"I made this (sort of)": Negotiating authorship, confronting fraudulence, and exploring new musical spaces with prompt-based AI music generation
This work addresses the problem of authorship and authenticity in AI-generated music for artists and researchers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing AI music generation without introducing new technical methods.
The author created two music albums using prompt-based AI music generation to explore the collision of personal junk mail with AI platforms and challenge the polished nature of AI-generated music, leading to reflections on authorship and musical identity through LLM-mediated interviews.
I reflect on my experience creating two music albums centered on state-of-the-art prompt-based AI music generation platforms. The first album explicitly poses the question: What happens when I collide my junk mail with these platforms? The second album is a direct response to the first, and toys with the inability of state-of-the-art prompt-based AI music generation platforms to generate music that is not ``practiced'', ``polished'', and ``produced''. I seed a large language model (LLM) with information about these albums and have it interview me, which results in the exploration of several deeper questions: To what extent am I the author? Where am I in the resulting music? How is my musical identity changing as I am faced with machines that are in some ways far more talented than I? What new musical spaces does my work open, for me or anyone/thing else? I conclude by reflecting on my reflections, as well as LLM-mediated self-reflection as method.