AI's 'grotesque mockery' of the Australian singer has him going nuclear. Photo / Getty Images
AI's 'grotesque mockery' of the Australian singer has him going nuclear. Photo / Getty Images
Legendary Aussie singer-songwriter Nick Cave has unleashed on a song created using artificial intelligence that is supposed to be “in the style of Nick Cave”, describing it as “bulls**t”.
In his widely read newsletter the Red Hand Files on Monday, Cave responded to a letter sent by a fan named Mark from New Zealand, who had created a song written by artificial intelligence software ChatGPT.
The popular software was used by the fan to create a song “written in the style of Nick Cave”.
In response to the fan, Cave revealed dozens of people had sent him variations of ChatGPT trying to imitate him, and he was deeply unimpressed by the technology.
The ChatGPT’s song included the chorus: “I am the sinner, I am the saint / I am the darkness, I am the light / I am the hunter, I am the prey / I am the devil, I am the savior.”
“Suffice to say, I do not feel the same enthusiasm around this technology,” Cave said.
“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.”
“It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction. Who can possibly say which? Judging by this song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ though, it doesn’t look good, Mark. The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks.”
The singer went on to eviscerate ChatGPT further, describing the software’s output as “replication as travesty”.
“Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite.
“It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self.
'It’s a blood and guts business, here at my desk, that requires something of me to initiate the new and fresh idea. It requires my humanness.'
“This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering.”
The singer who is currently preparing his new album Bad Seeds, said: “It may sound like I’m taking all this a little too personally, but I’m a songwriter who is engaged, at this very moment, in the process of songwriting. It’s a blood and guts business, here at my desk, that requires something of me to initiate the new and fresh idea. It requires my humanness.
“With all the love and respect in the world, this song is bulls**t a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don’t much like it.”
