AI or not AI?

For the composers and sound designers I work with, it's a strong NO. They are skilled musicians, amazing composers, and they have access to all the professional tools. They have no need of AI-generated tracks, and wouldn't want to use them because they can do better with what comes out of their brains. I have yet to talk with a professional composer who prefers AI compositions over skilled human creations.

Even at my own skill level when I hear AI generated music I generally cringe, and even the "good" ones it's pretty clearly machine generated. The music patterns are as clear to a trained ear just as the oversaturated colors and extra fingers are for AI generated art to trained artists. Sure it has a nice beat and it follows contemporary patterns, jazz patterns, blues patterns, or similar, but it rarely carries emotional weight, nor does it have the human made nuance of playing the instrument.

For an amateur composer who makes it clear they had AI assistance in the composition, and who makes the licensing details clear, it may be okay to the people using the audio.

Olivier Girardot wrote:

But a few sound designers asked if it was OK to have AI assisted sound effects, meaning that part of the creation process is made by a human, who used AI to improve the final result.

Actually i don't know much about how sound effects are created or recorded, but this reminds me on the example of AI amp modelers for guitarists, which became recently popular.
And being generally very negative about AI, i would not care at all if somebody uses those modelers, or maybe some AI driven effects. I'm ok with that, and would consider to use it myself.

Comparing this example with the other extreme - AI generated music from a text prompt not requiring any musical skill, i think there is a clear difference here. The first example is using AI as a creative tool, the second looks more like a fading species lacking any self-respect and confidence.

It's actually sad we have to ask ourselves if it is 'ok' to use AI or not. : /

Olivier Girardot wrote:

Start with an AI generated sound effect, and the human intervention comes after to improve the sound.

Umm... i don't buy it. I imagine you mean a process like this:
prompt: Generate me an explosion sound from hand grenade.
You get a wav file.
Then you add some reverb to it.
Done.

In this case i would judge your contribution was much smaller than AIs contribution, and i would feel scammed buying the sound effect.

Olivier Girardot wrote:

Or the other way around, the sound designer created the sound effects and uses AI for mixing, mastering or other possible improvements.

That's ok. They say AI is super good for noise reduction, so why not using it?

Olivier Girardot wrote:

I am honestly not very comfortable with the first option, and a bit more with the second one.

Yeah, i agree. I see the difference clearly and have no doubts here.
But there are surely grey zones and exceptions from the rule as well.

And even if you avoid that - i assume @frob did just read 'AI', and then he may have missed the topic is sound effects, not generated music. He instantly started ranting against AI music, maybe because he is just as annoyed about the slop and hype as i am.
Idk that, but i guess you will get some negative responses even if you do the right thing. Likely any transparency about using AI needs to be carefully worded. Which seems impossible to get right.
Personally i like anything with a 'no AI inside' sticker on it. It gives me hope some of our species might keep its natural intelligence. \:D/

I personally wouldn't be ok with either end of the process if you're trying to push the place as AI free. That being said, it would be good for you to look into AI poisoning your platform, depending on how things are shared. The last thing you'd want is an AI free platform to end up in AI generated content anyway.