> In the case of a human studying, a person puts in effort and gets rewarded for their efforts.
When someone needs something composed, they don't learn how to write music. They pay someone else the bare minimum, e.g. a few bucks on fiverr. The person will spend the least possible amount of effort to try to make their life go around with the little money they got.
When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free.
Neither the person you would hire or the AI credited those who created the material they trained on.
> When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free.
In other words, you pay a few cents to big tech for a generator that only exists thanks to work real composers, singers etc who now get the grand total of 0$.
As opposed to paying $5 to a singular composer that only exists because of other real composers, singers, etc., as they studied the craft. On the other hand, the easy access may cause new types of artists to appear by lowering the bar of entry, or just make custom music more generally available and more widely used as the price makes it a commodity.
We also stopped hiring computers (the occupation) and instead pay big tech companies which made computers (the device) available to everyone. And we stopped hiring people to do dangerous manual labor as companies started selling machinery to automate it. Markets change.
> As opposed to paying $5 to a singular composer that only exists because of other real composers, singers, etc., as they studied the craft
Yes.
> computers
> dangerous manual labor
If people are not in danger and don't have to do mechanical work, it's one thing. If composers stop composing original music that was used for training current AI because they don't get paid anymore then the field stagnates. Same for writing and everything else
People doing mechanical work made art through physical objects. Woodwork, pottery, glassware, you name it.
There are now far more options, both on the high and low-end, with the whole area being more affordable. The quality of most products also arguably went up, as factories beat handmade goods. And yet, if you want custom artisan goods, you can still pay a woodworker for it at more or less the same cost as you would have otherwise, as their labor costs are a function of time required and local living conditions.
In some cases, those workers were the ones to automate, benefiting from the assistance - woodworkers using CNC mills and laser cutters even for handmade goods, or composers themselves can use the AI - to speed up their otherwise fully manual work. It benefits the majority creating the demand, and tends to improve the craft overall.
> ... then the field stagnates.
A market that is not changing has already stagnated.
Dangerous manual labour like mining or tunnel building. In woodworking the art is art but if you use a machine to copy my original design then it's the same old theft again. :)
> A market that is not changing has already stagnated.
Yep. The way art is changing is thanks to original work and no one will be making it since anything you make gets stolen for free
> When someone needs something composed, they don’t learn to write music…
Speak for yourself! There is only one thing that scares me more than composing music, and that’s paying somebody a few bucks in fiverr to do it for me.
Despite your personal fears I believe I spoke for the vast majority of cases rather than just for myself.
Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely...
> Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely...
By the composer, yes, but the composer here is the AI. In neither case did the musicians that the composer studied/trained on get asked.
And that's the point: The difference is the replacement of 1 flesh-and-blood composer with 1 virtual composer, with the consequence being the lost business of the former. The artists studied were never part of the transaction in either case.
Now, the long-term consequences for artists - e.g., reduced supply on the low end as they're out-competed - is harder to guess, but that's just market dynamics. It may very well increase supply as composition becomes more available, diversifying by allowing people with other skills or creative treats to create music that previously could not - even if the musical part is done by AI.
Not AI, people who trained AI and who use it for profit
You can learn yourself but if you use an automatic tool to bypass and automatically make similar works and compete with original authors then you're IP thief
When someone needs something composed, they don't learn how to write music. They pay someone else the bare minimum, e.g. a few bucks on fiverr. The person will spend the least possible amount of effort to try to make their life go around with the little money they got.
When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free.
Neither the person you would hire or the AI credited those who created the material they trained on.