"No AI was used”

AI is here to replace you. So far, it seems that we safely can get back to sleep. There are obvious teething problems. Stilted AI-written pieces or AI-created images of people with extra limbs and fingers are some examples. However, many AI-advocaters argue that we should sleep with one eye open. The machine-learning is improving by the minute. AI is coming for you and your job. The next victim to the slaughter is music. This fact divides people. Some people argue that, throughout the ages, musicians have been "influenced" by and "borrowed" from each other. There's nothing new. AI just makes it much easier. Other people (here I include myself) argue that AI is different. Before AI, no matter of how influenced you were or how much you borrowed, you still had to put in the hours to make it yours. That is, if you had any artistic ambitions. Nowadays, the "influencing" and "borrowing" have turned into "stealing". The AI-advocaters like to think of it as a "democratization" of music (you don't have to be a musician to make music, or content as they like to call it). There are other unresolved issues. AI companies train their generative AI models on songs without their rightsholders permission. We will see how this plays out. I come to think of the rock band Queen, who on their early albums in their liner notes proclaimed that "no synthesizers were used". Contrary to popular belief, Queen didn't hate synthesizers. They just wanted to emphasize that the sound came from Brian May's guitar. Man and machine in a perfect symbiosis. Most musicians have been through enough the last two decades with restructuring of the industry and horrendous new business models. Will AI be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Maybe or maybe not. In the not too distant future record albums will be labeled "no AI was used" as a statement. This is going to be a mark of quality. Of course, if there are any musicians still around.