There’s a lot of hand-wringing about AI’s potential effect on music right now – all of a sudden, it might seem, although of course the technology has been long in the works. Those in the vanguard, like artist Holly Herndon, have gotten ahead of the crowd and already thought hard about how to use these new tools creatively, and (as she hopes) positively for the community. But that won’t curb their commercial abuse, which is what most of the present hand-wringing is about. That, and an AI imitation of Drake and The Weeknd by an anonymous “ghostwriter” which quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of streams after its release.
