Beyoncé States Stance on AI Music

Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter" is a mere blip on the timeline, yet its impact promises to be long-lasting. 

Records are shattering across streaming platforms, and the artist herself crowns it "the best music [she's] ever made."

But nestled amidst the press release fanfare, Beyoncé dropped an unexpected truth bomb – a declaration against the encroaching tide of AI in music. 

"The joy of creating music is that there are no rules," Beyoncé proclaimed. 

"The more I see the world evolving the more I felt a deeper connection to purity. With artificial intelligence and digital filters and programming, I wanted to go back to real instruments." 

Beyoncé's pronouncements are rare gems, each one a cryptic key for fans to unlock the intricate puzzle of her albums. Her stance on AI transcends a casual remark; it's a deliberate act. 

The backlash against AI-generated art centres around its modus operandi. AI music generators can churn out fresh tracks in minutes, even mimicking artists' vocals with unsettling accuracy. 

Often, this "inspiration" comes from the very artists whose careers AI might eventually displace. 

Large language models and diffusion models, the engines behind AI art, gobble up mountains of text, images, and sounds to fuel their creative fire. Some industry giants, like OpenAI and Stability AI, train their systems on copyrighted works without so much as a by-your-leave. 

Stability AI, for instance, boasts a music model trained on licensed stock music, but its image generation counterpart, Stable Diffusion, operates with a less scrupulous approach. 

Ed Newton-Rex, Stability AI's former VP of Audio, couldn't stomach the practice any longer. 

He resigned, stating his disagreement with the company's stance that copyright infringement constitutes "fair use" when training generative AI models. 

Little wonder artists like Beyoncé bristle at this technology. Countless AI models have been built on the backs of artists, their work pilfered without consent. 

This is particularly detrimental for rising musicians, struggling to make their mark in an already unforgiving industry. Beyoncé's perspective gains further depth when viewed through the lens of "Cowboy Carter" itself. 

While the album doesn't explicitly call out AI, it tackles the issue of artistic appropriation. Beyoncé delves into the historical contributions of Black musicians to the foundation of country music, a genre often wrongly assumed to be the sole domain of Southern white culture. 

The very title, "Cowboy Carter," is a subtle jab at the appropriation of Black music for white gain.  "Carter" could be a nod to Beyoncé's marital name, but it also evokes the Carters, the so-called "first family" of country music.  

These Carters built their empire upon the work of Black musicians, yet the genre continues to ostracize Black artists. An Oklahoma country radio station recently refused to play Beyoncé's "Texas Hold 'Em," citing her lack of country credentials. 

Beyoncé's seemingly out-of-the-blue stance against AI exposes a similar injustice: artists once again have their work pilfered and repurposed without their consent or recognition. 

The album features interludes where country legend Willie Nelson hosts a radio program called "Smoke Hour." 

One such segment precedes "Texas Hold 'Em," adding another layer of meaning in light of the Oklahoma radio incident. Nelson takes a subtle dig: "Now for this next tune, I want y'all to sit back, inhale, and go to the good place your mind likes to wander off to. And if you don't wanna go, go find yourself a jukebox." 

This is the world Beyoncé envisions: a world where jukeboxes and radios reign supreme, Black musicians have artistic freedom, and artistic theft becomes a relic of the past.