Thursday, March 5, 2026

For the Love or Hate of AI...

So here I am with something on my mind again... I recently wrote a song called Exotic Love and wanted to do a special video for it's debut release. My idea was to have a friend of mine on TikTok who is a professional dancer, perform a freestyle contemporary improvisation with the sounds used from my song as the theme/backdrop. I was crushed when he messaged me and I learned from him that he was out of the country working as a judge right now for several dance contests and would be unavailable to do it. Since the song was due to be released within a few days I had to scramble to come up with another promo idea. So, I got busy on my computer determined to create a solid piece of work that would do my music justice. I came up with a funny video that would showcase a liger sitting in the jungle wearing head phones jammin out to my song. I have created many, many videos manually using movie maker software and have found it to be seriously time consuming, sometimes taking weeks to create a polished and professional video. But clearly I did not have that kind of time, so I decided to enlist the help of this AI thing that everyone is talking about. I used it to literally breathe life into and generate my liger. I did not use anyone else's artwork or anything, simply a photograph of an actual liger in the wild. The AI made an extremely realistic version of what I had in my head, although it looked nothing like the photo I provided which surprised me. I still had to do a lot of video movie editing, hook several clips together, add my music track, and do quite a bit of polishing of this and that to get everything right, but overall the finished product came out well. Once done, I posted the video online accompanied by my song for the world to see and hear. It's done well netting me thousands of streams all over my socail media platforms, but it has come with a very unexpected side effect that I never could have expected. There were tons of loves and likes on the video, which I thought hey that's cool, my song is getting heard which is all we as musicians really want. It's not about the money for most of us, it is about you the listener hearing what we the artist have torn from our very souls. But I digress, my point is that there is a phenomenon that is happening to artists and musicians who post anything that showcases there work with the use of AI animation. On my BandLab account I was rather stunned to see over fifty comments ripping me and my lil Exotic Love mascot liger for using AI. As I alluded to previously, I had never used it before. So unbeknownst to me apparently I comitted an absolute cardinal sin in doing so. Although alot of comments praised my video, the majority on BandLab were downright rude. I checked with some of my other fellow musicians who also used some AI annimation and the hate they were receiving made what was happening on my page look like child's play. Funny cause I also found it interesting that the majority of it was coming from Gen-Zers otherwise known as Zoomers and Millennials. It got so bad I had to turn the damn comments off and delete the hate. Then an older dude who is an artist at some place called Humble Dumpling, came on my Facebook page and this is what he wrote:
He then got even more nasty and told one of my very close long time followers who had told him to stop being a hater, that maybe she needed to stop sucking the d*#% of technology etc. It was at that point that I was like WTF is going on with people over this whole AI mess?! Now for the record, I am completely and perfectly aware about everyone's serious concerns about AI taking away peoples jobs and affecting the environment, but it causing people to troll, hate, and bully enmasse has got me puzzled. So I ask you, what do you feel about AI and it's effects on media creation? Do you love it, or hate it, and why?

5 comments:

  1. Hey JeRubi, honestly I have shied away from AI and felt that trying to replace humans via robots is absurd and also frightening. My experience is the use of "Avery" the AI agent for my job and he sucks. There is also a female voice that sounds quite real until you notice the delays and pauses when you ask a question that she is trying to figure out how to respond to. Your video gives me a whole new perspective on the positive aspects of AI and AI animation. This makes me question many things about the use of AI and its potential. I absolutely love what you created and I found it interesting when you said AI was able to breathe life into your mascot, so much so that it looked more like what was in your head, than the photo you actually used. 🤔🤔🤔 The audacity of some stranger to make such a disrespectful comment about your work is shocking to me and the fact that he would accuse you of using AI to write your song is ridiculous. I had no idea there are bullies behind the keyboard harassing musicians. As for me, I hate the use of AI replacing the human connection you receive with something as simple as customer service. Thank you for bringing this topic to the forefront, I am curious to see what others have to say.

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    1. I agree, I worry about AI replacing our connections with each other as well. Social Media has already made interpersonal relationships much harder than ever before and AI will probably only exacerbate that. But, there are some positive ways I can see AI being used now and in the future. Like in medical breakthroughs, new scientific discoveries, and to solve economic/world problems that we can't seem to fix. As far as it's use in the creation of arts, media, and music, I am vehemently opposed to ever letting AI write music. That is why I was kind of pissed when that guy accused me of that. I also don't think that allowing it to use other's original art work should ever be permitted either, but he never gave me a chance to explain to him that I did not use anyone else's creation in my AI generation. I also hate talking to it on the phone, and refuse to do it, lol. Appreciate you sharing your feedback and for your kind words about my music video promo. 🤗

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  2. Honestly I think its crazy people are so upset and focused on the liger when it's really about your music. It's like they wanted you to paint an original piece for your album, but your not a painter, your a musician. So how does that make sense? It just seems like to me people have such small problems in their life that they would let a picture of a liger bother them.

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  3. Exactly, I'm a musician and I'm gonna always stay true to that no matter what. I don't need AI to write music for me and never will. Organic creativity is something that can't be programmed or robotically generated period. But, using a lil AI as a graphic illustration for the song shouldn't be the cause of so much uproar as long as it isn't using the artwork of an artist without their consent.

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  4. Yeah, haters are going to hate especially if they're jealous you know what I'm saying J? Can't do nothing about him but hope he sees the light or the karma will get him, lol. I hate being accused of something I ain't doing. Oh my God that's one of the worst things to me and one of my pet peeves. Also, he probably just don't want to admit it was good so you know he had to throw that curveball out there to try to make himself look better and instead he looked like an idiot really. Why have so much animosity towards somebody you don't even know about facts you don't even know? It's just sad what the world has become.

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