Musicians-turned-detectives are hunting for AI grifters
Musicians-turned-detectives are hunting for AI grifters
音乐人化身“侦探”，誓要揪出AI骗子
As AI infiltrates the electronic dance music scene, a callout culture is brewing. 随着人工智能渗透进电子舞曲（EDM）领域，一种“公开指责”的文化正在酝酿之中。
As audio-focused generative tools and platforms have gotten more sophisticated, the internet has become increasingly filled with AI-generated music whose melodies and vocals are algorithmically derived from the work of human artists. While some of the people pumping out this kind of content immediately own up to using AI, others have denied using the technology until increasing public scrutiny forced them to tell the truth. 随着音频生成工具和平台变得愈发成熟，互联网上充斥着越来越多的AI生成音乐，其旋律和人声均通过算法从人类艺术家的作品中衍生而来。虽然一些制作此类内容的人会坦诚使用AI，但另一些人则矢口否认，直到在公众日益严苛的审视下被迫吐露真相。
For musicians — especially those creating art in technologically-focused spaces like electronic dance music — the increasingly complicated question of what is “real” and what isn’t feels particularly urgent and personal. Professional courtesy can make this only more complex; listeners can call out performers they suspect of using gen AI, but it’s something else for artists to raise concerns about their professional peers. There are some though, like 26-year-old EDM producer Max “H4RRIS” Harris, who are taking a stand against generative technology with videos calling out anyone they believe is trying to pass off AI slop as human-made art. 对于音乐人而言——尤其是那些在电子舞曲等技术密集型领域创作的艺术家——关于什么是“真实”、什么是“虚假”的问题变得愈发复杂，也显得格外紧迫且切身相关。职业礼仪让这一问题变得更加棘手；听众可以质疑他们怀疑使用生成式AI的表演者，但艺术家若要公开质疑同行，则又是另一回事了。不过，仍有一些人，比如26岁的EDM制作人Max “H4RRIS” Harris，正通过视频公开抵制生成式技术，点名批评那些试图将AI垃圾内容伪装成人类艺术作品的人。
When I recently spoke with Harris, he told me that he sees AI-generated music as “a kind of decoy art form,” and he thinks that the people making it don’t really have anything meaningful to say with their creations. He feels that true art in any medium is “created by people that are trying to express feelings and messages,” and he believes that the only thing AI boosters are really interested in is making a quick profit. 最近我与Harris交谈时，他告诉我，他将AI生成的音乐视为“一种诱饵艺术形式”，并认为制作这些音乐的人并没有通过作品表达任何有意义的内容。他认为，任何媒介的真正艺术都是“由试图表达情感和信息的人所创造的”，他坚信AI的推崇者们唯一关心的就是赚快钱。
“I don’t consider AI-generated material to be art, and I don’t think this technology is really advancing art in any meaningful way,” Harris said. “It’s a technological advancement that’s giving people a way to steal real art and pass it off as their own.” “我不认为AI生成的内容是艺术，也不认为这项技术以任何有意义的方式推动了艺术的发展，”Harris说道，“这只是一种技术进步，它让人们能够窃取真正的艺术，并将其冒充为自己的作品。”
Harris, originally from Maine, described his approach to making music as being fairly similar to working in other creative mediums. He always begins with a core concept before he starts “throwing more ideas down until I find something that sticks.” And as complicated as his workflow might look to someone unfamiliar with all of the tools and programs that he uses — his production setup includes Ableton Live, Novation Launchkey 49 MIDI controller, Ableton Push 3, Launchpad X, a couple of analog synthesizers, Serum, Diva, and the software sampler Kontakt — he said that the entire process is “really just me making creative decisions” that culminates in a sound that feels right. 来自缅因州的Harris形容他的音乐创作方式与其他创意媒介的工作方式非常相似。他总是从一个核心概念开始，然后“不断抛出想法，直到找到能产生共鸣的东西”。尽管对于不熟悉他所用工具和程序的人来说，他的工作流程看起来可能很复杂——他的制作设备包括Ableton Live、Novation Launchkey 49 MIDI控制器、Ableton Push 3、Launchpad X、几台模拟合成器，以及Serum、Diva和软件采样器Kontakt——但他表示，整个过程“其实就是我不断做出创意决策”，最终汇聚成一种感觉对味的声音。
“Each of those decisions — and there’s hundreds of them to go into each song — brings me closer to evoking a specific kind of idea or emotion,” Harris explained. “And then once I have a song mapped out, I have to start making even more choices about how to mix it in a way that makes it sound good and presentable.” “每一个决定——每首歌都要经历数百个决定——都让我更接近于唤起某种特定的想法或情感，”Harris解释道，“一旦我勾勒出歌曲的蓝图，我就必须开始做出更多选择，决定如何混音，使其听起来悦耳且呈现出最佳效果。”
In Harris’ view, being a real artist means being able to make those kinds of experimental but informed creative decisions using your own studied understanding of a given medium. One of Harris’ biggest issues with gen AI is the way the technology often eliminates a user’s need to think about how songs (or books, films, podcasts, etc.) come together. But he has also been dismayed at the way that AI posers are muddying listeners’ understanding of what human-made EDM actually sounds like. 在Harris看来，成为一名真正的艺术家意味着能够利用自己对特定媒介的深入理解，做出那些实验性但又经过深思熟虑的创意决策。Harris对生成式AI最大的不满之一在于，这项技术往往消除了用户思考歌曲（或书籍、电影、播客等）是如何构建的需求。同时，他也对那些AI冒充者混淆了听众对人类创作的EDM真实听感的认知感到沮丧。
“Aside from the similar vocals, you can usually hear a sharp hissing throughout the track,” Harris said of AI-generated songs. “I think that comes from the way that these models often work by starting with a big white noise block and then making guesses about waveforms by referencing data taken from real songs.” “除了相似的人声，你通常还能在整首曲子中听到尖锐的嘶嘶声，”Harris在谈到AI生成的歌曲时说，“我认为这源于这些模型的工作方式：它们通常从一大块白噪声开始，然后通过参考从真实歌曲中获取的数据来推测波形。”
Harris pointed to MANSA’s “Midnight on My Mind” and Danny and Ian Asher’s “Take Me (To The Moon)” as what he thinks are examples of AI-produced songs that embody what he jokingly refers to as “the AI revolution” that’s responsible for polluting the EDM space. MANSA, Danny, and Asher have not publicly commented on whether they use generative tools in their music. But Harris and other EDM fans have noticed the similarities between “Take Me (To The Moon)” and another person’s AI-generated track. There’s no definitive evidence that MANSA produced “Midnight on My Mind” with AI. Harris could very well be wrong about these songs being generated with AI. But his insistence that they are reflects the larger culture of mistrust that has developed in response to the growing presence of AI content online. Harris指出，MANSA的《Midnight on My Mind》以及Danny和Ian Asher的《Take Me (To The Moon)》是他认为由AI制作的歌曲范例，这些作品体现了他戏称为“AI革命”的现象，而正是这种现象污染了EDM领域。MANSA、Danny和Asher尚未公开评论他们是否在音乐中使用了生成式工具。但Harris和其他EDM粉丝已经注意到《Take Me (To The Moon)》与另一首AI生成的曲目之间存在相似之处。目前没有确凿证据表明MANSA使用AI制作了《Midnight on My Mind》。Harris关于这些歌曲由AI生成的判断很可能是错误的，但他对此的坚持，反映了随着AI内容在网上日益泛滥，人们之间产生了一种更广泛的不信任文化。
“People are just straight up uploading original, copyrighted tracks of artists like Madonna and asking [AI] to remix them.” “人们直接上传像麦当娜（Madonna）这样艺术家的原创版权曲目，并要求[AI]进行混音。”
Harris holds AI production company Suno responsible for the recent spike in this kind of music being uploaded to the internet, but he also credits specific quirks of the platform for helping him learn how to spot songs worth calling out. Harris认为AI制作公司Suno是近期此类音乐在互联网上激增的罪魁祸首，但他同时也承认，该平台的一些特定怪癖帮助他学会了如何识别值得公开质疑的歌曲。
“Something I’ve noticed with a lot of Suno-generated tracks is that a lot of the time, you’ll hear the vocals and other melodic elements will start stuttering at the same exact time,” Harris explained. “These models still have a hard time fully separating different parts of the songs they’re trained on, and they treat these elements like one big instrument. As a music producer, all of these things come across like choices that a human just wouldn’t make with their compositions because it just doesn’t make sense.” “我注意到很多Suno生成的曲目中，人声和其他旋律元素往往会在同一时间开始卡顿，”Harris解释道，“这些模型仍然难以完全分离它们所训练的歌曲中的不同部分，并将这些元素视为一个巨大的乐器。作为一名音乐制作人，所有这些听起来都不像是人类在创作时会做出的选择，因为这根本说不通。”