I have very few people who I genuinely considered heroic for the creative fields, but Kevin MacLeod was one of them. To learn that the "free varied music for whatever you want it for" guy stopped composing and started prompt engineering AI slop for almost a year is the most depressing twist.
Yee-ikes... Guess he went from letting everyone use his work to figuring it's okay to use everyone else's regardless of consent XP boooo
*NO* *NO* *NO* *NO* *NO* *NO* *NO* FUCK me man NOOOOOOO
You are very quick to judge, the guy dedicated years of his life providing resources for the community and you basically throw him under the bus as soon as he does something you disagree with. I don't like AI either, that's why _I myself_ don't use it.
Consider his view, he probably contributed quite a big chunk of the data these models were trained on, who are you to scold him for using them now?! Did you ever write anything positive about your "hero" before, or only now that you found something negative?
Nah, fuck that. Anyone who uses genAI should be shunned and disparaged for it.
There will be a lot of disappointments ahead of you if you expect people to be perfect. And this is what this is, demand for perfection. Literally spend his whole life creating free music for everyone, and now he's treated exactly the same as a random AI slop prompter.
Because he now is a random AI slop prompter.
That's very binary thinking. Maybe you turned into a machine if you can't discern between him and a random AI slop prompter anymore.
It is. If you operate a car, you're driver. If you use a parachute, you're a parachutist. If you get an income from employment, you're an employee. If you do a thing, you do that thing. How is that wrong?
If it's purely about definition without the associated emotions then I do agree.
If you use genAI as a replacement for human-made art, you make AI slop. That's threatening art as a whole, so no, as an artist - I have emotions attached to that. That doesn't change the binary though.
He writes "Original track was realized via Suno" in his videos description. That doesn't necessarily mean that it has replaced the human part. But what ever, I don't support these songs, or his use of AI either. I will never use these songs. I'm not defending AI I'm defending Kevin MacLeod,
I have literally never used generative AI to do anything. It's not hard. It isn't like we are required to pass off slop as our own work to participate in the creative process. It's not perfection, it's baseline integrity.
I'm not encouraging the use of AI, I'm very much against it. I just lament the fact that, someone who did a ton for the creative community, is treated just the same, or arguably worse, than some random AI slop prompter who tries to hide that it was AI generated.
Because it feels like a betrayal
I can understand that, and that's valid. I can also understand if you stop supporting him. My comment was addressing Rami, because he is well known and puts this out to ~55k followers, which has the potential to cause a lot of stress for the guy. Which he doesn't deserve IMO.
He uses AI, which I don't like either. But his contribution to the creative community is huge, and he is clearly labeling all the work that is using AI, so he isn't trying to fool anyone. Rami could've at least try to talk to the guy first.
Maybe he shouldn't have decided to use the theft slop machine like any random prompter could, because just like them, he's using unethical tech that is destroying our environment and harming creatives who, y'know, *care.*
shut up nerd
👍
I mean I was going to write a whole post about how you are misrepresenting Rami's words but I decided you just weren't worth the time. I could've got AI to do it but that would have taken longer and used three tons of water.
Let me give a low perspective here because I feel you’re dumbing it down. This isn’t a small disagreement thing Similar to wanting sprinkles on ice cream versus normal ice cream Embracing AI means you are OK with accelerating global warming You are OK with theft You are OK with exploited work
There’s a lot more things that can obviously be listed here, but the fact is dumbing it down as a disagreement is a little disingenuous. I am sure they have their reasons, but those are hard lines for some people not a simple disagreement.
Accelerating global warming - I don't drive a car. I don't think I'm somehow automatically a better person then someone who does. Theft & exploited work - He is the one they stole from, he is the one who was exploited.
Is it great, no. Do I like it, no. Should he be treated worse then any random AI slob prompter, hell no. Pick a random AI prompter that has contributed jack shit, and tries to pass it of as their own work. Put them on blast with a well known ~55k account, I'm perfectly fine with that.
Just say you like stealing other people's work
Very nuanced take 🙄 I literally say I don't use it. My post is about reasonable response, not an endorsement for AI slop.
No reason to support him.
You don't have to 🤷
No shit!
He didn't do "something I disagree with". He's doing a thing that is actively harming and damaging the creative fields. That's not disagreement, that's an existential threat.
I find that a wildly disproportional response. I'm mad too, but I focus my frustration on the companies who actually created AI and harvested all that data instead of singling out a person, someone that created huge value for the creative community.
That's OK, you can have your response. Let me have mine.
NO
I feel like every week someone I looked up to is getting sold on this garbage
This is so devastating to learn 😭
"was" has me reeling that MacLeod had passed, the second half is a worse sort of death.
These are also the emotions I went through
Creative death might as well be.
I use his music for nearly every project I do. This is so disappointing. Was one of the first artists I patreon'd. I even made fan art
He did a post about it apparently, his site should still be clear of GenAI, but man, I'm gonna have to wean off. "I don’t publish any of these on incompetech. They don’t get distributed to music stores or streaming services."
People are missing a lot here. He took an interest in it when 3.5 came out, the first point where you could feed the cursed ai (at the high $99/mo tier) your own samples. While it remains soulless worthless crap that particular aspect is far less bad sounding than slop suno generally churns out.
*please do not confuse me with a person who sees any value in ai music. I just think people are jumping the gun on Kevin. ***Everyone*** with even a mild interest in these matters tried suno when 3.5 appeared.
Did it make any difference whatsoever to the quality of his output?
what the hell
There is no God but Allah. Do not Idolize anything or anyone else. A lesson to be learnt I guess and I am sorry for your loss xD
Whatever he got out of this, I hope for his sake it's worth it, because *man*
This is the first thing I read when I woke up. Goddamn it.
Ugh, shit really? Man, he was synonymous with so many YouTube video opening for so many years. This sucks.
What bothers me personally is everyone getting on their soap box complaining about this, yet how few people do you think actually paid him for what they used? If the intention was a passion project for no money, then who are we to complain that he’s putting out “good enough” music?
we’re basically people from a species that can only live on one specific planet with- and this part is key- limited amounts of land, water and electricity. have ypu heard of this concept? it’s kind of a big deal
The confines of reality are not the AI apologists' strong suit. Finite resources, as well as the ecological and human consequences of use, are just like, so inconvenient for anyone who wants to play nicey nice with fools who indulge in selfish endless growth and continuous output fantasies.
the product is currently free and/or at loss leader prices because it is going to stay economical to use it for everything forever. I am very smart. Anyone offers me a free drug, I take it. Crazy to turn down that opportunity
Yes, it's oftentimes thankless work. Why give a damn if there's suddenly no work? He's content with pivoting to the soulless audio homogenization machine, and we're content to not give a damn as a result. He's not putting out HIS music, he's putting out slop anyone could go generate if they want to.
Didn’t have enough characters in my original post, but I also don’t agree with the fact that he’s putting out AI slop under his own name (in my opinion releasing nothing would’ve been better), my comment is rather about the fact that I can understand his reasoning.
By endorsing this tech, he’s making it even harder for composers to get paid gigs and ensuring that even more are forced to leave the industry I can understand his reasoning that stealing is easier than composing but there’s no moral high ground there
If the passion project is no longer arousing passion, he can just stop.
Not the point, the point is he went from champion to existential threat - it's just for him the distance of the fall was notably enormous. The problem isn't quality, the problem is genAI.
Agreed on genAI; rather he stopped than go down this route imho. Root cause of the prob still stands; the majority intentionally took what he actually made for free while he kept trying to find other rev streams to continue. We need to actually support those that give to the community for free.
You would have a point if he, say, stopped making free compositions at all. But he hasn’t, he’s just resorted to making AI slop. Don’t put his laziness and irresponsibility onto the audience.
Like how fucking incredible to have your name be synonymous with "royalty free music". Incompetech literally was the soundtrack for almost everything small and experimental and creative for a decade. His art, his work, in everything. But his YouTube doesn't lie: everything lately has been generated.
For a composer to embrace it is weird... I mean, why take all the fun parts out of the job?
@ramiismail.com His work was so prevalent I'd recognize it in like commercials, random videos, etc. "Oh, that's Monkeys Spinning Monkeys!" lol. I haven't looked at any of his stuff lately but sucks that it sounds like it's just AI stuff now. :(
Jeez that’s a kick in the teeth if ever I heard one
When the fav becomes a slop head. You hate to see it. I wonder what made him start hating the work.
He’s been indispensable for 48-Hour film project teams! We now have enough musicians in the group that we can ostensibly throw something together, but our older movies all use his stuff
Ah that's fucked up 😭
At first I thought this was leading to "Kevin MacLeod has died" but honestly the reality is worse
The man survives (and hopefully will in good health for a long time), but the legend that would've survived him by decades has died. Genuinely sad.
I used to help run the 48Hours filmmaking competition in New Zealand - hundreds of teams competing each year - and probably a solid half of them used his tracks. Real bummer.
WHAT oh man
Its sad - but at least his AI content seems relegated only to youtube (couldn't find anything AI generated on his site) and he's 'releasing' it as cc0, not cc4 as the music he actually composed. I'd like to think he's just experimenting with this stuff. But yeah, it was a shock learning about it.
"Experimenting" It's been over 8 months, face it, this isn't experimenting any more.
Huh? People can take all the time they want to try something out. Took me an year experimenting with Unity here and there until I made the jump from my own 2D engine to make a 3D game with it. One can take a lot of time just to see if something works the way you want/need it to.
it's still AI use. There's absolutely NO ethical way to use AI to create "art". Period. It has a heavy environmental cost, it's theft, plain and simple. 8 months of experimenting with committing a crime, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not arguing against that, at all. I'm not defending AI use. Just trying to understand what is going on before throwing him at the fire - I'm giving the benefit of the doubt, specially considering his past making tons of free to use songs.
that's fine, you go ahead. I'm never giving people like that the benefit of the doubt, it's very clear he's unapologetic about his actions.
oh... this is how i find out :(
Yeah, learning that shit hurt
Fuck
I cannot even begin to understand the reasoning and cannot describe the confusion and, honestly, disappointment. It sucks. :(
I was just thinking about him the other day in the context of me eventually needing music, and trying to remember why he had landed on my "No-No" list. I hope he comes to his senses.
This is how I find out. Godsdammit.
i have rarely been so disappointed. imagine completely shattering your integrity like this. god DAMN it Kevin. this one hurts 🫠
