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by drngdds 978 days ago
People like celebrities and personalities. Perfect and artificial is the opposite of what they want. People like Taylor Swift because she's Taylor Swift, not just because she's a great singer. (Not to mention that, for music in particular, live shows are a thing.)

There will definitely be a role for fully AI characters when the technology gets there (people love vtubers and vocaloids already!) but I doubt they would ever really replace human performers.

1 comments

This doesn’t track. If this was true, people would not like fictional characters, like sponge bob or pikachu.

Taylor Swift is a generated personality designed by a branding and marketing company.

People don’t care if there is a human portraying the character or a team of artists.

> Taylor Swift is a generated personality designed by a branding and marketing company

Interesting. When did she turn from an actual person into a generated personality, and how? And why can't we get more of them on tour to lower the ticket prices?

its basically true for all a-list celebrities. branding companies exist to coach celebrities to maximize their reliability and marketing.

I'd imagine the moment she signed a deal with a record label, they hired a company to help manage her brand/PR.

people want authenticity, and ai is just not gonna fly

sure - you can suggest that Taylor is the product of branding/marketing. its cynical and somewhat true. but aside from that, she's an artist. in the deepest meaning of the word.

people are not going to resonate with a generative ai. instead - people will continue to resonate with actual art and artists expressing actual feelings

> people want authenticity,

They _want_ that. But they rarely have that. I argue most if not all music artists in particular, are "fake" already, in the sense that, like you say, branding+marketing, and scripted stunts and controversies, etc. People are already fooled by this in today's age. I think there might be pushback, but I think in the end people will accept/be fooled by ai generated artists.

Or maybe the two truths can coexist: some people will worship SpongeBob and others Taylor Swift, all will attend both live and virtual shows of both, with the only negative consequence that SpongeBob will now eat (more of) the cake of some other human artist. It's still displacement just slightly less dramatic. As for myself, I'm a simple man, going only to cellar live shows which cannot be replaced by AI as the very reason of being there is... being there with the artist. So the AI seems to only threaten the pop industry, not undeserved if you ask me.
> people will continue to resonate with actual art and artists expressing actual feelings

really though? Look at Britney Spears or Shia LaBeouf. They have very "authentic" personalities, but society rejects them.

Then you have people like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, or Johnny Depp paying for branding agencies and people love them.

Uh, Hatsune Miku?