Vincent Jacob

I'm I'm not afraid about the change in music because there will as long as there are humans on this planet, which is not guaranteed we'll have

Yep. Indeed.

Yeah.

people needing like the vibe or the emotion, the connection to something that resonates with them, that transport them. And one of the mediums for that is music and there will always be the need

and doesn't matter which instrument you're using, which software you're using,

Hehe.

as long as someone from one end is talking to someone on the other end, there should be something interesting.

Welcome to Taste Bench. I'm Bruno Marnette, my co-host is Philipp Zahn and this is a podcast about AI and taste. Our guest today is Vincent Jacob, a French artist who has spent many years in Los Angeles, where he had a rock band called Yards of Blondes and a podcast called Hanging on Sunset. He was the lyricist of a hit song by Johnny Hallyday called "un cri" with over a million views on YouTube, but he's always been a modest artist and he always talks of music as a passion rather than a profession.

So we wanted to hear his perspective on AI and how it will change how people compose music when they're not doing it for money or fame.

Hello. So today we have the great honor, pleasure to have Vincent Walter-Jacob with us. So one reason we wanted to talk to Vincent is because he's someone who's not from the AI industry, but from the artistic side of things and someone we would love to discuss the question of taste with because he's a man of taste himself as a musician, photographer, and also someone who has

a background in philosophy as well. So someone who knows how to spend some time to try and define words and concepts. so yeah, very excited to talk to you, today.

Thank you. Me too.

And maybe just to start with kind of talking about the present. I'm curious how has AI kind of changed the way you compose music? And then maybe we'll go back about your history, your background, but.

Yeah. So well a as a musician, I'm not very inclined to to use it, but I still

Hehehe.

do, I have to say. I I tried it and I enjoy some of the possibilities it gives me as a songwriter. mainly I use it to organize my thoughts. But also to

Interesting.

to to because i I there's so many topics when you're an artist, or even I guess for you guys it's the same.

Like you have so many ideas during a week that you need to organize yourself. And in the past

Mm-hmm.

I didn't have the tool that was working for me 'cause I tried notebooks, I tried a lot of things, notepads, but that was always lost. But now

Mm-hmm.

with Chat GPT that I use, I can organize in feeds and it helps me. But also more interesting I think for our topic is that I use Chat GPT also to teach me some stuff that I don't master.

Because originally I'm a self taught singer songwriter. I never took a lesson. my only teacher was Bruno. When we were teenagers and were

Because it was, yeah.

creating our first rock band and he was teaching me the guitar just because he had like five lessons ahead of me. So

Mm-hmm.

I never, you know, learned how to produce or mix or anything like that. And I always went to studios and, you know, messed around with softwares and tried to teach myself. That's what the way I do most of the time, fortunately. And I ended up asking Chad GPT how to mix a song. And then I was really, really surprised and impressed because after giving him well giving it some prompts

about, you know,

Mm-hmm.

the the results that I want, the aesthetics that I like and you know the kind of records that I love. Well I tried my way into it and just I told ChatGPT my setup basically what I had with which software, which plugins and he was like I I I I'm saying he he like he's a person. That's

It can, it's

alright.

I nodded it, yeah.

And it started like giving me some values that I had to enter that at first I didn't understand anything, but then when I pressed play, it was great. I liked it. And then I made some little twicks and then I did that with several songs and then I started to understand a lot of things that I didn't understand before. So yeah.

I'm curious

how much of that is a kind of technical know-how how much of that is telling you like oh if you are using this software the button is on the right and how much is it like I don't know music theory or like more like proper music

If

I just sometime I just send a screen capture. I'm like

Hehe.

I didn't get what you were telling me to do, so please can you tell me which button it is?

Yeah.

Depending on the version of the software, you know, will change and sometime I'm a a little bit lost. So it could be just like technical like that, but sometimes also I

tend to feed Chat GPT with more like chord progressions and stuff like that. it's I don't like ChatGPT to mess around with my the core of what I write.

Mm-hmm.

But in terms of orchestration or arrangement, sometimes I would like, all right, I'd like to have like an orchestra in the background.

Mm-hmm.

And I played these chords and those chords. Sometimes I use a capo and I don't know how

he even how to tr transcribe it into

Mm-hmm.

actual notes. So it will help me and then you know, start figuring out music theory too. So for me, Chad GPT is a great teacher.

It's actually interesting in the in in one of the well, actually in one in the f the first episode, we talked about this phenomenon that, you know, thirty years ago when you wanted to play music, you typically had to play within the band. Maybe fifty

Mm-hmm.

years ago. Then electronic music co came and it changed a bit. But now it seems like you have all these capabilities basically that you can be a one person artist that covers like massive ground

Yes.

that before was just infeasible, right? It's

I mean yes.

And also it started like maybe fifteen years ago already with the

Yes.

you know the the ability to build your home studio in your bedroom and around two thousand ten there was all these bedroom producer the starting to emerge and you had, you know, songs like mixed on garage band and they become a hit, like a global hit.

Mm-hmm.

So also ha

the fact that the music quality of the medium on w on which you listen to the song was degrading. It didn't matter so

Mm-hmm.

much like back in the day, like to spend thousands of dollars on on a recording because basically people were starting to listening it on an iPhone.

Interesting.

If you

I remember there was also kind of a different genre, right? Like rap was an example of a type of music you could do alone, And streaming platforms often are kind of blamed a little bit for also like pushing people towards kind of solo career, right? Just because like revenues

Mm-hmm.

for artists are kind of harder to share, right? Where was this part of the transition you think as well?

But also the

also like Instagram and all the platforms that value like actual interaction with one person. It's easier to be on Instagram as yourself

Mm-hmm.

than as a band. So I think it's like a combination of factors that did that to the industry. And and now it's even bigger, and I think we're just at the beginning of the AI revolution and now you have like software's like Suno.

You can just make a prompt and you have a like a solid like song that's coming out of it in f in two seconds.

I from an if you know, just putting on my economics hat for a moment. you know, normally if the what we call the costs of entry, so the the things that you have to pay basically to g get active in a in a domain, if they are falling, obviously there will be more entry, right? More people are trying to be musicians.

Yeah, definitely.

And you have seen this in the past. I it started not on not with AI, but w you know, if we think about the whole distribution, obviously there is a lot of slop garbage basically coming in. Do you also see something happening on the top that is changing or in the in the kind of in in

Basically, excellence that is structurally changing somehow, that looks different than it would look like twenty years ago, ten years ago.

Well, music is an industry. So labels in the past they tend to like reward, if I can say, things that work, right? And sometimes you'll you'll have something that wasn't expected, like a band from a garage in Seattle in nineteen

Mm-hmm.

ninety one that will

Yeah.

suddenly represent something for a whole, you know, generation. but then for ten years you have copies of that band.

So there was always a sense of like like I don't know if this if if this is where you're going with your question, but what I understand is like is does it affect the quality, right?

Does it change or does it go in different directions? Does it have different dimensions that it didn't have before?

I I think as as far as we're talking about the industry of music, I think it doesn't change. I don't think it it changes, but it changes for artists because now you have to compete with algorithm basically.

Yeah.

I think I heard like on a daily basis on Deezer, which is kind of like alternative to Spotify or Apple Music, they have like forty four percent of AI music now. So yes.

There was yes, of a

uploads, right? The list

the the the three the share of songs being listened to is is very small still.

Yes. So you had more and more people

I think Spotify

is a less more limited thing. I think that a lot of it is making it to the playlist now.

Interesting.

What's your general... So, Suno, I guess, is the most feared form of AI for musicians, right? I guess it's the one that can replace the entire song, right? The entire artist. Have you ever heard something coming out of Suno that you felt was somewhat original or are you thinking of it for now as still as more of a tool to mimic or copy existing songs?

I mean that's how AI works, right? They they

Mm-hmm.

use a big data database and then they make things out of it. So yes, obviously it's it's a challenge and also some artists that they were not willing to delve into that they're not starting to use it just to you know to see and they're I was discussing with a a a producer friend

a few weeks ago and he was telling me, Man, now they have like the the the studio version of it where you can mix.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And he had like slopey recordings. He just put the one of the tracks, not even the whole song, let's say a trumpet or something. And then he asked Suno to make it better, basically. And it works. So he was like, I'm starting to use it now, you know?

I see. So just

Because

for like as a level of polish for the end, like just to make a, to produce everything.

Yes.

Yes. But of course for the artist, if you start using that you're putting, you know, a lot of fun of the artistry out of your process. And I think that's that's the main challenge for the artist. If I I mean if you wanna keep having the fire inside of you and 'cause, you know, as an artist myself, like what is fun is when I just go in my studio and spend five

five hours just making music and just struggling and just like pouring my soul into this and

Mm-hmm.

be proud of the achievement. On my end is changing something that Suno Now is able to just produce the tracks in two seconds with a prompt. But on the listener end, I'm not sure that you know, soon or even maybe now, I'm not sure that they can tell the difference.

So that's a challenge too.

We

have a

I'm curious

in world of music, maybe it's less pronounced than movies, right? When people make a movie, there's so many different experts that are collaborating. You're never making the full movie by yourself, right? And people still take pride of having done this part of the masterpiece, right? I guess in the music, there's an aspect, you can be part of a band and you just play the bass and you're still very proud of the song even if other people have done the rest.

Is this a kind of similar relationship with the AI where like you're okay with the AI doing the drum as long as you do the melody or something like that? Or is there, like how do you kind of, guess, split the work in a way that still makes you feel like it's yours?

Mm-hmm. Well, that that's a very relevant question for me. Because now I work on my own, basically, and I'm not a drummer. So what do I do? I use logic. Oops, sorry. I lose I use logic to play the drums for me. in a way I was already using AI before you know, AI became became generative because it was

Mm.

already in the softwares. So I'm not gonna say AI bad or

AI is awesome and thinking we have to go beyond that because now it's gonna be part of our lives anyway. And

Mm-hmm.

but they are ethical questions, they are question about what's an experience for a listener, for an artist. And those

Mm-hmm.

questions are very interesting to me. I mean, I use AI, I try not to use AI to do

the fun part that I love doing. but also I know people, they're not singers, they're not musicians, they like they like to write lyrics, for example. And for I remember there's someone that was like sending me lyrics all the time. And

Mm-hmm.

I was like encouraging them but you know, I didn't want to produce them or anything. And and now I remember when Suno arrived, they were like releasing songs.

Because

Okay.

now they can do it on their own. Yeah, I think that's pretty valuable too in a way, you know.

I guess it's funny you definitely sound quite relaxed about the revolution of AI. You seem to think, for instance, in the drumming case that it's not that different from previous generation of drums maybe. But it's kind of, I would say outside of music, a lot of people are freaking out because AI is really noticeably different from previous automation. And it's, in my mind, it's...

I haven't looked closely enough in the musical domain, but I would imagine there is like very simple forms of automation where, you're just repeating like a classic reggae rhythm or classic blues rhythm and it's very like formulaic and very kind of, you know, established, you know, electronic drums. And then there's a next level. There would be the next level of, wow, like now it starts feeling like an actual drummer, right? Like

it does more

Mm-hmm.

of a subtleties or the nuance or something like that. Do you feel that we have...

had like a real qualitative difference where AI is now entering this other realm of like slightly less formulaic composition or.

I mean the you know, this conversation started f forty years ago with synthesizers

Yeah.

and drum machines, all the eighties music is

Yeah.

there's no drummers. I mean

Yeah, that's right. That's a point.

so I'm not sure that it matters so much because now electric electronic music is like part of the music totally.

So but what matters is I guess as an artist w what you're trying to achieve with this song you're making and worried, you know, if I I don't wanna say truth about it or a soul, but I think he has to what AI doesn't have

Mm-hmm.

is they don't have an experience of life.

They have data, but they are not living in the world. And what matters to me is I use my experiences in the real world and try to make sense of it through music or photography or if you're a filmmaker or movie. And that's what's gonna last for human beings as long as we're here. and if we're artists, I think

The yes, it's you maybe you will be floated with AI music. But we're floated too with like consumable music. Can I say that? So there are lot of hits and they're global and there's no shame in doing that kind of music or listening to that kind of music because it depends on you know what your th your mood. I mean if I

Mm.

go to the club and there's like electronic music and it's like

David Geta or someone that I don't parti particularly enjoy normally.

Mm-hmm.

it might be fun, you know? So I think there are different approach approaches to music. definitely it's not my approach, because I'm not, you know, an artist who's trying to be commercially v viable. I'm more into I do what I want to do.

And if it works, great. If it doesn't work, I'm just happy to do it. And baby because it's a necessity for me. Like I need that medium to express myself and make sense of the world. And AI doesn't have experiences or the necessity to achieve something, but offers you a lot of possibilities, I guess. So that's

Ask

sorry.

I guess.

Can I ask you a follow up question on this or maybe a bit more tangent actually actually? when you think about performance in the context of music, I mean if you go back basically there is a band, or maybe even earlier there is an orc orchestra that basically has to perform, then there is a band, a rock band, then it moves to electronic music where things are already starting to kind of change slightly. Then at some point, you know, DJs are basically using computers to make music live.

Which can be very automated already at that level depending on how lazy or how engaged they are. How do you see this going forward? So you have a let's say you have the this person who has the lyrics and pr produces music.

Mm-hmm.

Is there any way of how what will be the performance of the future for these people, for these artists?

I don't know. I I

Yeah.

I'm struggling imagining the w what the future might be because of this change. And I don't know how someone can like perform if they're like making everything through a prompt, for sure. But I'm sure that

human artists that are able to play music will continue to do so and that might be what set them apart from the rest. I don't know if you're in a venue and you're at a concert and you're feeling the an actual bassist playing through the amp, well yeah, it it hits differently. But I don't want to sound like a like a a view con we say in French and that old

Yeah, yeah.

I'd love to

push the argument a bit. In other domain, like coding is the one where AI is known to be really impressive. People are starting to worry that it's going to become so good, so smart that it's going to be rarely the case that a human coder would do anything better, if you see what I mean, right?

In music, if you extrapolate a bit like the progress we see in Suno and so on, do you think there could be a time where actually a human drummer will never match the quality of an electronic drum? could it become so good that using a human to do a drum becomes ridiculous?

Mm-hmm.

People use this argument for driving cars as well, right? Like there's this idea that cars are become so safe when they're driven by your robot.

that people at some point will find it criminal to let a human drive a car, right?

Do you

Yeah.

think there's any risk of that happening in music and if not, why?

It will definitely change music as an industry. So you're talking about the drummer, but what about the mixer? What about the

Hmm.

mastering engineer? What about the people engineering lights at the show? Maybe you just can, you know, put a AI software and it will do the job perfectly. So yes, it

Mm-hmm.

will change the industry like it's changing the industry for the co coders. But what's not gonna change, that's my bet.

is the necessity to express yourself through art. So you know your your podcast is about AI versus taste, right?

And I mean taste is very subjective

Mm-hmm.

and taste can be simulated, I guess.

Mm-hmm.

Cause it's

you're co coding it so it's like a language. But what you can't really code is the necessity to express yourself. So I'm not worried f I I mean I'm worried about the commercial aspect of it. Are artists gonna be able to make a living out of it? Yeah, I'm not sure about that. But as an artist

Hmm. Yeah. As a hobby.

Yeah.

well how

It was always hard,

right? So

Yeah. Well you know like yeah, I I mean because probably my personal focus is not on the you know commercial aspect of it. I would still be happy just doing the craft.

Can we switch gears to photography? Because that's another interest of yours.

Mm-hmm.

I know you're very modest about all your art forms you touch, but it's another one where you've won various prizes and you seem pretty serious about it. I would imagine photography is another area where AI has been pretty mind blowing in a way, right? Like realism. Yet one thing I've discussed with quite a few people is that

I don't know that many people who have been mind blown by an AI generated picture. They've been impressed by realism, the performance of it, but someone

Yeah, exactly. It's not there yet.

impressed by the artistic nature of a picture, if you will, coming from AI. At least it's not a very common experience, people report. Again, do you think there is some sort of a gap between on the one hand, this AI image generator being very pixel perfect for photorealism and at the same time,

missing some sort of core capability before

I we've

they can be truly useful to visual artists.

To merge the question of taste and also

Mm-hmm.

reuse your expression of being bombarded right now with being bombarded with a lot of chat

GPT visuals everywhere and they're shitty. And they will probably improve a lot and they will match what photograph photographers can do and they will do yeah, it it's gonna be

in this command this indiscernable in this twin in well breath and yeah

and indiscriminated, indistinguishable.

Can't indescripable. Yes.

but again the

Actually,

how's that gonna be though? So that's the thing, I'm... I'm...

I think so. I think I mean,

imagine what AI could do four years ago and what they can do now. They just released a new model.

But again,

they seem to be improving on the photorealism, on the precision, on the correctness, the coherence, all these metrics. But I'd like to go back to the point you've made before, this sort of this authenticity, people putting their soul into it, people putting some sort of effort and vision into what they do.

There's one very sloppy use of image today, which is just illustrating a blog post or illustrating like a poster, you know, announcing a concert or something.

Yeah.

Musicians are being lazy instead of asking like the visualist artist friend, they just use ChargPT to make like some colors, right? Sorry.

And because they're on a budget too. And they're on a budget. And they don't have the budget.

Yeah, yeah, I totally understand the budget aspect to it, but is there a...

Isn't there a bit of a risk that the fact that they're kind of effortless, like the fact that they don't just ask LGBT, like, you know, come from some kind of background color, you know, as opposed to going through the process of trying to get a bit of a vision for like, this is the kind of illustration I want next to my music, you know, isn't there something that typically

Again, I'm not worried.

makes a big difference today when a human does it versus an AI?

I'm not worried. Today I was scrolling through Instagram and I watched a little reel. It was like an animation and there was hashtag like made by human or something like handwritten animation.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I read that and was like, yeah, I didn't ask myself what I was watching, if it was like generated or if was real, I was just enjoying it.

And when I saw it was like made by a human, I was really happy about that. Somehow. Yeah.

You were, yeah.

And and and I think again it's gonna be the the message you you carry through your art. So maybe AI will be able to match what visual artists do. But I don't think they'll have the message that is carried by those visuals.

It's the same in every art, I think. If there's a human behind and like true art to me,

Mm-hmm.

like somet something you care into this world because it's a necessity within yourself that comes from your experience of the world. And some people are really good at it and that those are the true artists. A lot of the other artists are not.

that good and

Yeah?

there are not many geniuses and I don't consider myself part of it.

The

case of photographs, I have a I have a very specific question. Because I think there is a so in the in the case of music you can make the same point that, you know, music is handmade, there is a difference, right? It's it's almost like nostalgia that we we have actual humans performing in front of us. That could be a a future way we're going.

Mm. That would be of value.

Yeah. But it i it also has a bit of a almost like a it has a weird vibe at some level, right? It's it's a certain thing that they perform even though the the the thing itself is different. it could tot it could make total sense. But for photographs I think there is a bit of a there's a different thing.

if you take some photo some very very famous photographs like the one by I think Robert Ca Robert Kapper from the Spanish Spanish War, Spanish Civil War, there is this I think there is there is a difference because you know that person has been in that in that place at that time. There's someone behind shooting, I mean the the photograph in that case. Or if you take pi I mean pictures by Helmut Newton where you basically where the photograph itself is almost like a voyeurish element

in the photograph itself. And I think it

Mm-hmm.

makes a big difference in that case for photos, whether there is a human doing that or whether there is it's basically you know that it's generated by our by by AI. Would you agree or is it basically do you think like people are looking at it and they don't feel that? It's in the end doesn't matter.

I agree with you as a as an artist and as a like a fan of arts. I'm not sure about other people. But also what you're saying is like striking me because like seeing the footage of the war in Ireland right now and you have all mixed together.

Like real footage, totally generated footage, a mix of AI generated and real footage, or footage that are real but are not coming from this time of war, another

Yeah.

war, another time, and it's being manipulated or not, but actually the algorithm that puts everything at the same level, but the evaluation of it it's not what's true, but what's more shareable, basically.

Mm.

is already confusing us. So we we live in a world where we don't know exactly what's generated or not. And we receive it and we're affected by it. And I think if you're generating a picture and it affects you and it was not a real photographer that took it, like Helmut Newton for example, but you feel that voyeurism and it disturbs you, I think you can be affected by AI.

generated products or artworks, if you can call that that way. But in the end, yes, the experience is less there's less value to it to me because I care about the relationship between the crafter and the one who's gonna be like experiencing it. So there's I I don't have the answer to your question.

But I I I'm asking the the same question to myself. Like where is the value of artwork? Is it in the art of the the craft of the creator or is it the in the the other person at the other end of the line receiving it? Well, it's a tough question

We are here for tough questions.

I guess there's a world where I wonder the... So we talked about the use case of care. The indie artist does music for his own fun. We talked about a person consuming music in a nightclub for some actual joy. And I wonder like the indie artist meeting another indie artist, right? So when you imagine the kind of...

photography competition you participate to. When you look at the art of the other participants, you would try to estimate, I imagine part of you care about whether they are being authentic, right? Like whether they're sharing real experience and all the stuff you mentioned before about yourself, right? And I'm curious, like how do you recognize it in a way? Like do you think there's a bit of a test you can run to get a test if a piece of art is somehow based on real experience or not?

But what I can say in in my the way that I experience art, it's it's really rare that I really shaken by something. And I I'm kind of obsessive then when I recognize something that

Mm-hmm.

makes vibrate something in me, like a a frequency that I didn't know I had or something

Yeah. Yeah.

that makes me think. So it's very rare.

And I don't listen to a lot of new music, but when I find something new that I love, I will like listen to it non stop for six months,

Mm-hmm.

maybe more. And just one artist. And then cycles like that. So it's yeah, for example, Angé de Patrin is yeah. And I think it's

I've had a gil de poitrine in the loop for the last week.

Me too.

very we can talk about Angine de Patrine after if you want, because I think it's very symptomatic of the entire AI.

is yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah 100 %

And but to come back to your question, if I'm on the exhibition and there are other contestants, I will talk to them if I can. I will look at the arts and try to vibrate with it just like any art. And again it's very rare when I'm like mind blown. But if it does, you know I'm not questioning I just accept it.

Do you care about the, so do you think you care deeply about the level of efforts people make on a piece of art? Or you don't care as long as it's kind of authentic? I'm asking this in, a lot of people say the key to success on YouTube or whatever is actually, like people watch your videos if they feel you've made a lot of efforts into preparing them.

A lot of people report feeling disappointed when they realize, no, that was just made by AI because they feel like, that's cheating. They didn't actually make an effort. Do you think for you as someone appreciating what you see around you, do you think it's an important part?

I mean, again, like displacing a little bit your question is not I I wouldn't say the effort, like

Mm-hmm.

time spent, but more like

Okay.

the you know, the what they put into it.

mean, the amount of soul power...

I mean the the question that they're asking and if it's valid and if it resonates with me and if just Jackson Pollux that has just put like thrown paint on the canvas and it took him maybe twenty seconds, or maybe not, I don't know, but it looks like it.

Yep.

Well fine, I'm fine with it because will resonate resonate with something that I'm deeply questioning myself too, you know? So

Not the amount of time but probably the message that is being conveyed.

Interesting.

S so I mean

Your question is if it's coming from a prompt.

No, no, you basically answered my question very well. Basically, there's industries that are impacted by AI in different ways. You would imagine, for instance, in the luxury world, sometimes people are going to prefer something made by a human because it's actually harder for a human to make it, and there's some sort of effort and prestige in having a human make it, as opposed to a machine. And there's a certain logic to all that.

Yes,

yes. Craft.

For art, in a more, I guess, romantic type, maybe it doesn't matter as much. Like as soon as the emotion is real, as soon as the message is real, then maybe effort is not

But also to complete

a requirement.

to complete my answer in answer to that, Jackson Pollock probably spent his ten thousand hours painting before came up with this, you know? So

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

artistry is is the l artisana craft. It it

Yeah.

it's a craft. You have to do it to like we said at the beginning of the the podcast, I'm a self taught artist.

like basically. Never went to music school or photography school. But I did spend a l lot of time doing it. Because I enjoyed it. You

yeah,

know? So yeah, there is something like that. Like I couldn't be where I am right now in term of like doing my mixes for example. If I didn't have all these hours of

producing music in a studio, listening to mixes from engineers and stuff. So there's

Yeah.

but again it's experience. And of course what's very frustrating right now is when you you can achieve that with a prompt.

But

I think that's also a question, do you really achieve the same thing? Right? That's the that's a subtlety, yeah. Like there is very often this question of is it on the outer appearance, is it the same, or is there something deeper? Right. That's also why the question I asked before is there for instance the perspective, the knowledge that there was someone behind the camera who made that shot involved in the relationship and the art or in the music as well, right? Is it someone who mastered that instrument over a long time making the difference in the in the in the perception?

Maybe on the... Yeah.

We we admire people, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

We do admire Helmut Newton. We do admire

well we don't, but I do Yes, yes. And we

Yeah yeah yeah. No no no. On a certain level I do. On other levels it's very foreign for me. No, but I I mean there's

Thank you.

don't admire like a a code, an algorithm.

That is That's a good questi that's an interesting question actually, yeah.

There's actually that's where I'm a, no, no, no, I've

well.

talked to people who believe code is poetry. Like they're absolutely in love with the effort of making code and one reason they're very upset with the eyes because it's killed them of the joy, the pride and all of that, right? Very similar

Hmm. This is the same.

to, yeah, it's exactly the argument you just made. One thing that worries me a bit, but maybe I'm the one being a Luddite and to worry is taste formation.

Right, like the, if...

If you're learning music and you're going through the struggle of, only had a guitar and you had to tune it properly and you had to learn to do the proper, the physical effort. And when you were writing song, you probably wrote a of bad songs until you found some riffs that resonated with you. So I imagine there's some, like you said, it takes time to have many experience with say an instrument or a craft or something to develop like a...

clear sense of what you like that others might not, like what's your style or something like that. I wonder in the world where, imagine a five years time when kids go to music school, all they do is they type in the prompt, description

Yeah.

of the music they want, right? And it's always pitch perfect. It's always like auto-tuned. Would they...

with that again rob them from that opportunity to like form a pretty unique taste. Like the fact that they lack this sort of like trial and error or like the more like high friction interaction with the craft.

I mean so yeah, you you you put something new into my perception. So coders are like artists, they're a actually enjoying doing this.

Yeah,

it's hard to imagine outside of it. I can totally understand the

There is there is a just as a side note, there's actually a very famous

book in hackers in hackers' circles that is called Hackers and Painters, I think by Paul

Made that point very explicitly.

So I mean it's always on on on on the end of the artist again, yeah, if you're just prompting and you're not basically making the result

Mm-hmm.

is pretty hard. It's like I guess when factories started to emerge during the you know, at the beginning of the century or like f Ford

Yeah.

And suddenly you're in a factory and you're not making a car. Well, you're not making an a an actual object and you're just making a part of it and it's very

Yeah.

automated and it's boring and it's like breaking, crushing your soul. Right? I think there's

Yeah, yeah

some parallel to that, that if music only is like prompting the next big hit, well yeah, you're you you don't care about music, you care about money.

Or success.

also there could also be the case that it's just the the interface, right? It's like the same thing that we you know we we moved away from let's say in parts from acoustic guitars to electric guitars. We are just interfacing differently, we are playing it differently, parts of it. It's just a different instrument. And the instrument here would be that you have a computer basically that gives you access to the all the world of music that exists and then you're using it.

Mm-hmm.

And you're not even you might not even be doing it for the commercial reasons. Would you feel that let's say this this is available in five years' time, which is possible.

And if kids enter this world without the knowledge of an actual instrument, do you think it's possible that that you know we just climb up the ladder and they will be creative on that level or is it like that do you feel like they sh they

probably need it anyways?

Yeah, excellent.

It's probably the best question of the podcast so far because you just changed my perspective. no really, because

Good.

I'm thinking about myself producing music on my laptop, using logic, the logic drummer and all you know, all the stuff we can use now. Probably if somebody from the seventies, like in a rock band, would see me right now.

the way that I'm producing my music in my room probably would say, that's not music.

So I think you're actually right. I think in five five years from now, kids that were born with AI will start doing stuff that we can't imagine right now, probably. And that will be the evolution of music. But it will be also a big part of it will be also the industry and it will be the same. It's just monetary reason, repetitiveness and

They'll have a tool that is built for that because it's youing using the data and they can mimic what's working, what's being trendy. But there will always be new kids with merging you know different styles of music, maybe through a prompt, and there will be producers. I mean it's just like the DJs, right? We were talking about that earlier. Probably someone from the eighteenth century w w wouldn't see

a DJ as a musician. But the performing the performing life

Yeah, I mean they would they they would probably think he's a

he's a he's a magician or a a kind of a mystical figure being able to

Yeah. Yeah.

get all the music out of a box, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

I still remember when I was a teenager, my father thinking radiohead was not music. It's like, you know, in the darker days of a Tom York going electronic, in the electronic side, there's a real rejection. Like, this is not music. This is just random. That was

yeah, yeah, K Day.

He did the say look

the way he was looking at it.

just remember when Elvis Presley was doing his thing, basically old people said this is absolutely absolutely crazy. Or think about the Beatles, the Beatles basically. People were saying this is this is endangering the youth, right? So we have been there. I mean not we,

Yeah, yeah, they had to, yeah,

Hmm. Yeah. We've been there.

but

Again, I would like to, sorry for keeping, going back again to the code analogy. There's something for instance, people are worried about now, which is if kids don't write code themselves, if they don't go into the low level details, telling a machine what to do, they're gonna struggle to match the level of like current senior engineers who actually have this luxury of really understanding what's under the hood, right?

One thing I worry a bit about in the music world is, let's say go to a concert with someone who really doesn't know anything about music, and they point at the guy playing bass and they say, look at the guitar over there. And I go, my God, they really, they can't even know the difference between the bass and the guitar, right?

Yeah.

You see when there's some people that have this really deep lack of understanding of what they're hearing in the sense that they don't have any of that technical breakdown.

And I would imagine someone like you who find pleasure in not just David Guetta and Taylor Swift, some of the music you enjoy is the kind of music that musicians enjoy, right? Are they kind of music for musicians or they think that they are easier to appreciate if you are able to understand, I guess, aspects of it. What I wonder again is, is there something similar in music where

If tomorrow the way someone creates music is just saying, make it more light or just add more energy and then it just adds other parts of the drum that you don't know how they're called, is there going to be something lost in there?

I mean

Like I said, I n I didn't learn music. So if you ask someone

yeah.

who studied in the conservatory for fifteen years, if I make actual music, probably

Okay.

they'll they'll say no according to their perspective and taste and how it was how it was formed. But my taste in music was formed by Nirvana The Beatles. Like

Yep. See you

about share.

Yeah, like bands who or we can't say they are masters at their instruments or music in general or music theory. S i i it affected me

very good point actually very good point yeah very sloppy

in a way that it changed my life and I'm trying to do the same way of expression so I won't be judgmental of these types of people.

Very good points. That's a very good point.

I mean I mean if you i

it just go if you look at what happened in the UK last year with the craziness about Oasis, right? I mean they

Yeah.

are definitely not the best musicians in the world, but apparently they were very authentic

No, no, it doesn't mean anything.

and they moved a lot of people in their time. And it meant a specific period obviously that people are now trying to get back to.

Yes.

was very interesting.

And I'm a big fan of Mozart, but I'm a big fan of the Ramones. You know? And not to put them on the same level. It's different.

Yeah.

You've already given a lot of closing remarks about the fact that you're not afraid of the future.

Perfect.

Yeah.

I guess maybe just to finish, on a... What would you advise people? So, Philippe and I are coming to the topic from more of the AI side. We are surrounded by kind of technical...

people who are very deep into the question of what AI can do, cannot do, what is the next frontier and so on. When people say that taste is the next frontier, what would you caution against? How would you advise people to think about the question of taste in the regard to AI?

You mean like like engineers?

What would you recommend to people who just basically don't have much of a kind of artistic background and are using the word taste possibly the wrong way?

Mm. Well, that's a shame. It's so bad.

You

So bad for you.

No, I mean we always know people, they don't have any passion in life and they seem to have a a great life and but I always ask myself, like, Wh you know, what's the how how can they do that? And I'm always

Can they live like that?

Yes, you 'cause I I'm I'm I'm obsessed with art you know all the time. That's the

My only focus in life beyond my family. So if you you're an engineer and you're working at OpenAI and you're like crafting some something that matters so much to the world right now and you're not like interested in art or ethical

You

question about it, well yeah, yeah, yeah. You're gonna yeah,

It sounds, yeah, I see what you mean.

you're gonna end up like giving your technology to the Pentagon. Yeah, that's what's gonna happen.

Yeah.

Or funding robots for army.

And so what would you want them to do? What would be your future requests for OpenAI? What would you want them to do to be more

Yeah.

friendly to the artist world?

Well drop the Pantingon contracts first.

Yes, yeah, that's a start.

That's a good start. no, I sp for myself, you know but no. I don't think that should be

Yeah

No, w I sometimes I wish that it it could control my mix direc directly in Logic Pro. But but then it becomes sudo, right?

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Yeah, let's see.

No, I I yes.

Would you be a f Sorry.

So

you want it to do more, like you open to it to do more, which makes total sense.

Sometimes I want it but I'm not sure it's good.

also sometimes I'm little bit annoyed by the how do you say that? Let tick. How'd you say that in English? The the tic,

there.

like AI ticks, like the way he talks, they talk and then reproducing the always the same formulas, but I think it will get better.

Mmm.

Conversational style.

That's

Yes. Conversational style be

Yeah, that's it to me now,

annoying sometimes. Even if you tried to prompt it away, it always comes back. Like emojis all the time. Fuck the emojis, please. Can we swear on this podcast?

Okay, request number two. Kill all the emojis.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Makes sense.

Second

dead.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for watching. We've got more episodes in the oven, so please like and subscribe to get notified when they're out, and please check taste-bench.com to read about the taste benchmarks and the creative engines we're building towards.