Dustin Ballard of ‘There I Ruined It’ Explains How AI Enhances His Song Parodies

Musician Dustin BallardofThere I Ruined Itgave a wonderful TED Talk explaining how he goes about creating parody songs using original music combined with AI. He also talked about whether or not AI is an instrument comparable to synthesizers, or perhaps phonographs in John Philip Sousas time, as he shared a number of his ingenious mashups.

Dustin Ballard, the creative force behind the viral channel There I Ruined It,"explores the weird, wonderful and sometimes unsettling ways AI is reshaping music.

Ballard also talked about how one of his mashups made it to Congress, noting that there was a big disconnect between the artistic effort put into the project and the finished result.

So there was a recent US congressional hearing on AI music where they played my mashup of AI Johnny Cash singing the song Barbie Girl," to which Representative Matt Gaetz replied, Robots should not be subject to free speech." Now for the record, I am not a robot, but I do think this illustrates some of the confusion around this topic, which kind of leaves musicians like myself into come up with our own guardrails for how to use AI.

These guardrails include deception, artistic intent, and the effect on the musicians involved.

The first is, is it deceptive? Could somebody believe this is actually real? Next, is there artistic intent behind it? So if you're one of these people that's mass producing AI songs, hundreds of songs, and uploading them to Spotify, your intent is probably not artistic. And then finally, how does this affect the musicians? And oftentimes, the victims of the songs that I create actually end up sharing those same songs on social media.

subscribe to the Laughing Squid Newsletter

The post Dustin Ballard of There I Ruined It' Explains How AI Enhances His Song Parodies was originally published on Laughing Squid.