Nick Cave recently took to his Q&A website, The Red Hand Files, to respond to a fan who used ChatGPT to write a song "in the style of Nick Cave."
First, what are The Red Hand Files? Tim Elliott of The Sydney Morning Herald, explains:
In 2017, Cave began a series of spoken word shows, in which he simply stood on stage and talked to the audience. Now comes the online version of that, called The Red Hand Files. Named after his 1994 song, Red Right Hand, the website allows Cave's fans to submit open questions, which the singer then answers, in beautifully written replies that are posted online.
Next, what did Nick Cave have to say about the AI-written song, "in the style of Nick Cave"? He says, in part:
Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don't feel. Data doesn't suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn't have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT's melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.
And he closes his response with this brilliance:
Mark, thanks for the song, but with all the love and respect in the world, this song is bullshit, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human, and, well, I don't much like it — although, hang on!, rereading it, there is a line in there that speaks to me —'I've got the fire of hell in my eyes' — says the song 'in the style of Nick Cave', and that's kind of true. I have got the fire of hell in my eyes – and it's ChatGPT.
Love, Nick
Read the rest of his response here. And go listen to some real Nick Cave, who can never be replaced by AI.
