There’s No “AI” in “Rock ’n’ Roll”

There’s No “AI” in “Rock ’n’ Roll”

OPENER

John Martin

AI WON'T GO ON TOUR, AND AI WON'T PLAY A SHOW WHERE ANY CRAZY SHIT GOES DOWN.

I was flipping through an issue of a recently relaunched general-interest music magazine with “Discothèque’’-era-U2-looking “alternative dance group" Rufus Du Sol on the cover. Not my speed. But the back page had a story by the bassist from Guided by Voices about playing a show where his amp actually burst into flames. Okay, I'll read that. Accompanying the piece was what I thought to be an illustration of the bassist on stage with his flaming bass rig. Upon closer inspection, everything was off: The flames were too clean, the lights too perfect, the arms of the crowd all at the same angle, and on the amp was a bunch of random letters aping the Marshall logo. And there was no credit—it was pretty clearly made by AI. What a bummer. An illustrator would have had a field day with that assignment.

Here at CREEM, we don’t use AI to make America’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll Magazine. We pay humans to write stories, take photos, illustrate, edit, sell ads, and design each issue.

Records being made by humans is what makes them great—or awful—and fun to read about. It’d be a snoozefest to read about some dude prompting AI to make a knockoff AC/DC song. (Of course, the AI company would swear the model wasn’t trained on Powerage and Highway to Hell.) We’ll pass on reading about it AND listening to it. We’ll take any Airbourne or Rhino Bucket record if we want to hear way-better-than-knockoff AC/DC made by actual humans.

AI won’t go on tour, and AI won’t play a show where any crazy shit goes down. So why should we use it to tell stories about art that’s created by humans? Surely there’s a Spinal Tap-esque gag here about the day where all our favorite bands are AI, a dystopia straight out of Terminator 2. Hard pass. AI polishes off the rough edges, and the best rock ’n’ roll is all about rough edges. The entire circus of rock ’n’ roll is a human creation, and that’s why we love it.

And furthermore, is AI rock something we’d even pay for? I find it hard to believe that, if AI unlocks the proverbial door to a room with an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters, there’d be any value to what it creates. I can’t see a world where we’re paying for that art, let alone paying for a magazine or website about that art, either. Sure, sure, “Art should be free!" they say, but more important, artists should get paid for their work.

The cover of this issue was made by an artist who puts baggies on legs. We thought his work was funny, so we asked him for a cover. We got a sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll riff. AI wouldn’t have come up with that, it would have put an airbrushed portrait of a rock star on the cover. Sadly, that might not be too different from some other mags out there. But call us vain if you will, we think we’re better than that. We like real art.

To go along with the cover, Zachary Lipez wrote an essay about the evolution of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll as the holy trinity of youth rebellion, another subject AI won’t ever get to experience outside of a prompt. And if it’s TL;DR for you, here’s the reveal: The kids are alright, but your attention span isn’t. Try reading all the way through, try listening to an album straight through, and put your phone away at the show while you’re at it.

And if you want a magazine made by robots, it’s not CREEM—but I can recommend one.