My 81-year-old dad recently sat on his Midwestern porch on a cool spring evening, and excitedly showed my wife a song that he loved. As the bluesy, soulful tune poured from his phone speaker, he gently rocked in his chair, reveling in the lyrics, about the pains and pleasures of growing old.
“Is this old or new?” my wife asked.
“New, but it sounds like those old soul singers. Doesn’t it?” was the reply.
My parents continued to rave about their new-found musical crush, who I learned goes by the name of Eddie Dalton, and how one can search his name and pull up a whole album’s worth of songs, one just as good as the last. Right on YouTube!
Upon my own web search, I pulled up an image of Eddie Dalton, graying at the temples, with lines of experience and challenges overcome etched into his 60-something face.
There was only one problem.
This hot, new soul singer lacked an actual soul.
Eddie Dalton is an AI creation. His songs are not reflections of hard-won lessons, woven into lyrical paintings that depict a life lived fully. They are algorithmic calculations, designed to tap into the consciousnesses of as many unwitting listeners as possible.
And my parents were two of Dalton’s successful targets. They talked about how they’d been sending the song around to their friends, and how this or that person would just love it. Thus has been the singer’s trajectory. As of last month, Dalton has racked up 230,000 Facebook followers (no doubt where my parents happened upon him), millions of YouTube views, and the song that my dad so loved, “Another Day Old,” hit number one on both the United Kingdom and United States charts last month.
Read more: “I Am Not a Machine. Yes You Are.”
According to Showbiz411, Dalton is a creation of Dallas Little (who I assume is a real person?). Little apparently works for Crusty Records, a company that has pumped out other AI “artists” and “songs” over the past couple of years. Crusty’s roster of AI talent includes country singers Cain Walker and Cody Crotchburn, both of whom set the stage for Dalton.
When I informed my parents that Dalton was in fact AI, they seemed deflated, bamboozled. They could hardly accept that the song and singer they so greatly admired was just lines of code. Chalk their flattened enthusiasm up as two casualties of our AI age.
I have concerns apart from the obvious problems flesh-and-blood musicians might have with such AI creations sucking away views and interest and revenue from their organic efforts. Although my parents are of a certain age and are therefore somewhat vulnerable to all manner of digital ruses, it is still remarkable the degree to which they were taken in by Dalton and his AI crooning. It struck me as I sat there on their porch that they are not what I would call music enthusiasts. Sure, they listen to music and they’ve had their favorite (human) artists over the years. But it is not at all in their habit to become so excited at a new musical find that they feel compelled to share it. Not only the song, but the surrounding fervor they tapped into in discovering it compelled them to undertake the very human practice of transmitting culture.
To be sure, AI can be used for our benefit. In science, such algorithms can help find new particle types and resolve the intricacies of protein structure. But I have my doubts about how AI can serve human cultural institutions.
As AI models improve, we all become increasingly vulnerable to such algorithmic manipulation. And not just in the modality of music. In film, books, and other media, I fear it will soon be nearly impossible to parse human fact from AI fiction and that the bots will be tuned to tap into exactly the right zeitgeist at the right moment.
That might be fine when the end result is misguided entertainment, but what happens when less-benign goals—political division, overconsumption, or misplaced hatred—drive these efforts? We may all be singing the human blues sooner than we think. 
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Lead image: monsitj / Adobe Stock
