DJ Jim Q's Playlist: Touch

Welcome listeners! We have made it through month one of 2023. February’s theme is Touch. Selected by the wonderful folks from the Lisbon chapter of Creative Mornings. Lately I have been thinking about human connection, our virtual spaces and our physical contact with one another. It is mostly instigated by my recent return to in-office work and the increased cadence of social activities done face-to-face rather than virtually. I’m sure others are feeling this as well.

Another provocation that has me thinking about human touch, especially in the context of creative work is the proliferation of emerging AI tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT. Anyone who has played with these tools can’t help but be impressed and intrigued with the eerily human-like output of these algorithmic producers. Last year, Midjourney, one of the AI image generation tools, was grabbing attention and scrutiny for its uncanny ability to replicate human art and imagery with nothing more than a simple text prompt. The images produced are weird, but often pretty good and occasionally even great. Things start to get complicated when AI is creating work in the style of real world artists without attribution, permission, or compensation. Artist’s have copied one another since the beginning of time; in fact, that’s how most artists develop, learning through mimicry and growing beyond those initial influences to finding their own voice. More than a few of my adolescent notebooks are filled with accurately reproduced pencil drawings of Iron Maiden album covers (shout out to Derek Riggs). I think the difference is that no matter how hard I tried, I could never reproduce his work perfectly, my idiosyncrasies, and inadequacies were always imprinted on the drawings. Work produced by a human is always forced through a filter of our own peculiarities and individual perceptions. Distorted and warped, the end result is inevitably affected by our imperfect human touch. I think that’s what we find so compelling with handmade art. Artificial Intelligence increasingly does not have these same limitations.

Over the past few years, my friends and I gather virtually in Discord to play games together and to generally socialize. It has become a somewhat regular meet-up space, almost like a corner pub. Recently, with all the hype surrounding ChatGPT, the topic of AI art naturally came up in our discussions. We are a fairly music obsessed group of friends, and so our immediate inclination was to ask the ChatGPT to attempt some songwriting. We started shouting out all kinds of bizarre amalgamations or artists and themes and constraints to throw into the machine. We tried a few failed experiments, but I think our most successful prompt was “can you write a song about giant cats and an ancient curse in the style of Bruce Springsteen”. Here is what we we got back:

Verse 1:
They roam the streets at night
Giant cats with shining eyes
They once were small, but now they’re fierce
An ancient curse, a mystery surrounds their birth

Chorus:
Oh, the curse of the giant cats
An ancient tale, a warning of that
The power of the curse, it’s real
And it’s something you should fear

Verse 2:
The townsfolk talk in hushed tones
Of the giant cats and their unknown
Origins, a curse upon our land
But the cats, they just keep expanding

Chorus:
Oh, the curse of the giant cats
An ancient tale, a warning of that
The power of the curse, it’s real
And it’s something you should fear

Bridge:
They say the curse was cast long ago
By a witch, with a heart full of woe
But now the cats, they rule the night
And the curse, it seems to have no end in sight

Chorus:
Oh, the curse of the giant cats
An ancient tale, a warning of that
The power of the curse, it’s real
And it’s something you should fear

Outro:
So beware, when the moon is high
And the giant cats, they roam the sky
For the curse, it still lives on
And it’s something we must all confront.

Then we asked if it could also write a complimentary chord progression for the song and it obliged with this simplistic composition:

Verse: C - G - Am - F

Chorus: F - C - G - Am

Bridge: Em - D - C - G

Outro: C - G - Am - F

Admittedly, this is pretty basic stuff, but amusing nonetheless. And while the world would definitely benefit from more songs about giant cats, I don’t think Bruce has too much to worry about just yet.

It is a fun toy to play around with and certainly provides hours of distraction. Hey ChatGPT, write a song about weightlifting in the style of Morrissey, or a song about Pokémon in the style of Danzig — the possibilities are endless and endlessly dumb. One thing we quickly picked up on with our queries is that the learning model’s success seems to be predicated on large repositories of consistent predictable examples. So the tool seems far less accurate with artists that have limited output or those with subtle or varied stylistic attributes. So responses to Bob Dylan will be much more recognizable than maybe an artist like Bad Bunny. Despite the hysteria in some creative circles, the bots do not yet have the nuance to replace human art. The algorithm can’t yet replicate the intent and the human touch that we, as flawed and limited organisms, bring to our creations. Not yet anyway.

I’m a fan of Nick Cave, and I really enjoy his newsletter, The Red Hand Files. In a recent edition, he responds to a fan who bravely sent him a ChatGPT-generated song “in the style of Nick Cave”, his response is witty, scathing, and worth a close read. Beneath the wry scorn, I believe what he is ultimately saying is that no matter how accurately or convincingly an AI can reproduce human work, it will always be a facade wrapped around a sterile set of procedural instructions. By definition, it will never be the expression of genuine human experience and that human touch is something we intuitively feel. When the AI can hope, dream, love, hate, suffer, and fail, maybe it will have the depth to create great art, but for now, that is well beyond its reach.

Because of the heavy references to AI in this post, I decided to experiment with generating the images using the AI imaging tool Midjourney. The header image was created using the text prompt “Nick Cave hugging a massive boombox caress tender” and the other image in the body was created with the prompt, “bruce springsteen fighting giant cats with glowing eyes at night using a guitar”. It’s pretty wild stuff. Interestingly, the AI can’t seem to get the fingers right. So when the androids come for us, we will know them by their extra fingers. Keep an eye out and stay vigilant, humans.

Can you feel it, the theme this month is Touch. So reach for your headphones, plug in, and feel the music. Caressed by frequencies high and low, I hope these songs of connection embrace your soul. Sinead O'Connor proclaims “I Want Your Hands on Me”, John, Paul, George, and Ringo just want to “Hold Your Hand”, Doja Cat and SZA demand intimacy with “Kiss Me More”, and the Pointer Sisters need a “Slow Hand”.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoy these playlists, reach out. I’d love to hear from you. Give me a shout on Twitter or keep in touch by subscribing on Spotify. See you next month with another playlist.