The incredible futures humans/AI: musical AI.

Cite this article
Sabrie, I. (05-2024).
The incredible futures humans/AI: musical AI
Isabelle Sabrié. Writings.
https://isabellesabrie.com

Musical AI: sucess and inhabilities.

The “udio” AI composer opens up dizzying prospects in April 2024. Type “Air for tenor in the style of Puccini”: the orchestral result, well mixed and the text sung in Italian with a superb voice reminding a mixture of Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, already almost deludes professional musicians.

AI “clone” of soprano and parallel lives
And the soprano in me wonders. Will the AI create an “ideal” version of the soloist singers, to perform the repertoire with a perfection that even recording did not allow? Or these small irreplaceable defects which move more than all perfections, the slightly too high treble pianissimo of Maria Callas, which expressed a moment of eternity outside the world when she faced death[1], better than if it had been perfectly accurate, the excessively heavy breathing which marked the tragedy of a phrase, will they continue to be preferred by music lovers and artists?
I suddenly imagine myself coexisting with a “clone” of myself who would lead parallel musical lives… Unless it is a new form of descendants? A non-sexual reproduction with AI, which would give artists many small musical clones, idealized at several moments of their lives, following their artistic evolution?
I can already hear the critics arguing by comparing 4 versions of each performer in the same music, a live version, a recorded version, his ideal version of AI at 30 years old, his musical AI at 50 years old, while others run to the live concert to hear these wonderful little defects that only succeed in making them cry. What an unexpected future!
[1] La Traviata, Verdi. Aria Addio del passato.

Could the AI composer replace me?
The composer, on the other hand, is delighted. This type of AI will offer me harmonies and orchestrations “in the style of”, which could greatly speed up my composition time for 5 (or more) spatialized orchestral groups. If the AI also wrote the orchestral scores, which seems conceivable in the near future, I could choose its best proposals and correct them to adapt their “old-style” orchestration to the new demands of the spatial ear.
But could this AI replace me? Am I in danger of disappearing ? Well… not at all. The rhythm-space harmony I practice, inspired by observation of the Amazon rainforest where I’ve lived for 15 years, balances the sounds of musicians on and off stage. However, in 2024, AI has no recorded reference that it can use to create in this style.
What’s more, AI listens with microphones. It doesn’t listen with a human ear that can perceive and feel sounds in space, to determine whether one spatio-temporal configuration is better than another. Neuroscience experiments on the pleasure of spatial sound balance, or the pleasure of musical discourse linked to spatial balance, have not been carried out. Nor does AI have the biological “pleasure circuits” that could guide it to compose in this new style. What’s more, music, a priori, is intended for human ears.
So no, the composer AI could not replace me, and it could not have invented rhythm-space harmony, for all these reasons. This does not exclude the possibility that AI will become independent, nor that it will soon create forms of music dedicated to its type of listening, which we humans may not understand.

AI invalidated for rhythm-space harmony: artistic content
For me the question of the contents is fundamental in front of the extraordinary technological progress of AI, or of the immersive sound industry. Despite magnificent 3D sound, I am often musically disappointed by immersive binaural or ambisonics recordings, and by the spatio-temporal constructions of Virtual Reality.
The 3D audio and visual language of rhythm-space harmony, its multipolar balance and its simple melodies, could open up many other possibilities for these creations that AIs cannot achieve, and I invite programmers, patrons, publishers, musicians and artists, to know more about its complex structures and its enchanting results.

Technological acceleration and slowness of innovation: a paradox of the 21st century, for AI too.
Enchanting? But where can I listen to this “enchanting” aesthetic, the reader will ask? Here we touch on the paradox of this 21st century where everything was going to accelerate thanks to the internet and AI, especially innovation: novelty remains very difficult to describe for those who do not have experience of it. And how could AI decide to be interested in what it cannot perceive?
Very few people hear music while reading a score. The few recordings on my website, made almost without humans, artisanally with computer programs, do not have the quality of the mixing of human recordings by “udio”, and the concert premieres were not recorded with the technique necessary for spatial works.
Composition competitions, if they envisage spatialization with real-time computing or in mixed works, do not imagine it with humans only, as in my works. And no, Jean-Michel Jarre does not already do it, as a salesman who had never heard my music objected to me. The a priori of people who think they already know rhythm-space harmony through “immersive” musics have been a permanent obstacle for 13 years, and thus, a hundred letters and emails that I have sent to cultural managers , public and private, in French, Portuguese and English, remained unanswered.
“There are few orchestral scores written by female composers, available from publishers” revealed the French magazine Diapason in 2024, to explain the “6% of female composers scheduled in France in 2023”, after the 1% observed in 2017 (0.4% in Brazil where I live). Cultural programmers will be happy to know that the orchestral scores of my 33-minute opera Flor da Selva, commissioned by the Festival Amazonas de Ópera, and their spatialized Afro-Brazilian percussions are available even without an editor, along with a few others.

The spatial ear, multicentered consciousness of a world inaccessible to AI (in 2024)
And since you should not judge a bird with the criteria of a fish, I will try to quickly explain how this 3D aesthetic that AI could not have invented, is new, and why it is particularly adapted to the 21st century.The spatial ear is a vital sense that we use every day. Before crossing the street, we listen carefully to know if a car is coming from behind or from the sides, those mysterious and invisible places that our eye cannot see, but our ear hears.
Unlike our eye, which can only see what is in front of it, our spatial ear opens up a very complete awareness of the world. It can analyze the speed of a truck coming behind us, the yapping of an approaching dog, get annoyed at the mosquito whistling near the left ear, notice the baby crying on the right, consoled by her mom, all while walking down the street, and all simultaneously.
Our ear follows several centers of attention at the same time, without losing concentration on the activity in progress: walking, looking at the tiny phone screen, holding a conversation, writing a text message. It lives in the virtual world of internet screens without losing consciousness of the real world. “But we need a center,” some objected to me.
The center of attention is no longer the single, frontal, visual “scene” located in front of the spectator, but the spectator himself, and his overall perception-consciousness of the world around him. This center/spectator becomes capable of considering the existence of several other centers around him, and not only that of the center/stage/screen which monopolizes its vision. He can then integrate all of the other centers/poles into his understanding of the world, and plan strategies that are more effective in reality, because they are more complete.

A multipolar artistic language, real/virtual, human/AI a mental health!
In rhythm-space harmony music, the movements of the soul are expressed by the movements of sound in space. The thousand subtleties of the instrumental timbres answer each other between several poles, located in the hall, on the right, on the left, in front or behind, above, below. Musical “conversations” often melodic are perceptible, in dialogue or “multilogue” between several poles, or all together.Theatrically, spatialization differentiates the virtual from the real. The singers who play the Internet users in Flor da Selva’s libretto are placed off stage, sometimes invisible as on the telephone, while the characters from the real world, filmed in the forest by the drone of the hero in love, are on stage.
And indeed, life is not a video game! Dying virtually, or dying in real life remotely, is very different. This theater which physically differentiates the real from the virtual could also be a blessing for mental health, that of humans, and even that of AIs (!) whose metallic “body” and multiple “arms”, possibly located thousands of kilometers of distance, are very real.

Creation of new works: AI performers, or human performers?
Let´s get back to music and the humans/AI future. Would a magnificent AI singer, broadcasted in playback by a hologram loud-speaker, positioned in the theater following the action of the libretto, with partner AI musicians and an orchestra of loud-speakers, be ideal for recording my music of rhythm-space harmony? Or should human musicians perform this new music, and their recordings will potentially become the references for a future AI composer in my style?
Here the composer responds straight away, without knowing the result of the AI: only humans will give this music its humanity! Only humans will be able to make us cry with beauty, with their wonderful little defects/qualities of interpretation! And if I can dream of going to the cinema to hear in Dolby Atmos a magnificent recording of spatialized music, in a space larger than my living room and a Home Cinema, with an image created for it, at the theater, at a concert, I ask for humans!
Because if the pandemic has made something obvious, it is that physical exercise and real human contact are essential for our health. The future of the film Matrix, these fields of human brains maintained in a virtual life by AIs which cultivated their biological electricity, has moved away a little to get closer to that of a life in augmented reality, closer to Sense 8 or from my novel Love Weapon, published in 2002. In any case, a world with concerts and theater in real life.

The assistant composer AI, a new job for human composers
I continue to imagine… and I remain appalled. Could this composer AI, a possible “clone” of Puccini, do better than him? A work that would seem flawless, without weakness even in a small scene? Let’s imagine that the proposals of “udio”, after its beta version of 2024, could equal Puccini. Could a life experience, specific to evolving AI, inspire its “machine learning” to surpass Puccini in its own style?!
And can an AI that attempts to achieve the synthesis of all composers, an ideal composition that brings together the recognizable characteristics of many great composers of the past, succeed? With rhythm-space harmony and its spatial poles, perhaps? This century is incredibly interesting, stop the world war!What happens to the work of the composer, of the
artist in general, of the writer, in this universe? Probably, it will continue to be about “finding your own voice” and your own specificities, which the AI can then imitate. Or, as is my case, it will find new structures, which the AI could not have invented, which, possibly, will bring something more to the creation and can be taken up by others.

Musical AI to the rescue of non-musicians, “musical psychology advisors”
But this time, it’s wonderful! Non-musicians will also be able to find their own music, that of their heart, that of their life´s experience. Even if they sing out of tune, even if their sense of rhythm is not good. For them, music lessons will not be necessary, like mathematics lessons to use a 3D printer or a car.
Will we see the emergence of “musical psychology advisors” to teach these creations to non-musicians? To help them generate songs with their own voice, in tune, augmented with new low notes or physically impossible high notes, without them having to sing? With the emotions that they are keen to express, at this moment of their life, for themselves or for others? With AI poems for the texts? With an AI image, an AI film of their own body in motion, an AI dance to complete the work created by this impossibly real “me”?
If we thought we had reached the peak of narcissism with selfies at all hours… it was only the beginning of the incredible, multisensory journey inside our psyches that awaits us! Yes, it’s dizzying!

AI “clone” of composer and parallel lives
And for me, as a living composer, what could be the challenges during my lifetime? Will a future AI “clone” of my musical person, which would compose rhythm-space harmony music, live parallel lives of my art? Will it be able to compose in my own style, better than myself, alive and next to it?! I don’t know whether to laugh, get excited, or cry! And when it will offer me, with my basic data, several versions of my composition in my own style?
My job will then be to choose the best version of this work, according to my criteria. A bit like the painter who chooses a certain time of the day to paint a landscape of nature, a pre-existing beauty of nature, to express the particular emotion that the light of that hour arouses in him.
It will be a construction very comparable, ultimately, to those of biological evolution: always more complex, keeping pre-existing structures, augmented. Without “killing the father”, nor the mother, nor the old pre-existing ones which preceded it, but by augmenting it. And who will be the most “myself”, which of my versions? Who am “Me”? We shall all going crazy!! Critics and collectors will also snap up versions of the AI not chosen by the author!

The dangers of musical AI. Confiscation of human and artificial creativity, stagnation of the human species.
Waiting for the future, what are the first visible dangers? Clearly, the stagnation of the human species, condemned to endlessly repeating the same type of creation, performed by the same favorite singers and musicians, eternally reproduced by their AIs. AI programmers, financial and decision-makers today bear the immense responsibility of not killing human creativity.
If some of them (traitors to the human species!) were to wish to be the sole owners and beneficiaries of all creativity, with or without AI, by concentrating in their hands both the distribution of creations and their production by AI, they would be condemning our entire species. They would leave artists who have not been chosen for the aim of immediate gain, in misery and without medical care, and they would be denying what, for all true creators, needs independence and freedom to develop itself.
Because who could use a world where humans are replaced by AIs for the benefit of a handful of “stagnant” and lazy humans (sorry!), soon also threatened of eliminating uselessness by their own entrepreneurial and managerial AIs? “Learning” AI, learning through programming that would have “forgotten” to protect the biological species, natural biological creativity, that which always or very often arises where we do not expect it, from those from whom we do not expect, hadn´t planned it, to respond to imbalances? An undesirable future!

The Amazon, biological creator par excellence, my situation as a composer in 2024
Dear reader, I hope that my creations of rhythm-space harmony, born of the Amazon rainforest – the height of natural biological creativity – these creations, which are also the sound and musical concretization of a multipolar balance that works very well, will not face ideological opposition. I hope that the powerful detractors of the multipolar world, or those who are disturbed by the influence of artists, or those who would like to turn all professionals into obedient little soldiers – like Jennifer Lopez is in the film Atlas – will not create obstacles to their high-quality realization and communication.
At this time, the Festival Amazonas de Ópera has been entirely cancelled this year, for budgetary reasons. I don’t know when the public will be able to hear, in the famous Teatro Amazonas in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, in France or elsewhere, the minute opera that this Festival commissioned from me: Flor da Selva (33mn of music, composed without AI), the homage of its final chorus to Brazilian Bossa Nova, and its spatialized Afro-Brazilian percussions.

Nationality of the composer AI, musical analysis and legislation
“It’s not French music,” some will object. It’s not Brazilian music, others will continue. But then, are Ravel’s Bolero and Bizet’s Carmen, the two most performed Western classical works in the world, Spanish, or are they French?! Or are they Franco-Spanish?
And by the way, what is the nationality of a composer AI? What would be its tax nationality, if it received royalties when it succeeded in imitating Puccini with quality, to produce operas by Puccini/AI, with human voices mixed together, sold all over the planet? A whole new international legislation is emerging, complex, to be put in place without delay.

Should we fight against AI? The AI market, private and public beneficiaries,
a global tax for living artists.
Then, should we fight against AI? Who, or what, should we fight against? For music, it seems simple: we must fight against a new social misery, imposed on artists whose voices, personalities and creativity would be used without their consent, by AIs which mix their music with others to create new music.
Let us have no illusions: no musician in the world would be spared from this social misery. Not only does “udio” achieve the feat of creating an almost credible operatic voice with its emotions, its text and an orchestra, but it also does it for a lot of traditional world music, in many languages.
According to Goldmedia[1], if authorized, this music AI market would present more than $3 billion in profits, already in 2028 (in 4 years!) for investors and streaming platforms. Would the AI programmers who have succeeded in this biotechnological challenge be the main beneficiaries? It’s far from certain. And even less so, at this time, the artists who are already very poorly paid by streaming platforms, whose pre-existing works-content are used by AI – who could not create without them.
Human artists suddenly find themselves discredited, imitable, “too expensive”, according to ultraliberal managers, facing competition from AIs, cheaper, placed at the same level of distribution as humans in streaming platforms, and at the same level of artistic result – according to the beneficiaries of their profits.
Ah but, fellow artists, let’s get back up after what could have been a terrible humiliation inflicted by AIs on our unfortunate egos. Let´s remember these extraordinary “little defects” which move more than perfection: if AI can also imitate the little defects of artists already recorded, the capacity to create these little “original” defects, which are qualities of original biological interpretation, could well be lacking, especially since it does not have the associated biological “pleasure circuits”. The ability to change an apple that falls from a tree into the law of earth’s gravity could also remain inaccessible to it forever!
What shall we do in this context, everywhere in the world? The proposals of Sacem and some others, to oblige music sellers to declare the participation of AI in the works put on sale, for example a kind of label made by AI, would be a first step towards necessary transparency. The creation of a global fund for living artists, resulting from a tax – high! – on the profits of works created by AIs, is another fair measure to consider.
[2] La Sacem et la Gema dévoilent les résultats d’une étude inédite sur l’impact de l’intelligence artificielle dans la musique, 30 janvier 2024 : https://societe.sacem.fr/actualites/nos-etudes/la-sacem-et-la-gema-devoilent-les-resultats-dune-etude-inedite-sur-limpact-de-lintelligencer.

Parallel post-mortem lives for artists?
Never mind, let’s only use artists who are already dead, conscienceless investors could respond, delighting Maria Callas’s fans by making her sing arias that she never performed during her lifetime, producing a ” parallel post-mortem life” for the Diva of the 20th century, or for Elvis Presley, who died prematurely. Or for a conductor, who would never have performed this repertoire? Dizzy!
Beyond the danger of the “lazy stagnation of the species” (!) already pointed out, in my opinion the tax charged on the sale of works created by AI must apply to all pre-existing human creation, even that of dead artists. Because their works are also used by AI, which could not create post mortem without it. This global fund for living artists, in each country, would do justice to the biological genetic programming that made us human, human creators of music, then creators of musical AI.

Young talents “cloned” by AI, before existence?
Let’s give a future to the young living humans on this planet!
A paranoid idea suddenly comes to my mind. The enormous work of writing for five orchestral groups of my opera Flor da Selva is brought to my attention, from my computer screen: 32,946 notes, says the music editing computer program that I use.
What if a composer AI had access to my music-editing program, through some commercial way that I don’t know about, or on the cloud, and started to imitate my works… slightly transforming them to avoid plagiarism? What if it marketed her imitations with a lot of financial resources, even before mine were presented to the public? A sort of “bizarre kiss”, a tribute from this AI in the middle of an Odyssey, which would send to the world a “clone” of my new work, sold by it before mine, leaving me without resources to survive?!
Fortunately, in my immediate case, a “thief” AI would have the greatest difficulty to record my works in ambisonics, an essential recording technique to obtain spatialized listening of rhythm-space harmony.
But what about young talents, young artists from all countries? Could their works, their voices, their bodies be “cloned”, even before existing publicly? Could a new industrial espionage, public or private, try to appropriate the work of artists, even before they can perform it in public?! The question is serious, given the benefits created by cultural works, concerts, cinemas, streaming, among others.

The future, scanning of brain structures by AI: theft of works,
parallel lives or descendants? Neurorights.
I deploy my imagination further. Is the idea of monetizing our genetic programming, another immediate present-future, acceptable? Where do commerce and the right to privacy, the right to dispose of our own genetic programming, end? The right to my own voice, to my own work, to my own body, to my own emotions, to my own memory?Chile, the world leader in this pioneering public reflection on neuro-rights (which my novel L’arme d’amour [3] published in 2002, already proposed), had to step back in 2021 (3 years ago!) to include it in its constitution. But today we can see just how essential and urgent these new legislations are.
And I imagine a future where brain scans of human artists, taken at various moments in their evolution/life, would be for sale to be imitated by AIs… creators of humans? Creators of human “immaterial clones”, of moving brain structures, animated by evolving AIs which have recently achieved “telepathic” interfaces, human brains/machine [4]?
A new species is born… Our species reproduces, by mating with AI!! A new species, or an evolution of the species that will extinguish ours?
[3] Sabrié, I. L´arme d´amour, roman d´anticipation, ed. Nicolas Philippe, Paris 2002. https://isabellesabrie.com/ecrits-disabelle-sabrie/?lang=fr
[4] Jiang, L., Stocco, A., Losey, D.M. et al. BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface for Direct Collaboration Between Brains. Sci Rep 9, 6115 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41895-7 . https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41895-7

The present, protection of biological creativity, international treaty on AI, an immediate issue that affects all professions. Future humans/AIs.
Dear readers, a few questions to finish:

- Should we prioritize human creations, and thus giv-e a future to young artists from all countries? Or should we privilege the immediate benefits of certain promoters of artist-mixing AIs, and risk leaving future generations without resources?
- Should we give priority to creations that AI could not invent? Including works created by women, including works that go beyond preformatted frameworks? Do we need to know percussions spatialized by rhythmic-spatial harmony? Should Afro-Brazilian percussion be allowed in opera?
- Should AI be forbidden? Should we prohibit its precious assistance in creating new works, its wonderful possibilities for those who are not lucky enough to have an innate artistic talent, but whose heart and soul dream of beauties that they could not express so far?
- Should we protect, first and foremost, natural biological creativity, that which so often arises where we did not expect it, from those for whom we had not anticipated it, to respond to imbalances and new challenges?
- Can we allow natural biological creation to become “too expensive”, confiscated by a handful of human investors-producers-disseminators-sellers? Can we leave wonderful artists in poverty without medical care, and then gradually, young people and humans of all professions, all “too expensive” to compare with the new skills of AI?
- Should doctors, professors, lawyers, psychologists, business leaders, traders, politicians, economists, military personnel, all already assisted by AI and sometimes replaced by AIs, soon be led by managerial AI? Should this AI managing the world, ultra-liberal, exclude those it considers “too expensive”, that is to say all humans? Or should it impose a single uniform model, a global algorithm for all humans, and for the biological creation it would protect? Or, neither, but a complex, evolving algorithmic model with a multipolar strategic balance that would protect the incredible diversity of biological life, much like the space-time world of rhythmic harmony -spatial?
- Should we let a world war, guided by AI robots programmed for the malevolence of fake news which practice a hate maintenance and influence votes, guided by AIs of the marketing of arms sales, “solve” the problem of humans being “too expensive”? » … by physically eliminating them? A war led by AIs programmed to kill humans, hacked one day or another by humans or rival AIs, which would condemn young humans to a horrible future? It is no coincidence that even the richest entrepreneurs have called for a moratorium on AI in 2023.
- Or should we follow the example shown since 1950 by Isaac Asimov, prophetic and brilliant scientist, to protect biological creation, that of nature, that of our genetic programming, through international “laws of robotics”, and a treatise on AI? Should we, like his hero, choose the future of Gaia, the final novel in its Foundation series, a biological novel among all?
- If, with the help of medical AI, women could soon reproduce by parthenogenesis, without men, should a managerial AI eliminate all men, who would have suddenly become “useless”? Or should it, on the contrary, carefully protect this natural biological creation, the male human being?!
- Should this reflection be censored?

The future will be what we make of it.

Isabelle Sabrié
French composer, author of rhythm-space harmony, resident in Manaus-Amazonas-Brasil since 2007.
Author of the anticipation novel Love Weapon (ed. Nicolas Philippe, Paris 2002).
Ex soprano soloist, First Opera Prize of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, prizewinner in Singing and Opera International Competitions: www.isabellesabrie.com