Timbaland is a loser

I know, I know. You're tired of hearing it, and I’m tired of speaking about it. However, like it or not, AI is here to stay, and it will only become more and more of an issue. So we'd better get used to speaking about it.

It felt like only a matter of time before AI reared its ugly head in a big way. There have been rumblings of AI being integrated into our media for years. Just last year, Oscar-winning The Brutalist was under fire for using AI to change the actors' voices, and just a few weeks ago in music, The Alchemist and Erykah Badu used AI to create an audio visualiser for their new song Next to You.

Don’t get me wrong, these are hardly groundbreaking uses, but in allegiance with the countless other times it has been used, it sets a precedent for the future that could harm thousands of creatives.

However, Timbaland has taken it upon himself to take that step further and give a middle finger to all the up-and-coming creatives.

For anyone who may not know, Timbaland is a rap producer who has worked for artists such as JAY-Z, Missy Elliot and Ludacris. Annoyingly, I used to like Timbaland. He was iconic in the rap scene and has created some great work. It just makes this pivot even more embarrassing.

Timbaland recently set up a record label solely for AI artists called Stage Zero, as he apparently believes that it's the only entity that embodies genuine soul. He has signed his first artist, a term I use loosely, TaTa, an artificial pop singer who has announced a new single.

I have many questions. Firstly, how a human can believe artificial intelligence has genuine soul is beyond me. It’s literally in the name. Last time I checked, artificial didn’t mean a way of expressing a person’s true soul.

Secondly, how do you sign fake people to a label? What does that even mean?

And last, but not least, how much of a loser do you have to be to do this?

Maybe I'm overcynical, but to me it screams that the calls to work for him started to dry up and the once great producer had been left behind.

That’s ok, It happens to the best of us. 

Timbaland is clearly not ready to accept this gracefully.  Instead of just embracing it, he’s having an AI-induced midlife crisis. I can’t say it's a good look.

Regardless of what your stance on AI is, letting it infiltrate a medium which was created on the ideas and creativity of individuals is an awful idea. It literally rots the foundations on which the entertainment industry was built.

It seems to me that the industry is so hell bent on being a pioneer that they are looking for the first opportunity they can to jump on the AI train. They are so scared of being left behind, they instead position themselves as a visionary for using AI and then cover their tracks by saying ‘it’s the future’ and ‘we'd better get used to it’.

It's doo-laley. I don’t understand how people have experienced music, movies, TV and art for their whole life and have the thought this would be done better than AI.

AI could never create Kendrick’s To Pimp A Butterfly. AI could never create Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. AI couldn’t even light a candle to Chance The Rapper’s The Big Day. If AI had the capacity to dream, it would spend every night begging to even be close to as good as what humans have created for decades.

They can try and spin it however they like. All AI is a vessel for lazy people to be lazier.  Why put in effort when you can just get AI to do it for you and you don’t have to pay a soul?

It’s even more mental when you remember it is Timbaland out of all people doing this, considering that the easiest job to replace in the music industry is the producers. He is lucky because if AI were around when he was coming up, he wouldn’t have had a chance.

When we eventually do all become mindless drones for AI living in a world devoid of any human expression, I want people to remember the likes of Timbaland and how he sold his soul just to save a few extra pounds.