Nick Cave hates songs written “by the emerging horror of A.I.”.
The ‘Into My Arms’ hitmaker does “not feel the same enthusiasm” for songs created by ChatGPT that fans seem to after they used the software to send him a few tracks “in the style of Nick Cave” and he admitted he is concerned about the technology.
The 65-year-old musician wrote on his blog The Red Hand Files for his January entry: “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.”
Nick deemed that music ought to stem from “suffering” from a real emotion experienced by a living and breathing person and not a machine.
He continued: “Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend.
“ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.”
The ‘People Ain’t No Good’ singer branded such songs “a grotesque mockery”.
Nick added: “Mark, thanks for the song, but with all the love and respect in the world, this song is bulls***, 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.”