The Art of AI

From Hollywood to Hip Hop, artists are negotiating new boundaries of consent for use of AI in the creative industries. Bridget Todd speaks to artists who are pushing the boundaries.

It’s not the first time artists have been squeezed, but generative AI presents new dilemmas. In this episode: a member of the AI working group of the Hollywood writers union; a singer who licenses the use of her voice to others; an emcee and professor of Black music; and an AI music company charting a different path.

Van Robichaux is a comedy writer in Los Angeles who helped craft the Writers Guild of America’s proposals on managing AI in the entertainment industry. 

Holly Herndon is a Berlin-based artist and a computer scientist who has developed “Holly +”, a series of deep fake music tools for making music with Holly’s voice.

Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo creates video games and studies the intersection between AI and Hip Hop at Brown University. Her alias as a rapper is Sammus. 

Rory Kenny is co-founder and CEO of Loudly, an AI music generator platform that employs musicians to train their AI instead of scraping music from the internet.

*Thank you to Sammus for sharing her track ‘1080p.’ Visit Sammus’ Bandcamp page to hear the full track and check out more of her songs.*