I’ve often been heard to be a little negative about the influence of AI on Voiceover and its impact on the creative industries in general. After all, having run rampant and without regulation for several years now, I’ve watched as a British Male Voiceover Artist how its decimating models of livelihood.
My argument isn’t that it’s inherently evil and my position isn’t that I hate it. What I don’t likes is the way that it’s been unleashed without regulation, accountability and certainly without consultation with the industries it affects, not just voice over. It sticks out and turns up in low end productions, where quality is not the priority, so there is reason to be optimistic.
As a creative in general, a provider of British Voice-over Services and a lover of the UK Arts Culture, I’m tired of being lectured by engineers about what constitutes art; that its here so you better embrace it and that all creativity exists purely for the purpose of profit.
What really grinds my gears though is that the voices often have a point. So if, like me you’re torn between AI’s utility and its parasitic grasp on creativity, here’s a quick case for and against AI in a creative space thats massively coming under its influence – music:
The Argument For AI In Music
Without wanting state the bleeding obvious, Beethoven was a musical genius, known for his ground-breaking compositions and innovative approach to composition. He was a visionary, pushing the boundaries of taste and he revolutionised the symphony.
Being such a trail-blazer, would he shy away from cutting edge tools and techniques if they advanced his creative process, or made him more productive ?
Once the whole model of Composer Patronage died in the C18/19th, along with the Courtly Dukes and Earls of Europe, imagine suddenly being able to compose popular music for a paying audience.
That’s where Beethoven found himself, but there were problems. The orchestras left behind were small, sparsely equipped and often relied on the services of un-reliable, poorly fed musicians.
I doubt any composer of that day would have been content with being ‘true to the period’ if they had alternative resources to hand. They’d have been properly hacked off at not being able to realise the music in their heads.
Here’s a few things I bet Beethoven would have loved if they were available:
Virtual Instrument libraries
AI Technology
Digital Audio Work-stations
He wouldn’t care that its not ‘real music’. He never left much written about how he actually composed, but I bet he’d believe the only thing that mattered was what came out of the speakers.
The Argument Against AI In Music
Have you ever heard of a composers’ Dice Game? Its a technique used by tonal composers since Mozart and Haydn to inspire creativity and add an element of chance to a work.
The Dice Game involves pre-determined rules that guide decision making. By assigning previously written pitches, rhythms and musical motifs to different outcomes of a dice roll, composers let chance dictate some aspects.
Sound familiar ?
With AI generated music, algorithms guide decisions in a similar way, but with the aim of replicating what we’re conditioned to accept as pleasing. There’s no ‘chance’ involved. There’s also no chance of ever creating anything that breaks the mold with it.
It uses probabilistic models to generate outputs that mimic creativity. By training AI models with vast amounts of data, it learns patterns and styles and appears to compose music.
Hmm ! Compose music, so what do we mean by that ?
If we accept that music is nothing more than a commoditised service for the good of marketing and a mindless monody of vanilla, then bring it on. Its perfect.
Alternatively, if we accept that all art exists as an expression of the Human soul and that the value lies not in its utility, but its inherent value to an individual that creates it, as well as the audience that interprets it and whose life it enriches, then it can get stuffed.
Both the Dice Games and AI present challenges to traditional models of creativity. However whilst one leads to growth and an expansion of possibility, the other leads to composers making beats !
So where are you on the AI spectrum ? Would Mozart have used it ? Should we let it do its thing at all costs ?
Feel free to get in touch to either chat about this, or if you’d like to discuss a project that needs a real, Human Voiceover from the modern tonal era, where I make nice sounds come out of the speakers.
