[zogrodea]

Regarding your point about music:

There are subtle and deliberate deviations in timing and elements like vibrato when a human plays the same song on an instrument twice, which is partly why (aside from recording tech) people prefer live or human musicians.

Think about how precise and exacting a computer can be. It can play the same notes in a MIDI editor with exact timing, always playing note B after 18 seconds of playing note A. Human musicians can't always be that precise in timing, but we seem to prefer how human musicians sound with all of the variations they make. We seem to dislike the precise mechanical repetition of music playback on a computer comparatively.

I think the same point generalises into a general dislike on the part of humans of sensory repetition. We want variety. (Compare the first and second grass pictures at [0] and you will probably find that the second which has more "dirt" and variety looks better.) "Semantic satiation" seems to be a specific case of the same tendency.

I'm not saying that's something a computer can't achieve eventually but it's something that will need to be done before machines can replace musicians.

[0] http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/sywtbapa_gradient_tool.php

[riwsky]

You can modulate midi timinbg with noise. In some programs, there’s literally a Humanize button.

[zogrodea]

Yes. I tried that with some software-based synthesisers (like the SWAM violin and Reason's Friktion) which are designed for human-playing (humans controlling the VST through a device that emits MIDI CC control messages) but my understanding is that the modulation that skilled human players perform with tends to be better/more desirable than what software modulators can currently achieve.