Letters | Will the machines take over our art and music in a Web3 world?

The birth of Web3 is promoting more art generated by machines – rather than people. While artists have the creative ability to break with tradition, with machine-generated films and music, the computer merely follows the algorithm and pattern. The beauty of uncertainty and variety cannot be found in Web3.

For instance, artificial intelligence company Cinelytic offers studios such as Warner Bros big data to calculate the profit potential of a script. Similar technologies are used by Netflix, Disney and the like to optimise profits and minimise risks. But following the database is only likely to push the production of films on hot topics and music with popular chords. This will ultimately lower the variety of art offered.

And then there are the art and music generators. EulerBeats, a non-fungible token (NFT) initiative, emphasises AI-generated music NFTs including its Futura series, which allows select NFT holders to create remix NFTs. Async allows users to “mint” music by combining digital profile pictures known as PFPs, with no musical knowledge needed. And Melos encourages remixes of an original song.

This has its attractions for those who prefer to tweak existing music, rather than invest potentially more resources, time and labour in making music from scratch. Commercially speaking, despite the high price tags for a few recent digital projects, machine-generated art usually costs a lot less than art laboriously made by hand, especially in the long run.

The thing is, businesses tend to prefer investing in lower-budget projects; they are seen as lower risk. And this is bad news for original productions. A drop in the volume and quality of original productions will also mean poorer recreations, forming a vicious circle. Web3 may look like it is driving creative production but it is really threatening to erode production values and quality in the long run.