The creation and life of ‘artificial intelligence and music’: how practices of design and use shape the direction of AI and work in a creative industry

Abstract

This thesis examines the construction and impact of ‘Artificial Intelligence and Music’ (AIM), an emergent practice of AI development for the automation and augmentation of music creation. Drawing upon findings gathered through ethnographic observations and interviews, it questions how and why the emergence of AIM is meaningful for music workers through the directions and influences of its innovation and the meaning making of its use. It argues that power in the music industry is shifting to AI technologies, developers, and controllers. These agents are shaped by an inflated value placed on association with AI in the wider AI market, and by internal competition for technical dominance within this market. AIM is therefore argued as a practice of technical, not musical innovation, limiting the practical implementation of responsible and interdisciplinary development called for in AI discourse. Regardless of music workers’ (invested; neutral; reluctant; avoidant) positions on emergent AIM, these power shifts necessitate new strategies for maintaining their own agency in and beyond existing frameworks of sociotechnical music careers. These findings demonstrate a distinction between perspectives of music as incidental in AIM and vital in music work that is seldom acknowledged in AIM development. The integration of music work perspectives is therefore argued for through an expanded view of users to include the complexities of use in musical labour, and expanded objectives in AIM practice to include music as a key consideration of AIM labour. This would ensure that the responsibility for beneficial AIM does not fall to individual workers, who have seen declining conditions of work through past struggles to maintain careers through technological change.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Kieron Rhys Owen: orcid.org/0009-0002-0593-7655

ORCID for Pauline Leonard: orcid.org/0000-0002-8112-0631

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