Flava voices concerns about AI - Warns producers, artistes not to get complacent with software tool

Renowned producer Kemar 'Flava' McGregor is warning music creators not to make artificial intelligence (AI) their best friends in producing their final products.

"AI is good and AI is bad. I use AI to produce but I still do all the work [because] how do you call yourself a producer when AI do all the work for you? The music and technology evolve, but if it should reach to a point where AI is gonna take over as the way to do music and do all the work for me as a producer, I'd retire. I'm done. I would not sit in my studio and make a computer make music for me and then call myself a producer," McGregor told THE STAR.

He said producers and artistes who solely depend on AI are lazy, and that when he uses the tool to produce, there is no energy.

"Yuh nuh get no vibes from dat; it nuh have no soul. It's not like yuh deh deh and yuh a feel di vibes and a seh 'Yea, mi like dah verse deh but lemme change this, lemme fix that'. It's just too perfect, and in music, there's no such thing as perfection," he said.

McGregor, an established producer who has worked with some of the most renowned local and international artistes, said AI has been integrated in his music for the past three years. He declared himself as the first Jamaican producer to release AI music videos, of Buju Banton's hit track, Slogan, and Vybz Kartel and Beenie Man's single Gangsta's Paradise. Recently, internationally-acclaimed superstar Sean Paul also created a full AI-generated video for his track, Ginger, which received diverse reactions within the music space.

He clarified that he's not telling musicians to stay away from the software, but cautioned them not to get complacent and allow it to take over.

"When I use AI to create a beat, I afterwards go and play it organically. So what I do here is create with AI then do interpolations organically which definitely adds the human touch to it. But I've never depended on it for the finished product," he reiterated. However, McGregor said AI will aid composers and writers to "play up on notes, words and melodies in order to add range to your sounds".

McGregor said that contrary to the belief that producers will now gain more, that might not necessarily be the case, as there's already been a roll-out of laws for producers using AI-generated or altered music to pay a portion of the royalties to the software owners.

"On all digital platforms, these songs are now going to be labelled as 'AI Music created by AI', even if it's just infused in the sound, and it's coming to you guys soon. This therefore means those people who are the creators of AI are gonna be entitled to royalties as well and they are gonna pay you [the musicians] less. So producers/artistes who produce music organically are going to be getting more royalties - that's what's coming," he argued, while admitting that, this strategy will "level the playing field".

"A lot of producers/artistes are going on about 'AI is the way' and diving into it, but they don't study it enough to know what is coming. They don't understand the laws and guard rails that were put into place by law to govern this," said McGregor.

The ' Billboard king' said while this is just another technological evolution in music, he believes it will take away from the artistes' authenticity. But he said the main issue hurting local music is the lack of "real, soulful artistes who can sing and perform like di Beenie Man, Beres, Sanchez, Bounty and Shabba Ranks dem".

"And now wi a guh to AI, dat ago mek it worse," he opined.