The debate about the use of AI in music continues to run and run.
In a Reddit post titled ‘So this happened’, Marc Rebillet - aka Loop Daddy - has uploaded a two-minute clip of himself and some loops generated through AI prompting.
In an accompanying post, Rebillet discloses that the work is part of a partnership with Google. Loop Daddy, known for his improvised performances, recently starred at the developer conference Google I/O, deploying the the Big G's AI product Music FX.
This being the internet, reactions on the post varied wildly. One poster commented: “How do we know it’s not an AI running your Reddit account now?” Another said sardonically, “When you can't come up with another idea... f**k it dude, just generate something. Pump it out, ChatGPT. None of it matters."
However, others were more positive, with one commenting, “I'm def not an AI bro, but I can't get why so much hate on this video. It's a new tool, your right to try it.”
Rebillet was one of the first musicians to rise to prominence almost entirely through social media, initially through Youtube videos of himself improvising songs, often clad in nothing more than his boxers.
He has managed to parlay that viral fame into a career, with live sets – which are often entirely improvised – skirting the boundaries between comedy, performance art and dance music. Technology features largely in his music, particularly the Boss RC loop station, hence his status as the self-styled ‘Loop Daddy’.
He is one of a number of musicians that have partnered with Google to promote their new toys. Others include ex-Fugee Wyclef Jean and the US songwriter Justin Tranter, and the three of them were featured on a recent Youtube clip in their respective studios playing with the Music AI Sandbox, a tool that through AI prompting can reshape and enhance existing tracks.
In it, Rebillet can be heard explaining “where I found AI really useful for me, is as this way to fill the sparser elements of my loops. It makes it sound, ironically at the end of the day, a little more human.”
“It’s like having this weird friend who goes ‘try this, try that’. And then you’re ‘oh ok, that’s pretty dope.”
Cynics may argue that he would say that. Google are, after all, paying him a large amount of money to do so. Indeed one commenter on Rebillet’s Reddit post made this very point: “the step towards normalizing AI in music via a very corporate sponsorship is a worrisome one.”
