The ChatGPT program has caused a sensation and astonishment worldwide - and given many people the feeling that our lives could soon be different thanks to artificial intelligence that works so well. ChatGPT can write fluent texts, answer questions and solve tasks that users ask it. And one user wanted the AI program to write him lyrics in the style of Australian musician Nick Cave ("Where The Wild Roses Grow", "The Mercy Seat").
But the 65-year-old did not like this experiment at all. Since 2018, Nick Cave has been personally answering fan inquiries on his website, The Red Hand Files. And now he also commented on the ChatGPT song attempt, which he shares there with his followers. The lyrics are indeed reminiscent of the Australian's dark poetry, but they remain conspicuously superficial. So the chorus goes: "I am the sinner, I am the saint. I am the darkness, I am the light. I am the hunter, I am the prey. I am the devil, I am the redeemer." A string of pretty-sounding opposites.
Cave replies to the fan: "Since its launch in November, many people, mostly filled with some sort of algorithmic awe, have been sending me 'Nick Cave-style' songs created by ChatGPT. There have been dozens of them. Maybe it's enough when I say: I don't feel the same enthusiasm for this technology."
"This song sucks," writes Cave. "What ChatGPT is in this case is impersonation as travesty." An artificial intelligence might be able to write speeches or obituaries, but not songs. "Songs are born out of suffering, by which I mean the complex, inner human struggle to create. And as far as I know, algorithms don't feel. Data doesn't suffer. ChatGPT has no inner soul, it hasn't been anywhere, it hasn't endured anything. "
However, the songwriter suspects that his anger could be misinterpreted – after the emergence of ChatGPT, many professional groups were suddenly afraid that the AI could endanger their jobs. Maybe the Australian feels the same way? No, he clarifies directly: "Maybe it sounds like I'm taking it all a little too personally. But I'm a songwriter who is busy writing a song at this exact moment. It's a process full of blood and Sweat, here at my desk, draining me for a fresh idea to emerge. It requires my humanity."
Quellen: CNN, "The Red Hand Files"
