How far away are we from artificially intelligent artists replacing human artists? It’s within our lifetimes, for sure. Some say it’s as close as five years.

Google’s Project Magenta proved that machine learning/artificial intelligence can study Bach fugues and compose music so similar, musicologists can’t distinguish them from actual Bach fugues. The project has effectively proved that machine learning can study and then replicate the compositional patterns of even the most intricate and learned composers, with a high degree of sophistication.

Startups like Authentic Artists are creating AI-powered, virtual artists, armed with AI-generated music that they can control and that listeners can interact with in virtual environments.

“We are very intentionally not trying to create a digital facsimile of what already exists... We want to use new tools to create new art, new experiences, new culture. The appeal is that these artists can really be vehicles for collaboration with the audience, so that [audience members] can selectively shape the live show.”

— Chris McGarry, Authentic Artists

I’m all for new creative and artistic experiences. My worry is that once people can’t tell the difference between music created by a human and that created by a machine, it’s a slippery slope to cutting them out of the process altogether.

Think about the fact that Spotify effectively eliminated thousands of working artists’ careers, virtually overnight, by replacing the royalties paradigm with the streaming paradigm.

Think about the fact that the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, is paid more per year than all the fees the company pays to artists annually—combined. And that Spotify, at 155 million paying subscribers at time of writing, is still losing money most quarters.

I don’t mean to pick on Spotify here (and I hate that I probably sound like that guy from Metallica). I’m simply making the point that if profit and convenience are the driving factors pushing in the music industry forward today—and they certainly seem to have been from the Napster era onward—it’s a very small step to simply pushing those artist fees to an emerging company like Authentic Artists to replicate the style and sound of every original artist out there.

How many fans would actually care? I hope a great many would… but you never know.

Sidenote: jump to the 1 hour mark of this Mylar Melodies interview with BT for a detailed discussion of this topic - with some potential solutions.

Perhaps music will continue to be a hobby for humans in the future—something we like to amuse ourselves with. But commercially, can humans compete with AI? It remains to be seen. Without a doubt, the era of AI musicians is upon us.

I’d love to be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.