Music Can Thrive within the AI Era
The birth of ChatGPT brought a collection of anxieties regarding how large language models allow users to quickly subvert processes that once required human time, effort, passion, and understanding. And further, the tech sector’s often stormy relationship with regulation and ethical oversight have left many fearful for a future where artificial intelligence replaces humans at work and stymies human creativity.
While much of this alarm is well founded, we should also consider the possibility that human creativity can blossom in the age of AI. In 2025, we will start to see this manifest in our collective cultural response to technology. To examine how culture and creativity might adapt to the age of AI, we’ll use hip-hop as an example. It’s one of the most lucrative forms of music ever invented, and one that has already been influenced by large language models. We’ve all heard the AI-driven rap songs by popular artists and seen them go viral, easily mistaken for authentic, original music. For example, during the recent rap feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, an AI-generated song called “One Shot” was released, and was incorrectly attributed to Lamar. In 2025 we should expect more AI-generated fake music, especially fueled by the social media circus where being loudest and most provocative can draw the immediate attention of millions.
In 2025 we believe that creative engagement with AI will begin to take on three different forms.
The first might be described as “full surrender”: Don’t run from the technology, but rather lean into the fact that artificial intelligence can create terabytes of music in minutes, much of it as enjoyable as the music made by our favorite artists. While this strategy will include leaving the music-making to the robots, human-driven aspects to music culture will remain. For example, one human element resides in how AI music is curated (think successful DJs), and in a new industry of art critics and commentators. This is not unlike the TikTok influencers who currently drive the widespread popularity of relics in the arts and technology. The human-led discussion of AI products can be big business, and will spawn a neo-influencer culture that compares and evaluates this progress.
A second strategy will involve an indirect embrace of artificial intelligence in the arts, where creativity becomes a healthy hybrid of the human and machine. In the case of hip-hop, artists such as 50 Cent have recently communicated their enjoyment of AI-assisted country-music renditions of hip-hop classics (often made for humor). This is a model we will continue to see: AI-aided reimaginations or remixes of classic songs. Further, we may observe elaborations on this model: growth of a battle-rap scene driven by AI algorithms trained on the data sets of human artists. Or maybe even rap duos composed of two members: a rapper and their AI-trained sidekick (with refrain hooks also by a mix of human and AI singers).
This sort of Robo-Franken-Hip-Hop leaves plenty of room for clever engagement and could spawn whole new subgenres of music. This will also have business implications: Artists can be remunerated based on their training data, which might be an improvement over the hip-hop business models of the past and present. The possibilities are only as constrained as the infinite combination of human ingenuity and computational power.
Lastly, 2025 will mark the formal start of a great irony: AI art will foment a new appreciation for classical human-made relics. Because the volume of AI creations will rapidly overtake human ones in volume, highly regarded human relics will become more valuable. For example, one of the messages that emerged from hip-hop’s 50-year celebration was that society still lacks a general appreciation for the art form. Fewer than a dozen hip-hop artists or groups have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Also, very few of hip-hop’s founding acts are wealthy, as they built the art form during an era when it wasn’t financially lucrative. Similar to how a retro-tech industry has emerged that celebrates the simple devices of yesterday, we will see a renewed appreciation for music from the analog era.
The rise of AI and related technologies will cast a new light on original music that was made prior to its advent. This will implore an appreciation for proto-hip-hop, which may translate into a lucrative industry around the preservation of original music, and an associated valorization of the artists. AI may aid in hip-hop’s origins, finally getting it the respect that it has always deserved, and a place among the high arts.
Human technology and art are two institutions that are defined by their ability to surprise us. Yes, the relationship between creativity and AI will be a stormy one in the immediate future, but 2025 will be an inflection point where we begin to embrace greater possibility. Maybe there’s creative light at the end of the technology tunnel, one where analog-era art forms like hip-hop can thrive in a land of large language models and whatever else the age of AI will deliver.
