AI and The Shock of the New

Nick Cave screams into the void

“The Shock of the New” is culture’s allergic reaction to new art forms. It’s an attempt to kill off the invader.

Whether it’s hip hop or comic books or the blues or video games, or movies or TV or fan art or even novels, these were all considered “not art.” They were lower, inferior, and contemptible forms, not capable of conveying the insight, humanity, and emotional breadth of real art.

This doesn’t just happen with art, it happened with the internet, cars, trains, factories, or electric lights. Anything that was once new – which is everything – was subjected to the shock of the new and targeted for defeat or elimination.

This is happening now with AI.

These attacks come from many different angles, but I want to focus on my domain: creativity and art.

In this realm, the singer-songwriter Nick Cave has been one of the most persuasive and eloquent critics of AI as a creative tool. Cave wrote an influential and ferociously critical letter about ChatGPT. Cave’s words have resonated widely in the months since he wrote it. (If you don’t like reading, you can watch Stephen Fry read the letter here.)

Cave argues that writing song lyrics with ChatGPT is “participating in [the] erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself.”

Holy shit guys!

Nick Cave certainly has wisdom to share about the value of art and how it enriches your life. But he doesn’t have wisdom about ChatGPT, and c’mon, has he ever used this stuff? Judging by his level of revulsion, which is extreme, I’d guess he’s probably never typed a single prompt.

I’m not a great artist like Nick Cave, but I am artistic and I have used ChatGPT for creative tasks. Anybody who has done the same knows this: ChatGPT is bad at art.

If you want bad lyrics, ChatGPT can write those. And y’know, for most pop music, bad lyrics are good enough, so let’s start there.

Yeah, you got that yummy, yum, That yummy, yum, That yummy, yummy

Bad lyrics are good enough

Cave thinks songwriting with the assistance of ChatGPT is not songwriting. Here’s a bit from his letter where he addresses a songwriter who uses ChatGPT for lyrics because it’s quicker and easier.

That ‘songwriter‘ you were talking to … should fucking desist if he wants to continue calling himself a songwriter.

Cave thinks the lyrics of songs are of paramount importance. But lots of musicians and fans do not share this opinion.

Cave makes serious music with serious lyrics. But most people don’t wanna hear that shit. Of all the millions of songs being streamed right now, almost all of that music has stupid lyrics.

Here’s some of Justin Bieber’s famously stupid “Yummy.”

Yeah, you got that yummy, yum
That yummy, yum
That yummy, yummy

It goes on like that.

That song has 770 million views on one platform. It certainly has over a billion listens in total.

Pop music is mostly stupid. You and I and Nick Cave might not like that kind of music, but most people do. They want catchy songs they can sing along with and the lyrics are often unimportant.

If pop artists want to quickly write stupid lyrics with ChatGPT rather than dash them off themselves, I’m sure we’ll all be fine.

But stupid lyrics aren’t just for stupid artists. Lots of great musicians don’t care much about lyrics and toss them together at the last moment. 

Mumble mumble mumble

Good music has stupid lyrics too

Plenty of great artists don’t necessarily value lyrics and sang meaningless strings of words. 

David Bowie sometimes wrote jibberish lyrics. “Life on Mars” sure is a great song, right? Ever listened to the lyrics? No, you haven’t, but here’s a bit of what’s actually said.

It’s on America’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
’Cause Lennon’s on sale again

Michael Stipe’s early lyrics with REM were entirely jibberish and maybe not even words at all. Here’s a bit of “Radio Free Europe” (whatever that means).

Keep me out of country and the word
Deal the porch is leading us absurd
Push that, push that, push that to the hull
That this isn’t nothing at all

Plenty of Nirvana’s lyrics were written by Kurt Cobain moments before recording. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” starts like this. 

Load up on guns, bring your friends
It’s fun to lose and to pretend
She’s over-bored and self-assured
Oh no, I know a dirty word

Again, bet you never knew most of what was being said there.

Cave would certainly not dismiss David Bowie, Michael Stipe, and Kurt Cobain as “not songwriters” and yet they tossed together lyrics like they were scribbling homework minutes before class.

The most important part of music is, y’know, the music. And inane or banal lyrics can be compelling in the right musical context.

Is prompting ChatGPT less creative than stringing together rhyming syllables? Perhaps it is if you just cut and paste ChatGPT responses, but I’m gonna argue that many songwriters probably won’t be doing that.

William Burrough’s famous novel Naked Lunch was sliced together from existing texts

ChatGPT is useful for good art

One of Cave’s major themes is that ChatGPT undermines artistic struggle.

ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning. It rejects that there is a collective, essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence, connecting us all through our mutual striving.

I suspect Cave is imagining someone prompting ChatGPT for lyrics, cutting and pasting whatever it spits out and presto.

This is not the reality of creating something good with ChatGPT. This entails lots of editing, rewriting, and writing. ChatGPT is a powerful tool, but it is extremely dependent on the orchestration of a living person, with a heart and a soul. The creative struggle is still very much real if you want to write good lyrics.

The best ChatGPT can do is create fragments that a creative person can isolate, then copy, transform, and combine those bits and others into something good.

There is, of course, a rich history of artists thinking like this.

The writer William Burroughs popularized “The Cut-up Technique” in the sixties. He used to cut out bits of text and string ’em together. Bowie, Cobain and Thom Yorke all did the same thing for lyrics.

I made a documentary series about how this technique applies not only to words, but to music, film, technology, science, and ideas. Everything is a Remix, folks.

Music listeners aren’t idiots

One of the weaknesses of the artistic mindset can be insularity. Put more bluntly: your head is stuck up your ass. Sitting by yourself and composing your great thoughts often means you’re pretty into yourself. I’m speaking from experience here.

Cave is guilty of this in his letter. He’s thinking of his own struggle and striving, but he’s not thinking of his partner in the dance, the listener.

I’ve spent thousands of hours of my life as a listener. The listener is seeking connection with another soul and insight into themselves and into life.

Only extraordinary experiences can do this. If good art is easy and common, then good art is worthless. If everybody can spit out great lyrics with ChatGPT, nobody will be paying attention. The truly great work will have to be even better – or at least different.

Great art gets attention because it is extraordinary. This doesn’t mean it’s better, it just has something unusual. If ChatGPT starts writing good lyrics, the differentiator for good lyrics will move elsewhere, and great artists will still struggle to create this extraordinary work.

There just has to be an apocalypse

Steeped in Biblical narratives as he is, Cave’s vision just has to culminate in a Book of Revelation-style apocalypse. He can’t just say that ChatGPT sucks and you suck if you use it. 

ChatGPT has to be “[eroding] the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself” and “just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world.”

Holy shit Part Two!

Here’s my guess about what’s coming: culture is more resilient than people think. We’ll all adapt, the shock of the new will fade away, and life just goes on. The whole panic gets forgotten and then gets repeated for The Next New Thing. 

Art created with AI is not yet good. But it will be. And it won’t happen because AI is that much better, it’ll be because brilliant people find a way.