualitatively different to cover up or re-conceive what was. That's not a moral judgement, just an observation. But the end result is usually the same, some group of current or wannabe oligarchs playing musical chairs at the top without regard for the rest of the system.
That feeling of connection with other musicians while playing is something else.
I was live-reading lyrics sheets to some songs I’d never heard while jamming with a big group. Hit a chorus with some really great phrasing and bungled it the first time through. But the second time, the other guy singing and I just automatically made eye contact and had a whole conversation through body language.
“I’ve got it this time”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah”
“Oh fuck yeah”
“Fuck yeah indeed, my good fellow”
As a drummer keeps time, the band reacts by looking at the drummer’s hands and the sway in their posture. A drummer intensifies their playing as they respond to the feeling of air being pushed from guitar cabinets. A lead guitarist looks back at their friends and smiles when they are about to play that sweet lick that the bass player likes to play along with.
These are just simple examples that make all the difference when you listen back. I also can't imagine paying hundreds of dollars to go see an AI "perform" this solo at a concert. When I listen to music, I'm remembering the moment, the feeling, what the artist was doing to create their art. So still... no thanks!