Good Commercial Music Targets Emotions – AI Music Is Bad at That
In her article ChatGPT Needs More Cowbell (Source: The Atlantic) – Nancy Walecki describes the history of jingles and the influence that human creativity has on emotional response. The piece centers on the idea that great commercial music – the kind that gets stuck in our heads – is built on crafting catchy, pop-like mnemonics, but also a willingness to take musical risks, which humans are more prone to do than AI.
In her own trial of AI jingle generation, Nancy found that “many of these jingles were ridiculous; many were deeply average. But the real problem was that I couldn’t remember any of them.” She concludes that “good commercial music needs to target people’s emotions, and AI music is bad at doing that, at least for now” citing the Human vs. Machine music creation study by SAM and SoundOut.
The article leans into the spontaneity of human creativity with a reference to Blue Oyster Cult’s classic hit (Don’t Fear) the Reaper, saying simply “I doubt that AI – or most humans, for that matter – would have thought that ‘(Don’t Fear) the Reaper’ needed more cowbell.” But it just works, and that’s what we love about it.
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ChatGPT Needs More Cowbell (The Atlantic)