Sophie Burbery. Photo: Supplied / Paul Taylor
It seems a week doesn't go by when another example of the wizardry of Artificial Intelligence comes to light.
Be it another day in the office for a Star Wars stormtrooper, or a video of a blues singer who exists only in cyberspace, AI's ability to imitate human creativity seems to be progessing at an exponential rate.
But composer, feminist and Auckland University doctoral student Sophie Burbery says Artificial Intelligence is only as deep as the material it has to work with.
And that material is mostly based on the tastes of the popular music machine.
Ask an AI platform like Suno to create a raw-edged, contemporary blues sound, it has plenty of material to imitate. Ask it to create a classical Indian raga and the results, Burbery argues, are likely to be less than ordinary.
Burbery spoke with RNZ Concert about her research into and interest in AI.
The creative viewpoint of what goes into cyberspace, she says, will determine what comes out.
Burbery says there are alternatives to the popular AI platforms which don't rely so much on what the mob is doing, and she herself hopes to use AI in her own composing as part of her research, which she plans to finish within three years.
We'll have to wait and see whether AI has done most human creatives out of a job by then.
