While some artists are declaring AI the enemy of creation, classic “Sledgehammer” rocker Peter Gabriel has declared it a “powerful new tool” that artists need to work with, not against.
“I can’t think of anyone whose job couldn’t be done better by Al in 10 years time, maybe five,” he says in an interview in Uncut magazine when confronted with Australian singer Nick Cave’s quote that AI is a “grotesque mockery of what it is to be human”.
For his own belief, Gabriel believes it’s time to embrace AI for all it has to offer sooner rather than later, then grow with it.
“We’re only just building it, we have no idea what it’s going to achieve.
“With some of the AI, half the artists want to play with it and half want to shut it down. But I think you do better if you work with a powerful new tool than just grumble or pretend it doesn’t exist.”
He’s not alone in that belief, with recent South Park episode “Deep Learning” being partly written by ChatGPT.
Being an animation mainly aimed at a younger audience, the episode deals with a character’s efforts with a girl, with him telling a friend, “ChatGPT, dude. There’s a bunch of apps and programs you can subscribe to that use OpenAI to do all your writing for you.
“People use them to write poems, write job applications, but what they’re really good for is dealing with chicks.”
