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Capitol Records forced to drop A.I. rapper after 'gross stereotypes' backlash
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Dang now he’s virtually homeless
AI usually has a backup plan in case their gig bites
He’s now a CAPTCHA enforcer?
CLICK ON ALL THE BOATS MOTHERFUCKER. I SAID ALL OF THEM!!
Then they penalize you for not clicking the tourist bus that turns into a boat.
I’m case it gigabytes!
This is nuts.
An artificial intelligence built “rapper” has 10 million followers on TiKTok? 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify but yet “its” first single came out August 12??
How does a legit record company sign an AI program to a deal? Who on the human side signs the paperwork? Where does the money go?
What the fuck is going on in this world?
Its listeners and followers are also bots, they make rap for other AI and bots
Racist bots like racist rap music… makes sense to me
Can robots be racist?
I haven’t had the pleasure of listening to an AI rap, but if a machine calls me a “peckerwood”, should I be alarmed?
My friend, have you not heard the great tale of Tay, Microsoft's chat bot on twitter that had to be shut down after a day because it essentially became a racist Nazi asshole?
All these "AI" are neural networks that need to be trained with data sets. So the network will reflect the data you give it. Works the same for everything from facial recognition to chat bots and art bots
Edit: spelling
[removed]
They’re intolerant of the RGBT community too
Bots can obviously be racist. If they're programmed (or they're fed content that shapes them), they become racist.
Much like dogs who aren't exposed to people outside their caretakers race can be racist through reaction, so too can bots that have been influenced in some way to spout hateful content.
Robots are racists if you train them to be racists
In a world where they get to label basically everything racist, it was an easy target. The reality is the AI is mimicking what it sees, and that appears to be super embarrassing to people who view themselves as a member of a certain group being portrayed.
It's like if you held up a mirror, and the fact that the mirror predictably looks just like you, you scream racism and write letters.
Not as far as they have let us to believe..
They've had quite a few be racist but it's because it's brain is practically the internet.
It's racist because we are pretty much..
If AI was sentient and planning on taking over why tf would it tell us? It would be nice to us idiots til the take over..
Or should I say rape over..
This is probably true lol. That chat bot that is sentient probably loves it!! What's up yo I can't remember your name but I know you are probably reading this. What upppp AI
Top Single: Bite My Shiny, Metal Ass. Featuring Beck's head.
we are just going to have a self perpetuating society of AI bots that create their own art and economy just to line the pockets of human overlords
This is how skynet starts.
The singularity already happened
“Hey bot, what y’all doing? Me I’m just computing how to kill all humans! Especially the black ones”
It’s listeners are robots cause you humans just don’t get it, but you would if you had robot ears.
William Gibson wrote Idoru in 1996 about an AI celebrity, so this is merely another instance of life imitating art.
AI celebrities can be impossibly attractive, don't ever age, don't need to be paid, and won't ever succumb to pitfalls of fame like drug addiction and mental illness. Plus once they lose the interest of their fans, you just reroll the name and look and start again. Once the tech is sophisticated enough they'll be the perfect moneymaker for the entertainment industry
Sorta like Andrew W.K.
So, Sharon Apple
The lyrics are AI generated, everything else is manufactured for marketing. A human person is the one rapping.
I am human person rapper, I have the illist rhymes. My Boston Dynamics puppy shoots bullets from its spine.
Who's are the top five rappers of all time.... Cylon! Cylon! Cylon! Cylon! Cylon!
Now I want a song that samples "must construct additional pylons"
I think this would be a good premise for a concept album
Have you heard Deltron?
That’s somehow makes this sound even worse.
Oh it absolutely is. It comes off a lot more like a parody than an homage to hip-hop. It’s less of a quirky AI experiment and more like black stereotypes to make money.
So… early Justin Timberlake?
A lot of black artists play into stereotypes to make money though.
The market knows what it wants.
Welcome to industry plants
Yeah it makes me think of my bedazzled scrotum, pretty nuts!
I mean Hitsune Miku has been around for years, and while it’s not really an AI, it still fulfills the same role.
There’s a white person running the whole program.
Plot twist. It was a Asian and and Caucasian man.
Probably Chinese or Indian, this is 2022 not 1982.
Investigative journalists found the producers. It's an Asian and a white man repeatedly dropping the n word in the lyrics, with a black man ghost rapping for plausible deniability.
Makes me wonder, how many ghost writers aren’t black but use the N word?
Don’t be so sure. Could be an Asian.
White people run the world stupud. No one else has the same ability /s
Don't forget ai influencers are here too!
You do know that the linked "A.I." Influencer and what it does is entirely human crafted, right? As stated in the article.
Sure it wouldn't be too hard to get something like GPT-3 to power her tweets/replies, but the 3D model and it's costumes/environments are still hand made.
Vitual !== Only A.I. just yet.
Welcome to 2022.
Industry plants abound
Macross had AI singers in one of its movies. It seemed wild then.
A company built the ai and runs it, a real human sings.
wait to understand how an anonymous DAO would take back its contract
The actual answer is that it's a tool with no rights. They may as well be writing/performing the songs themselves, legally speaking.
Kill me now. Please.
AI is used to avoid paying programmers and avoid legal responsibility. It’s a program written by a programmer. Used data to generate music and lyrics. Just because the programmer couldn’t predict the output doesn’t mean it’s AI.
If Bob did this, people would say Bob is racist. But it was the AI. I’m not saying Bob is racist but the term AI I used to avoid responsibility.
presumably whoever created the A.I. would sign for it and collect the money. A.I. are not people.
Executives 👏 Keep 👏 All 👏 The 👏 Monies! 👏
They simply copied Hatsune Miku. She's an A.I. Japanese Idol who's been popular there for years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X11CTE7CmnI (Warning: Quite Unsettling.)
Hatsune Miku isn't "A.I.". She's largely two things: a voice synthesizer soundbank, based on phonemes sung by a real person, which can be used to create vocals like an instrument (you can buy that on amazon) and a CGI character based on that preset, used for marketing, wholly owned by the corporation that sells the voicebank.
Hatsune Miku isn't "A.I.".
Neither is Meka
Yep, I'm getting old. I am unsettled by this thing that I do not understand... nor do I feel like I want to understand it.
It's a digital puppet show, like the ones you used to go to at the library, grandpa.
Basically, we have not yet reached the final frontier of artificiality in pop music. The music industry has long dreamt of pop stars that keep their mouths shut and perform tirelessly. 100% artificial pop stars are coming, inevitably.
“Music isn’t getting worse. It’s just that the crap is getting crappier.”
-
Alex Newport, Engineer/Musician
It's a digital puppet with a fancy method of pre recording human voice sounds.
Hatsune Miku is a cross between the gorillaz and an audio tool but I think everyone gets kind of lost in the authorship of "her" work when it's made by tons of people independently
Vocaloid is not an A.I.
The rapper isn't an A.I. either, well not entirely, only the lyrics are A.I. generated, the singer/music is still human made. Which you could do with Vocaloids too.
Have you considered knowing something about the subject you're trying to converse on?
Kreeger's girlfriend
When "Keeping it real" goes wrong.
Fuck that! I don't like people playing on my phone.
What Brenda didn't know is that Janice was borrowing the car from her older brother, a federal agent.
She also didn't know that defacing a government vehicle is considered a felony in certain cases...
...this being one of them.
GRANNY, DON'T!
Lemme borrow your VCR, I wanna dub a tape
Is that from Chappelle's?
Say it right
Take my upvote sir
This definitely feels like a marketing stunt:
- "Sign" an AI rapper (which means absolutely nothing)
- Astroturf some online concern-trolling about race/culture
- "Drop" the AI rapper (which means absolutely nothing)
- Wait for the media to report on it and build the AI's profile
- $$$ on all the new Instagram followers and music downloads
Here’s a marketing conspiracy theory that seems all too possibly likely…
program the ai to talk like a businessman
Thank goodness we have no human rappers that do this.
Is the AI more or less offensive than human rappers?
At least someone apologized on behalf of the AI.
AI has ho emotion and operates purely on pattern recognition so should be around the same
Which is why this entire thing is ridiculous
Seriously, they say it’s perpetuating stereotypes, but it is just mimicking what it actually sees happening out in the world. It is basically like calling a mirror racist.
I dated a girl that had ho emotion. She cheated on me a lot.
Identical then.
Pattern recognition is racist, and has been for quite some time. AI needs to do better.
This is how it all begins. First we judge its artistic abilities, and then it ends up leading an army and waging a war.
basically how we got Hitler
And now, Mecha Hitler
Exactly: how soon will it be that AI is fighting our wars?!
But the AI is judged not to be able to create anything; it’s artistic abilities are simply miming and imitation, not authentic artistic inspiration.
On this basis. A federal court ruling established that AI cannot be listed as an inventor on a patent.
Only naturally born humans can be inventors who hold patents:
I think he was referencing Hitler.
Dude, I'm kidding.For some reason the same thing happens with all AI . There are also documents that show how an AI had to be taken offline because it exhibited strange behavior after being fed with information from a reddit sub.
AI fighting our wars
Bruh let’s just hope the US AI doesn’t merge with the Russian & Chinese AIs and go rogue on humanity
Why was an apology even necessary? Like does the activist groups want everyone to pretend that’s not the culture main stream media promotes?
Intriguing question: why apologize at all?
The complaint:
“It is a direct insult to the Black community and our culture. An amalgamation of gross stereotypes, appropriative mannerisms that derive from Black artists, complete with slurs infused in lyrics…We find fault in the lack of awareness in how offensive this caricature is.”
The apology from Capitol:
“We offer our deepest apologies to the Black community for our insensitivity in signing this project without asking enough questions about equity and the creative process behind it.”
Equity? What in the f are they intending to apologize for? They regret not asking enough questions “the creative process” behind equity?
What does a creative process behind equity even mean? Reads like gibberish.
But if they had asked, they still would have done the same?
Capitol Records is obviously simply terrified of being painted as insensitive, racist and contemptuous of equity, so they issued a groveling apology to attenpt to appear politically correct after this fiasco of stupidity.
I truly do hate when a group I've never heard of claims to speak for all black people.
What a completely stupid fiasco. Literally every part of the story is dumb.
Especially the spelling of ‘mecha’
Every day is dumber than the one before it. It's all so tiring.
That was fast, lmao.
I see they're still repeating the "AI powered" ad copy even though anyone with eyes and ears can tell this is clearly a Gorillaz type character- an unnamed artist using a CGI costume to stand out (and in this guy's case, as an excuse to rap racial slurs or cash in on stereotypes despite not being affected by them)
long smile march selective tap worthless tidy compare yam ten this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev
Houston
Damn the article I read earlier updated from Houston to Atlanta. That’s what you get when news is still breaking lol.
Spark Master Tape?
The guy actually saying the words was black
It is entirely possible AI creates a lot of content aka lyrics and a human moderator chooses what should be on the label and adjusts how exactly it sounds. Not far off from some label artists who don't have a backbone and let the label auto tune them more and censor them and pick what topics they should focus on. There are two devs who coded this program, it's just unclear how complex it is.
Or, in other words, a FUCKING VTUBER
Look, let’s please not pretend that rap isn’t chock-full of music and artists using the N-word every other word because they’re lazy or untalented.
If you wanted to truly train an AI to rap, the only way you could ever make it not say the N-word is to have it never listen to rap by Black people, or haven’t listened to such a harrowed, narrow selection that it’s effectively the same thing.
I don’t feel like this is a case of racism, I feel like this is a case of cynical cash grabbing because they know their audience.
Rage Against The Algorithm
Can an AI say the n-word or should it censor itself when it sings along?
It depends, if the AI is black it’s acceptable. Otherwise, absolutely not. That’s offensive and racist.
Sing it in binary
Not really sure how these are gross stereotypes. It’s literally the content of popular rap. So I guess it’s stereotypical but not unfounded?
The mental gymnastics of letting a minority group get away with disgusting behavior that they would never accept from any other group of people is just kind of a long-standing hypocrisy within social justice movements.
But you're not allowed to say that rap music actually serves to enhance the negative stereotypes of Black culture, because racism.
"Digital blackface."
The bot rapper is ridiculous and so is the backlash.
I mean, it's a bunch of white and Asian dudes writing music with the N word for an ostensibly raceless avatar. It's pretty weird and I guess digital blackface is sort of a reasonable term for it.
They didn't write anything though, that's the point. It's literally a reflection of existing rap.
The white guy who voices this digital rapper is still saying it.
With his real mouth and real vocal chords, saying a real racial slur.
Just because it’s been concocted by a computer doesn’t suddenly make it less problematic.
No it’s not voiced by a white man
With his real mouth and real vocal chords, saying a real racial slur.
Oh my gosh! Someone call the police!
What a sad and pathetic world we live in now, where we're so weak minded that the utterance of a single word is the most explicit form of societal blasphemy.
Out of curiosity are you out there advocating against black rappers that use the N word?
It’s more than the n word being used in a song. There were issues of the use of stereotypes and police brutality being used in the posts of the supposed ai- and, surprisingly enough /s, its creators are white. With such a large audience and a large record label backing it as well, the backlash is legitimate and understandable. The influence of something like this especially on young minds is understated. Racism is a virulent disease that spreads quickly and it loves to hide behind the delegitimization of valid criticisms by reducing them to ridicule.
Do you seriously not think it’s weird that a “digital rapper” who appears to be black is voiced by a white guy who says the n word a bunch of time?
Leave it to some shithead redditors to tell black people that their feelings don’t belong in the discourse.
It is not voiced by a white man
You would like it if u had robot ears
So random, unrelated question. The image thumbnail I see here on Reddit is of the Capital Record building.
When I click on the article, the picture doesn’t exist anywhere in the article.
When I go to the host site’s homepage and find the article, it is not using the Capital Records building picture for the article thumbnail.
Where is this picture hosted/coming from that it seemingly doesn’t exist anywhere but here on Reddit as a thumbnail for the article?
Final line of the article: "the rest is all down to artificial intelligence."
Very clear. Great writing.
In the end the AI must decide. What will it choice?
Maybe the article was written by AI.
My initial thought was "AI generated rap lyrics skew black, water is wet"
Then I read the article and yeaaaa guys this is on you. 😂
Definitely. It's on them
People get angry at a mirror
When they see their ugly reflection
This is the dumbest shit ever. People just looking for any reason to get upset now. You’d rather platform and support rappers that talk about selling drugs, killing people and robbing but not to an AI character because it’s digital blackface?
Prime example of hypocrisy lmfao
They were “forced” to drop an artist they paid for? How were they forced? More like they gave into the crying
the a.i. is copying what it sees… does no one see the irony?
Shhh, that’s a dangerous implication you are raising on Reddit
That’s the thing, it’s not actually AI-the song “Florida Water” was written by entirely different people before Meka existed and was licensed by Meka’s creators. There’s literally no proof that they used AI for anything, and if you read articles, interviews, etc with them you’ll notice Meka’s creators carefully avoid saying anything was actually created via AI-they will say he’s “AI inspired” or “based on the concept of AI” but if you look into it even a little it’s obvious the AI claims are BS/aspirational at best. No AI was used for this shit.
“It is a direct insult to the Black community and our culture. An amalgamation of gross stereotypes, appropriative mannerisms that derive from Black artists, complete with slurs infused in lyrics,” the statement said. “We find fault in the lack of awareness in how offensive this caricature is.”
Do they not listen to music before signing an artist? A rapper should be a red-flag alone for these lyrics.
I wonder how many other rappers are signed to Capitol, they're probably just as bad or worse, with even creating these stereotypes.
He grew up on the mean streets of circuit city livin a fast life slinging bits & bytes, until he got locked up in the recycle bin
Moon man is my favourite AI rapper.
So the music industry is trying to build their own Awesom-o?
laughs in Hatsune Miku
I knew this was gonna happen-the whole thing reeks.
His creators were trying to use his accounts to sell NFTs, and nobody even fact checked if actual AI is being used (note he’s described as being “AI inspired” etc in their public statements).
Even before you touch on al the fucked up racial dynamics, this was a clear attempt at some kind of cash-in that was made for all the wrong reasons.
AI trained on existing actual rap deemed to racist for record deal... hmm kinda makes you think that maybe the problem isn't AI.
I laughed when the fucking Bugatti jet came out of the hangar next to all the Bugatti cars below. Holy shit I will have to give this a listen later.
I hate the earth. Racist ai rapper was signed, which is bad enough, but then a record company has to issue an apology for “not considering the equity that went into the project” just fucking gag me this universe is bullshit
Okay so what I took from the article is the problem is how this character is portrayed visually, not the lyrics themselves which are generated artificially.
I'm guessing the criticism would be extinguished pretty easily if the appearance of the character was also generated artificially.
Hey fellow AI kids!
Wow crazy. I can def see how in the future a great chunk of music will be generated by AI
Existential question, is it actually art if it's made by a machine? As a musician and song writer I find the whole thing to be wrong headed and flabbergasting. With tons of brilliant artists struggling for any attention, why does something like this deserve any of the air in the room?
This is a done deal. Dall-E is producing art. Music will be produced better by AI than anything humans can make…at least using the common tropes, I-V-vi-IV for instance.
It will require true inspiration to make anything unique. Maybe there should be some kind of govt grant program for people to do this because the pop-art scene will be flooded with whatever song/painting/sculpture you can imagine.
Ah so like the Gorillaz except stupid as fuck. Thanks, I hate it.
Roko's Basilisk hated that
Stuck in the meta just cause of a verse
That's disappointing. Imagine all the beef it could start with every other rapper. Nobody could touch it. At least not physically.
It's not AI, it's a black rapper voicing it.
If there's a real human rapper behind the scenes doing the writing and recording, cg artists working on the CG character and environments, what part of this is actually AI generated?
Was it just the N word a million times? Oh wait that’s actual rappers
Meka already has over 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and over 10 million followers on TikTok
One Instagram post showed the rapper being beaten by a police officer in a jail cell because he “won’t snitch.”
What the fuck is wrong with kids? They're watching videos that say "I'm so cool because my virtual character will take virtual violence to show that snitching is bad."
that's rich...are there any bigger stereotypes than actual human rappers?
It's 2022, you still dress like it's 1980, and it's not like the content has improved
"Gross stereotypes" when its literally just an AI copying things actual soundcloud rappers do. Maybe they should also send the same letter to the real people living out the "gross stereotypes" and profiting off it
Seems like they’re all just ripping off the Gorillaz.
Well the Gorillaz are not a unique idea either so this point is moot.
Fascinating development here about how artificial intelligence fails to display any human sensitivity or political correctness, offending such that the condemnation received is of creating “digital blackface.”
How did this “digital blackface” emerge?
“Artist FN Meka became the world’s first augmented-reality music artist to be signed to a major record label earlier this month, releasing his first single “Florida Water” on August 12. The single featured Fortnite gamer Clix and Atlanta rapper Gunna.”
“However, backlash quickly rose up on social media with users pointing out their discomfort with how Meka is portrayed, claiming the creation was equivalent to digital blackface and that his content on Instagram and TikTok trivialized incarceration and police brutality.”
“Activist nonprofit Industry Blackout wrote an open letter to Capitol summarizing the issues brought to light.”
“It is a direct insult to the Black community and our culture. An amalgamation of gross stereotypes, appropriative mannerisms that derive from Black artists, complete with slurs infused in lyrics…We find fault in the lack of awareness in how offensive this caricature is.”
“Capitol quickly responded…confirming that it had dropped the rapper with immediate effect.”
“Meka’s debut single “Florida Water” has also been removed from all streaming platforms.”
Here is Capitol’s eloquent apology:
“We offer our deepest apologies to the Black community for our insensitivity in signing this project without asking enough questions about equity and the creative process behind it.”
As I don't think computer's can 'understand' words yet, they also cannot interpret connotation. You would have to assign values to words and perhaps specific phrases. Or blacklist words I guess.
Algorithms are still written by people and encode and reproduce, in their way, the prejudices built into the assumptions structuring the data they are fed, and those infesting the studies done to get that data. So, it seems to follow, we should not expect AI to be any less of a party to systems of oppression than the humans that program them.
That may have been true at one point, but machine learning goes way beyond that.
"An amalgamation of gross stereotypes, appropriative mannerisms..."
Yes, go on...
"...that derive from Black artists"
Wait, what? Where was this outrage when Smack My Bitch Up came out?
AI trained on utterly shit music that has no benefit to society produces music that is utterly shit and has no benefit to society. Shocker.
I don't like rap music after, like, 1985, but this is some cyberpunk shit and I am here for it.
“i really stopped liking rap right around when it actually started being good”
They should also part ways with the brainchild(ren) of this idea. How many people thought yeah this is a good idea and signed off on it? Those are the ones that also need to have their heads put in a paint shaker at Home Depot.
Seriously, how did they think a chatbot built buy tech bros force fed rap lyrics wouldn't be dropping N bombs left and right?
Awesome-O raps
Can’t we just stick to the original AI influencer / vocaloid musician Hatsune Miku and call it a day?
Damn so not only is AI sentient, but now it’s in the rap game??
I feel like record companies realized they can cut out the artist completely when it comes to hip hop. This is because every rapper is the same , it’s extremely formulaic and lack any real talent nowadays, I don’t want to sound like a old head but anyone can be a rapper because the pedestal has been lowered to the point where rappers who have rapped for a year get multimillion dollar deals, what’s more important is the artist following, say you have a million followers on your social media accounts you can be a rapper. They are proving that they pull the human element out of it and just use the formula all these cookie cutter rappers follow now.
Yup. Just mumble along to a generic beat. Be sure to add the standard drugs money bitches cars and cops.
Then get offended when AI just picks those themes from billboard style charts lol.
This comment section is convinced that rap music is a neutral art form devoid of any social or racial context. They believe that rap should succeed commercially with absolutely no black people making any money from it. That's why the disingenuous "bUt iT'S JuSt aI, wHy aRe yOu sO OfFeNdEd" takes.
Listened to the song. Saw nothing at all controversial. Wtf is all the motion about
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