A Letter to Nick Cave—AI and Songwriting

Hello Nick,

I know I’m a bit late to the game here, but I only recently happened upon your letter on AI and songwriting (ironically served to me by YouTube’s AI-powered algorithms). I found the letter compelling and persuasive and agreed with the thrust of it. I felt, however, that a slightly different approach could be taken.

Let me explain: You cautioned the reader to abstain from AI-driven songwriting. ‘Fucking desist’ were your exact words. But why such a blanket rejection of AI? I propose an alternative approach: I say, go ahead and write a song with ChatGPT or Suno in the style of your favorite artist. Prompt it to perfection. Then put it side-by-side with a song you’ve already written. If Suno’s song is better or even comparable, trash your song and start again. 

Your letter argued that songwriting must stem from authentic human experience. I agree. But consider this rebuttal: AI learns from collective human experience and synthesizes it far more comprehensively than any single human mind could. After all, ChatGPT has access to a vast database of information—the collected works of humankind. Eventually it will pore over our social media posts, digitized books, and academic papers—all in the blink of an eye. In contrast, us humans can only ever retain a tiny slice of information that is distorted by our blinkered, emotional perspectives. One could make a cogent, if not conclusive, argument that AI understands us better than we understand ourselves.

Who better to write our songs?

The questions at the heart of this debate are: What is creativity? Does ChatGPT engage in the creative process? Is ChatGPT a superior creative agent? 

There is a school of thought that conceives of creativity as an input/output system (perhaps these are the same individuals who scoff at the ‘hard problem of consciousness’). They view creativity as a reformulation of words already written; a fresh spin on ideas already presented; minor adjustments and embellishments to a predetermined structure; a variation on a tired theme. Verse-chorus-bridge. Rinse, repeat. 

AI excels at this kind of bland ‘creativity’. Rules and algorithms are its forte. It is, by its nature, derivative. It lacks any sort of creative spark, any genuine inspiration. It is a black box that accepts information and proceeds to spit it out in the requested form. There is no unique, maybe divine, consciousness that grapples with that information, internalizes the joy and suffering, reflects on its own experience, and hobbles forward to birth something wholly singular and original. To indulge in stronger language, Suno and ChatGPT produce content that is competent and coherent but soulless and sterile. 

I think you would agree with this.

But here lies the real problem, the one that was not addressed in your letter—much of our popular music is similarly lifeless. You argued that we must fight ‘tooth and nail’ against the ‘existential evil’ that is ChatGPT. But shouldn’t we be fighting tooth and nail against the existential embarrassment that is the current state of popular music? If many of our culture’s most cherished ‘artists’ released a song with AI-generated lyrics, would anyone notice? Or can ChatGPT already spit out lyrics that are indistinguishable if not superior to most of our radio hits and chart-toppers? Why wage a war against ChatGPT if it can write better lyrics than we can? 

I would like to draw an analogy here to atheism and religion. Being an observant Jew, I am well acquainted with the impulse to shudder when atheists liken religion to an opportunistic virus. But should we really demonize atheism in response to such a critique? Or is better to take the critique in good faith, to respond to it accordingly, to ensure that religion evolves in a positive direction so that is remains the best option on the menu? 

Just as the response to bad religion is better religion, the answer to ChatGPT is not an ‘anti-AI movement’ but songwriting that is more authentic. We must examine our own art and ask: ‘Is this really good enough?’ 

The sad fact is that much of our popular music is formulaic pablum, disconcertingly similar to AI-generated content. The aim of these songwriters (or songwriting teams) is to ride the current Tik-Tok trend and cater to the lowest common denominator. They specialize in polished artifice rather than meaningful artifacts of the human experience. 

While this may all sound unnecessarily cynical and judgmental, I mention it to inject some optimism into the conversation. There could be a silver-lining to Suno and AI-generated content more generally. Once we accept the fact that AI can write better cookie-cutter content than most songwriters, maybe we will be dragged kicking and screaming into a new era of creativity. 

In other words, perhaps we’ve reached a fork in the road. We can either set ourselves apart from the machines or we can become inferior versions of them. We can instill our art with that ineffable spark of consciousness or we can forfeit the project altogether, concede mediocrity, and defer to the master techno-race.

I hope we choose the former.