The sampler and the AI — beat it?
The 1980s was a special decade for music. Computers and synthesisers changed the sound of music in a rapid way, as the development of the technology moved so fast.
One of many new inventions was the sampler, used mainly by hiphop artists as they reinterpreted and played with music from other artists and other decades. Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys contain “somewhere between a 100 and 300 samples” according to the makers.
Sampling of music spurred the controversial topic of copyrights and intellectual property of music and sound. It would probably be impossible to legally make a record like Paul’s Boutique today.
But we are at the cusp of another era of controversy over intellectual rights with the advent of AI generated art. Services like Midjourney (which is used to generate the Santa pictures in my latest series of posts) can copy the style of an artist and generate new art in seconds, which looks very similar to the original.
Is that “theft” or simply an algorithm being “inspired” by an artist? Most likely, that question will end up in court within a few years.
Once again, technology changes the landscape of art and culture. And the legal system tries to keep up.
