This post contains and links to (clearly-identified) AI-generated content. As remains the case, none of my writing on this blog was generated by AI.
Imagine my excitement to learn that Pagan Wander Lu just dropped a new EP, Built In Obsolescence. And then imagine my horror to discover that it’s actually produced by P-AI-gan Wanderer Lu; an AI that’s been given PWL lyrics and some artistic direction.
Wot.
Nothingness is what silicon dreams
My younger child’s been getting into PWL in a big way lately. As a result of this, I ended up making time for a careful re-listen to a lot of the back catalogue. This in turn inspired a blog post last year in which I mentioned that Checker Charlie‘s observations about humans replacing their work with machine effort feels increasingly prophetic in the age of generative AI. That’s something I didn’t see in it when I first reviewed it 13 years prior.
I’ve played with AI-generated music a couple of times myself, of course, mostly as an academic exercise. And it’s becoming more and more apparent that it’s hard to avoid bumping into it in the “real world”.
Early efforts at AI music were pretty unconvincing, always sounding a bit auto-tuney, frequently struggling to stress lines in the right places, and tripping over themselves when they try to do anything even remotely more-interesting than a simple repeating melody atop a predictable chord sequence. But they’re getting… shall we say… “better”, and there have been times nowadays when I’ve gotten some way through a track before realising that I’m listening to AI.
At least PWL’s being honest about it and declaring at the outset that this is AI-generated art. There’s plenty of folks using AI to generate content online and not declaring it, which is pretty awful1. Anyway: in this EP the AI’s moderately well-concealed and listening casually to most of the tracks I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been told2.
Is there life enough in these chords?
So I listened to the EP. Three times.
The cover of Checker Charlie, I’m sad to admit, works. It’s got the feel of early-nineties pop, full of synths and saccharine, but instead of insipid lyrics about love it benefits a lot from Andy’s lyrical prowess. It’s a bouncy bop that would be forgettable if it weren’t for the excellent story told by the words is, I suppose, what I mean to say. And, of course, it’s the song that would have made me think about this. Anyway: I enjoyed it and would absolutely listen to it again, and I don’t know what that says about me, about the song, or anything else.
Uncanny Valley doesn’t work as well. Musically, it feels like a new artist in 2012 drew inspiration from their dad’s new wave albums but wanted to make it sound more like Carly Rae Jepsen was collabing with Daft Punk. And the result is kind-of…flat? Could I even say… soulless? It feels like it might have been the B-side of their cover of Chemicals Like You, which rolls out next in the same vein. Twice was probably enough for these two.
Repetition 4 is among my favourite – let’s say top 15? – Pagan Wanderer Lu songs and the AI’s cover of it starts so strong. It finishes pretty strong too. The voice it’s chosen shows only a hint of uncanny-valley-autotune and it wails plaintively. The most human-made bits – the lyrical themes of fighting for creativity against your own struggles as a vulnerable and flawed human “machine” – remain solid. I really expected to love this one! But by the time we were half way through the song it felt… musically-repetitive. You know when you get a pop cover of a classic song sometimes3 and you feel like the cover artist… missed the point somehow? That’s what this feels like to me.
The repetitions of “we are all machines… for dancing” in the original felt meaningful and real; a human’s cathartic resignation to pleasure in the simple things we all enjoy, despite the challenges of life… but the AI cover adds this kind of doo-woppy backing vocals that subtract, rather than adding to, the meaning. I’m not saying it ruins it – it’s still a fun and bouncy version of a great song… but it’s one of those covers that leaves you longing for the original.
And then there’s the “unaligned version” of Uncanny Valley. I’m not sure if the introduced distortions in this version are AI-generated or not. They don’t feel like the kinds of “creative” choices that any AI I’ve played with would make, so I suspect this represents a closer human intervention in the AI’s process: humans imitating machines imitating humans, perhaps? Anyway: the change doesn’t add anything for me.
Had this been produced entirely by a human, I’d say that EP consists one one track I’d add to my everyday playlist (the cover of Checker Charlie), maybe one or two tracks that I “wouldn’t necessarily skip” if they came up on a random shuffle while I wad driving… and the rest just feels too much like “bad cover” vibes.
And that’s as much of a review as I’m willing to give, for the reasons touched-upon below.
Building the engines of our own defeat
I continue to have several issues with the widespread use of generative AI, and in particular I have problems with it being used in the production of art. Those are partially mitigated by it being used by an artist to remix their own work, and partially mitigated by the transparent declaration of the use of AI by the publisher both of which are true in this case. But many issues (ethical, environmental, etc.) still remain.
Perhaps the biggest of which in this case is my concern that we’re using automation wrong.
As a child, I was optimistic about a future in which machines would take away the boring and repetitive work that humans do, leaving us free to pivot to experimental and experiential roles: the joy of working hard in the quest of discovery and of creativity. But instead, the predominant popular use of generative AI is to replace exactly those things, leaving humans only with an increasing amount of drudgery, review, and fact-checking. Where did we go wrong?
Don’t get me wrong: I love that Pagan Wanderer Lu has created this EP. Taking art that he’s created, whose concept touches on the concepts of AI… and feeding them into an actual AI for reinterpretation is transformative. It’s worthy of discussion as a piece of art in its own right. And the result is… well, some of it’s good, and other bits are okay.
What I don’t like is what it represents: the wider societal issue of the mainstream use of these technologies that have enormous unsolved problems.
So I guess… I appreciate the cognitive dissonance of enjoying a peice of music and disliking what it means?
Footnotes
1 Whether or not the side-effect of undisclosed AI-generated content “poisoning the well” for future AI training is a good or bad thing remains an open question, in my mind, but it’s certainly a real phenomenon. You know how we salvage the wrecks of ships sunk before the atomic age because they’re untainted by man-made radioactivity, which makes them useful for special purposes? It feels like the Internet before the explosion in generative AI may provide a similar cultural resource for future AI training, if you see what I mean.
2 And assuming I wasn’t already familiar with the artist, who doesn’t usually sound like an auto-tuned female singer.
3 I don’t have a specific example so I hope this is a universal experience!
