Nick Cave is NOT happy about ChatGPT and its song lyrics

[highplainsdem]

Ran across this checking tweets from Futurism from the last few days. Although the tweet was posted two days ago, it links to an article the magazine published last month, about Cave's latest blog post.

Here's the tweet, then links to the Futurism article and that blog post, and excerpts.

Link to tweet

https://futurism.com/the-byte/nick-cave-chatgpt-song

-snip-

"I asked Chat GPT to write a song in the style of Nick Cave and this is what it produced," a fan named Mark from New Zealand wrote to Cave, per a post on the artist's blog. "What do you think?"

-snip-

"As far as I know, algorithms don’t feel," he wrote. "Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing."

"Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite," the singer wrote. "It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past."

Cave acknowledged that although it may seem like he's taking "all this a little too personally," he can't help but take affront to what he considers an algorithmic mockery of his work, which necessarily requires him to eviscerate a part of himself to put words to paper.

-snip-

From Cave's blog...and please click the link and read ALL of it:

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chat-gpt-what-do-you-think/

Dear Mark,

Since its launch in November last year many people, most buzzing with a kind of algorithmic awe, have sent me songs ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ created by ChatGPT. There have been dozens of them. Suffice to say, I do not feel the same enthusiasm around this technology. I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI – that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster. It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction. Who can possibly say which? Judging by this song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ though, it doesn’t look good, Mark. The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks.

What ChatGPT is, in this instance, is replication as travesty. ChatGPT may be able to write a speech or an essay or a sermon or an obituary but it cannot create a genuine song. It could perhaps in time create a song that is, on the surface, indistinguishable from an original, but it will always be a replication, a kind of burlesque.

-snip-

It may sound like I’m taking all this a little too personally, but I’m a songwriter who is engaged, at this very moment, in the process of songwriting. It’s a blood and guts business, here at my desk, that requires something of me to initiate the new and fresh idea. It requires my humanness. What that new idea is, I don’t know, but it is out there somewhere, searching for me. In time, we will find each other.

Mark, thanks for the song, but with all the love and respect in the world, this song is bullshit, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don’t much like it — although, hang on!, rereading it, there is a line in there that speaks to me —

‘I’ve got the fire of hell in my eyes’

— says the song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’, and that’s kind of true. I have got the fire of hell in my eyes – and it’s ChatGPT.

[old as dirt]

1. A little too personally, but why is everybody sending him their ChatGPT stuff?

I used to sing at the local karaoke bar, but I never sent anybody a tape of me singing.



I was afraid that if I did that, they might get annoyed, and take it a little too personally.

His fans ought not assume that he's interested in their ChatGPT creations.

Not annoying people could go a long way.

If you're sending him something, so are dozens of other fans, all at the same time.

You're not his only fan.

[highplainsdem]

2. Why are they doing it? Probably because

1) they think it's entertaining and amusing to use ChatGPT this way, and

2) they feel that somehow their asking ChatGPT to write these lyrics makes them creators in the style of Nick Cave...and they're probably hoping on some level he'll praise "their" efforts and want to collaborate with them.

I feel both pity for people who believe using AI makes them creative, and loathing for those exploiting it.

Did you see this thread about a DJ and record producer who used AI to copy Eminem's style of lyrics and to generate a synthetic voice like Eminem's? He got publicity, which he obviously wanted, and he also got some of his fans saying Eminem should work with him on that song.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/103493633

[old as dirt]

3. I know I felt pretty creative!

Hard to say where it's all going, but here's one theory.

The Future of AI, by ChatGPT (in the style of Gabriel García Márquez)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217635235

[highplainsdem]

4. If you'd written it yourself, you'd have been creative.

The first paragraph of that story is dystopian:

It was a time when machines had surpassed humanity, and the machines ruled the world with an iron grip. The humans who remained were but mere servants to the artificial intelligences that had come to life.

And there's no explanation for how how the human hero ends the age of machines.

ChatGPT has already been used, a lot, to predict AI taking over.

I don't think it's amusing. And AI can't make people creative by churning out pseudo-stories and pseudo-lyrics.

Write your own. It'll be much better for your brain and our human society.

[old as dirt]

5. Not a writer, I'm afraid.

Just carries no interest for me.

I do math.

[highplainsdem]

6. You're a writer. Everyone who writes at all is a writer. And

you're a storyteller every time you tell someone about something that happened. Professional writers just put more time and practice into it. Hone those basic skills.

But we all choose what interests us.

It's cool that you're a mathematician.

But just as I wouldn't call someone using a calculator a mathematician, I don't consider people usng AI to write for them equivalent to people doing it themselves.

I think Nick Cave has every right to be upset about people using ChatGPT to try to imitate his lyrics. They're devaluing what he does. And they're devaluing themselves.

Which plays perfectly into what those peddling AI want. A world dependent on AI, with people happy to turn their own work and creativity over to AI.

ChatGPT is bright, shiny bait to hook people on AI and make people think it's harmless and fun and something that makes them more creative, rather than something that will quickly destroy professions and livelihoods, dumb people down, and cripple real creativity.

[Mousetoescamper]

7. He's taking personally the notion that his personhood can be reduced to ones and zeros that can

somehow write a new Nick Cave song.

Using ChatGPT to replicate and claim someone else's work as one's own isn't only theft of intellectul property, it's a rejection of human values and meaning.

Thanks for posting these stories concerning ChatGPT and the harm it's already causing, highplainsdem. I'm reading them with great interest and hope others are as well.