>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made with the release of a new hit single from an artist known as Xenia monet.

The song is called Let Go, Let God.

When it was released on TikTok, the response was massive, particularly in Christian circles on YouTube.

Let go, let God has 4.5 million views, and it has reached number three on Billboard's Hot Gospel chart.

But it turns out Xenia monet is not real, even though Xenia monet has a face and a look, a beautiful and stylish black woman, the entire creation is A.I.

There are no real musicians on this song.

The voice is A.I.

All of it.

And yet, when you read the comments on YouTube, no one seems to know.

Here's a taste of the song.

It's one of the first fully A.I.

songs to reach the Billboard charts in this country.

>> Let go.

Let God.

He already knows every tear, every burden, every loss.

You were meant to break.

Just to prove you tried.

Some storms are only his to fight.

It ain't worth your peace.

It ain't worth your tears.

You don't have to carry what he's willing to clear.

Take your hands off.

Let him do his part.

Let go.

>> One of the top comments on YouTube says the voice is what hooked me.

This woman can sing again.

There is no woman here.

It's artificial intelligence.

Does that change things for you?

Many of the comments referenced deeply personal struggles, struggles that listeners have endured, and how the song moved them or encouraged them.

And I would not deny that there is value in that.

but I can't help feeling there is something deeply deceptive going on.

Another commenter says she can't wait to meet the singer and see her in concert, which again, is not possible.

Another writes that the lyrics are so deeply human.

Are they?

We are in weird territory.

In the past month, A.I.

songs have started charting on Billboard.

The Christian category is full of them, but so are genres like alt country, where an A.I.

creation called Breaking Rust is racking up millions of listens.

With a song called Walk My Walk.

We'll have a clip of that one coming up.

Human artists are already raising alarms.

The Grio Online featured an A.I.

creation called Solomon Ray.

Ray is the first A.I.

artist to hit number one, the number one album and the number one song on an iTunes chart on Billboard.

Ray has the number one and five songs on the Gospel Digital Sales chart, but The Grio quotes a human artist named Forrest Frank as saying, quote, at minimum, A.I.

does not have the Holy Spirit inside of it, so I think it's really strange to be opening up your spirit to something that has no spirit.

End quote.

Now, the human creator of the Solomon Ray A.I.

is a human named Christopher Jermaine Townsend, and he defended himself on Instagram.

He says A.I.

music is just an extension of real human creativity.

You can judge for yourself.

Here's the number one song on Gospel Digital from A.I.

creation Solomon Ray called Find Your Rest.

>> I've been running hard feet on fire dreams and duty tangled in wire.

But when my strings start slipping away I still hear your voice say.

Don't grow weary in well doing with those problems off your chest.

Cast your cares on my shoulders.

And I'll give you rest I'll give you rest.

>> Well, here's good news.

I've got two certifiably human guests to help us sort through this.

Jimmy and Sarah are back.

Jimmie Highsmith Jr.

Grammy nominated human musician and human CEO of Xperience Live Music Group.

I've said human enough there, didn't I?

>> You did.

Thank you, sir.

Non-synthetic non-synthetic.

>> Sarah De Vallière composer and human singer songwriter.

Non-synthetic.

Welcome back to the program.

>> Yes.

Thank you.

>> Nice to see you.

and I was learning a lesson.

Sarah, I I'm kind of a Luddite, and a colleague was saying, you know, all those comments on YouTube might be A.I.

generated, too, so you never know how many actual downloads, views, et cetera.

I'm going.

I can't even keep up with, like, how to authenticate anything anymore.

Does your head spin sometimes?

Do you feel like you got a handle on.

>> It >>?

>> my head doesn't spin, but the reason is not because I feel like I know what is and what isn't.

I think it's because I know one thing for sure.

Like, I feel like we're just.

We're in a very.

We live in a very materialistic world where money is what controls a lot of a lot of what we don't even realize it's control.

It's it's behind the scenes.

Is somebody wants money.

And so I guess what I'm trying to say here is like, yeah, there is a lot of, like, fake stuff out there.

There's a lot of generation of.

Yeah, the streams and people watching on YouTube.

And don't get me started with the digital sales, because no one's actually really buying, like, that's ridiculous.

>> Spotify coming up.

>> Yeah.

>> Both of you have a little bit of a bee in your bonnet on Spotify.

>> Oh, yes.

>> Which I want people.

>> To hear.

>> So.

Yeah.

And but anyway, I just kind of think like at the end of the day I can't, I can't really control all of that, but I can definitely just stay true to what I, what I believe.

And I think this is the problem is that we're just getting sucked into something that, believe me, there are people who want us to get sucked into this.

Like there are people profiting off of all of this, even to be very perfectly frank, us talking about it right now, someone is profiting off of it.

>> Probably.

So I just I.

>> Think we need culturally to have these conversations for sure before the train is too far down the tracks.

>> Totally, totally agree.

>> The last time you guys were I mean, Jimmy coined the phrase, I don't know if Jimmy coined the phrase Jimmy brought to my attention the idea of synthetic music versus music, and I have thought about that in the context of art, period.

When we talk about quote, unquote actors and movies being all A.I., well, that's synthetic acting, that's not acting.

And I think we need before this goes too far to decide what we're good with and what we're not good with.

That's why.

But I take your point.

This doesn't hurt.

The A.I.

producers that we're talking about it.

>> Yeah.

And that going back to like, does it bother me and make my head spin?

It's like, no, not really, because I don't really care what other people say or what other people think.

I don't care how many streams somebody has.

I just I just care if I like among.

>> Humans, though.

>> I mean, like, that's the thing.

>> Every time I'm listening to a song, I could be listening to a different song.

And if I'm listening to primarily or even partially A.I.

lists, then I'm not spending my time or my dollars or my energy on humans.

That's what I worry.

>> That is true.

I mean, I do agree with that.

I definitely like I brought my little notebook here, and one of the things I wrote down is like, we should know why.

Why don't they label this as A.I.

generated?

Like, exactly.

If it's not pure A.I.

and it's like, oh, they used A.I.

to write the lyrics.

Okay, I can get that.

But if it's pure A.I., you can.

You can discern that.

And why don't they?

>> They should be synthetic labels.

Again, going back to Jimmy, I think there should be synthetic labels, even if you're using it as an assist for an instrument songwriting.

But if it's pure A.I., I can't believe that there's not like, you could look this stuff up on Spotify right now and you have no idea they've got pictures.

The dude from Breaking Rust.

Yeah, like they've created these these images.

So I know Jimmy.

Did you like what you heard of those two A.I.

cuts there?

>> Oh real quick.

Well, I can't say real quick.

You're going to have to allow me a little liberty here.

the train has left the station.

It's a bullet train, and it's far gone.

You'll never catch a A.I.

>> I'm.

I'm bicycling down the tracks, trying to catch a train.

>> You'll never catch.

The A.I.

has.

A.I.

has touched every part of society like a cancer.

And I say it like that.

Let's talk about music in general.

How did music start?

Well, let's go back.

Let's just go back to Western popular music.

All right.

20s to the 40s.

Jazz music really set the standard for popular music with big bands, you know, and in the rock and roll era of the 50s and 60s, 40s it was always based on one, four, five progressions, pretty much.

Right.

Like the Happy Day, steam 145.

That was pretty common.

The 251 in jazz, you know, and then in the 60s and 70s, it got a little different.

You started seeing what's called sus chords and Sherrill flat five.

They got a little different, but the point is it was all based on chord progression.

But in the 80s and 90s, when rap came into play, it became producer driven, based on beat.

So now a song may only have 3 or 4 chords on a drum beat and different the bridge from the melody from the from the verse, from a string pad.

So now people are used to just hearing music.

That's not really constructed, like say, Sa'ar.

And I learned music theory in school and how to write a song.

>> And how to play an instrument.

>> So now with A.I., I'm writing almost.

I'm writing a soundtrack for motion picture.

Right now.

I'm writing a couple songs for Motion Picture right now, and they're paying me good money.

A lot of money, actually, to do this.

And I got a I went in the studio with a scratch track from the hair.

They liked it.

Some flying cats from L.A.

and Atlanta to do this.

And it's going to cost a couple thousand dollars to do this song.

You can go to A.I.

program variables and get the same song for nothing.

>> I don't think it'll be as good as what you do.

>> But yeah.

>> Or.

>> Is interesting.

No, it will be as good.

>> But it can be.

No, I'm not sitting here saying Jimmy, all A.I.

is slop.

I mean, like, there's a lot of slop, but it's already quote, unquote better.

I don't even like that word, but, I mean, it's better than I thought it would be.

>> What I'm saying is that unfortunately, we it's just like the English language.

When we were kids, you and I. Maybe not you, but me.

We all learned Latin.

We learned Latin.

We had.

We had to.

We, you know, we we had Wagner or Britannica encyclopedias.

We learned how to do a bibliography.

We learned Dewey Decimal System.

We had to write an outline to write an essay.

We're in the 90s.

They got word processors.

In 2000, they had Google.

So there was a study at Yale last month that said it's almost an epidemic of the amount of kids who don't read anymore, they don't know how to read because they rely on social media and ChatGPT.

They're learning those skills.

They're losing those skill sets.

Music is the same way.

Kids aren't learning music because they're relying on technology, and it's dumbing America down, period.

That's why I say A.I.

is is it's involved in everything we do now, and it cannot be stopped.

And this music, it's synthetic music, but it's still music.

It's not fake.

It's music.

It sounds good, I like it.

I have a friend now at the Academy and the Grammys.

They're having issues with deciphering what's what's handwritten music and what's synthetic music and what's this?

I can't go and say, I want to write a bossa nova song.

Give the computer all my ideas.

It creates the song.

And I learned and recorded myself.

So it's not A.I.

But did I write the song?

No.

Can you tell?

No.

But I didn't write the song I got from A.I.

You follow me.

This is this train is gone.

It's history.

It's over.

It's not coming back.

And I can see down the road.

We're going to have conscience.

Will have hologram people.

>> These artists.

No.

>> I'm telling you, it's going to go.

You go to Vegas now watch Michael Jackson.

You can.

>> See A.I.

in concerts.

>> If they make a hologram, you can.

>> There's a.

>> Hold on you.

It's going to happen.

>> There are already.

There are already virtual reality shows on like see, I don't play video games or whatever, but what is that?

There's like a video game where like, yeah, they'll have like actual shows where real artists will have holograms.

And so, yeah, this idea of like, you.

>> Think it's happening.

>> It's happening now for sure.

For sure.

>> So the idea that, well, artists will be insulated from the fact that there will be no live concerts for, quote, A.I.

stars.

You're saying there will be live concerts.

Right now.

>> I'm a concert promoter right now.

This is what I do for a living.

I promote major concerts.

We brought Jeffrey Osborne here last year out of the eight out of the main acts that played, 80% were track acts, a singer with a track, and Jeffrey brought his whole band.

So the crowd is already used to not seeing bands.

They used to sing a singer.

So now if I put a hologram in front of you singing the song I love, why would you care?

The love for live music is just not there anymore.

And I hate to say that, but it's not.

>> Well, this is to me, this is really interesting.

Let's listen to another A.I.

song.

This is the first song on that ever charted on the alt country Billboard charts.

The name of the A.I.

band is Breaking Rust.

The song is called Walk the Walk.

Let's listen.

>> You can kick rocks if you don't like how I talk.

I'm gonna keep on talking and walk my walk ain't changing my tone ain't changing my song I was born this way.

Been loud too long.

You can hate my style.

You can roll your eyes.

But I ain't slowing down I was born to ride.

So kick them rocks.

If you don't like how I talk I'm gonna keep on talking.

And walk my walk.

mm-hmm.

>> I see engineer Rob Braden.

You love it, don't you?

Yeah.

It's so good.

Yeah.

I mean I was kidding about Rob.

You actually like it Jimmy.

>> One of my favorite phrases to tell people is rock with sandals on.

They me off.

So it's great for me.

I'm a country western fan.

Anyhow, that's the cowboy hat.

>> So you dig?

At least the sound of that.

>> Yeah, I love it.

I mean, again, this A.I.

stuff, I mean, I, I hate that it's, you know, I'm not a purist.

It's like.

>> You're willing to admit when you like it.

>> Well, it's just like endorsing, you know, my world was jazz music as a musician.

A lot of jazz, like my friend Wynton Marsalis.

He cannot stand the music I write because it's not pure jazz.

>> Did you just say my friend Wynton Marsalis?

>> Yes.

>> I'm sorry.

I just had to make sure I understood that.

>> And, you know, we've had this conversation.

You know, a lot of purists, whether they're classical, jazz, have a real disdain for folks who can't read music or can't create music at their levels.

I'm not that guy.

I celebrate anybody creating music.

This A.I.

stuff is synthetic music, but it's still music and it's I like it, but I'm fearful that, again, people like me and Sarah are going to go away forever and no one will know how to read music anymore.

That's my concern.

>> So I, I have like, I think I love Jimmy and I have so much respect for you.

Plus, his friend is Wynton Marsalis.

but I feel like we have actually kind of mirror views on this because I don't like that song.

I definitely can hear how it sounds synthetic.

Sure, one day it might really, really, really sound real and I can't tell the difference.

But the fact for me, my real problem with it, why I don't like it, is not actually because it's A.I.

I don't really like it because it just sounds like a bajillion other songs out there.

By the way, if you stand up these different A.I.

tunes next to each other, they all even the different artists.

>> Have the same beat, the drive.

>> They all sound the same.

And I don't like it because I. I just don't like music that also like, I that's just how I am.

That's how my ears are like.

It's just how I grew up or I don't really know why, but for me, what turns me on is something different.

Like I like to hear something that, you know, really just like, oh, this feels new, you know?

So my bigger concern is actually not about me because I, I'm always striving to do something different.

So I'm not worried about me, but I am worried about kids.

And like, impressionable young people in particular.

But I guess anybody who's just they may not have the resources to, to go out to see live music, to like, hear what real music is like.

I take my kids out to shows.

They they, I think they have great taste in music.

And a lot of it's because me and their dad, we kind of put them in that, in that path.

But there's a lot of people who don't have that ability, and all they're doing is just listening to what's on the radio, what's coming on when they're in the supermarket, what's on YouTube.

So that's all they're being fed.

So for them, yeah, like, what's the difference?

It's all just it's the same mass produced stuff as before.

It's just like the bullet train that Jimmy was talking about.

It's way faster at mass producing the same.

Sorry.

I'm just going to say it.

Same crack, not crack.

Crap.

>> I don't crack crap.

>> Crack crack formula.

Same thing.

It's formulaic.

Formulaic?

>> Yeah.

You're dying to jump in.

>> I want to give back to what you just said about it all sounding the same.

But that, unfortunately, has been cultivated.

If you listen to, like, watercolors on a certain XM radio station, every sounds the same.

Everything is produced.

I have a track that me and Scott, me and Paul did that.

They denied play because it did not sound like there cultivated sound.

Seriously.

So I'm not surprised that all sounds the same, because NPR radio.

I cannot listen to the radio because I get bored.

Because everything sounds the same, whether it be country, pop, jazz, it all sounds the same.

>> And whether it's A.I.

or not.

>> And what is the sound?

The same?

>> Let's be.

>> Honest, it does.

>> mass produced country music.

I'm not saying all country music, I'm just saying the mass produced Nashville country sound mostly all sounds.

>> The same.

>> Same thing.

Definitely with Christian music.

Again, I there's some Christian music I really love, but a lot of it, the radio stuff, it all sounds the same.

So whether it's A.I.

or not, I'm just like they're just doing more of the same.

>> But the observation I have as someone who's not in the industry is that A.I.

is likely to lead us into areas where there is even less variation.

And here's why.

What Sarah is describing and what Jimmy described in talking to producers who are like, I don't know, these tracks are good, but they're not quite like the mainstream stuff.

So can you, can you dumb it down a little?

I mean, that happens that happens to human beings.

That's happened to family members that I have who've tried to break into the music business.

It's like, can you just write a simple hook?

You know, this is a little too much.

So what happens over time is producers figure out what sells.

Yeah.

And that's why four chords and blah, blah, blah.

It sells.

It's popular.

And there's nothing wrong with it.

I would urge people you like what you like.

I like plenty of very simple music myself.

That's fine.

but over time, the human production element means someone's going to break through trying something different.

And now you have a new genre or a new idea, and then trends and norms change.

But when A.I.

takes over, it figures out the formulas and it just keeps it very tightly within two little guardrails.

And you're not going to see a lot of creativity, you're going to hear even more.

I think uniformity is that is that.

>> Yeah.

And that's exactly what like when we were kids, when I was a kid, every grade school had a general music class.

Everybody, whether you're in band or not, follow me.

And then you got a band or marching band, et cetera.

you don't see that now.

Kids are not learning music at all.

At all.

And with this A.I.

stuff going on, there's going to be less demand to learn music.

For people like me and Sarah are really the minority in the world.

You're the minority.

>> Now and wait till the A.I.

era.

>> Is fully with, you know, true counterpoint, harmony, polyrhythms, just just the basic building blocks of music theory to understand what a song is and how to write a song.

It's scary.

>> Yeah.

So let me show you something here.

This is the other thing that's sticking in my brain here.

And maybe on YouTube.

I don't know, I should have thought about this, but here we go.

So you just heard Walk My Walk by Breaking Rust.

That's the A.I.

creation band.

So if you go anywhere online and you find them, first of all, it looks like an album cover and it is a dude with his hands in sort of a prayer motion.

He's got a a hat just like Jimmie Highsmith Jr., you know, he's got a nice.

>> Stetson.

>> A nice Stetson hat there, and he's got this dark beard and he looks very serious, and he's going to sing in a very dark, deep, serious voice.

and the issue I have with that, or I could have done the same thing for Xenia monet, who is not a real person.

And but they now they have this image.

She's this young black woman.

She sings in a church, you know, she she looks real.

This guy looks like it could be a person.

And nowhere on here does it say A.I.

created image, not real human beings.

So if you just stumble on it, if somebody shares it with you, you see there's Xenia monet, or there's the dude from Breaking Rust.

You know, he's this gruff country dude that's not a real person.

They don't tell you that.

>> I don't.

>> Think I've got a real issue.

>> With that.

I don't think people will care, I really don't.

It's like.

>> I would like them to care.

I'm going to.

>> Lose on this.

It's like this, I, I, you know, I don't eat pork now, but I used to eat pork years ago because I'm Islamic now.

One of my favorite meals was cordon bleu, which is chicken with with ham and cheese.

You can go to the store and buy it frozen, eat it and be happy with it, because that's how the world is now.

No one needs to hear real you.

They just like it.

What is the real deal or counterfeit?

This is what it is.

>> Well, I, I do think that the majority is like that, but I actually think the minority of us who can tell the difference between a frozen cordon bleu in a real one, I actually, I think there's more of us than people realize.

And I actually, to give you even a little bit of hope, I actually do think there is way more backlash to A.I.

than people realize.

Like, it's just that, I mean, I said this the last time I was on, I, I really think that there is so much more at play here than we even realize.

And a probably we shouldn't discount the fact that there was a lot of money invested in A.I.

and a lot of desire to see that investment through.

And so we don't.

That is a big reason why I have an issue with it not being said that this is A.I., blah blah blah, but yeah, I think that we don't really know how like who is really behind all this, who is actually marketing all of this?

>> Exactly.

>> Yeah.

>> Who really created it?

>> Yeah.

>> That's why I don't buy it.

Sarah, when the guy who created the Solomon Ray character says, yeah, Solomon Ray is not a real person.

But again, there's an image of Solomon Ray.

He's, you know, got this really, really nice cut suit.

A black man singing Christian songs.

That's not a real person.

And people, a lot of people are encountering the music, thinking it is the human creator says, yeah, but that's just an expression of human creativity, where I think that's kind of lazy.

I mean, like, I, I don't you're creating if you are just creating an A.I.

song, that would be one thing, but you are creating with money, with Solomon Ray, with Breaking Rust, you're creating a whole persona of a band or a singer that doesn't exist because you're trying to sell something that's not creativity.

>> And yeah, and this is what I tell people when they talk about how good A.I.

is.

I have a friend who's a doctor, PhD, you know professor, I said, how would you feel if I used A.I.

in my entire collegiate year and got my doctorate degree just like you?

But I used A.I.

the entire time.

Now I'm making the same money you make, and I have the same tattoo you have.

How would you feel about that?

You feel cheated, wouldn't you?

There you go.

That's A.I.

for you.

You're not putting the work in.

You're using a computer to do the work for you.

>> I think the other thing too, is like we keep saying it's not a person.

It's not based on, like, anything real.

But but I think the bigger issue here is like, actually, it is based on real people and real art.

>> A great.

>> Point, you know?

And how much of that art has actually been properly attributed, gotten permission of my guess is an incredibly, incredibly small amount.

>> Almost none.

Right?

Yeah.

So let's listen to another of Solomon.

The Solomon Ray cuts.

This is the number five song on Billboard's Christian list.

And this song is called Goodbye Temptation.

And again, think about what Sarah is saying here.

What you're about to hear is entirely A.I.

It's charting.

People are buying it.

They're sharing it and probably not buying a whole lot of music anymore.

We're going to talk about that in our second half hour.

But it wasn't just created out of whole cloth.

It was created using a sampling of an endless catalog of existing human music to create what you're about to hear.

Let's listen.

>> I don't shake when the strong winds blow.

My roots run deep in that holy flow.

Grace the Lord me clean me whole.

Now I'm walking in freedom.

Yeah.

Body and soul.

Say goodbye to temptation.

You no longer have control.

Yeah I'm dead to all my sin.

And now alive in Christ alone.

>> I think, I think once.

>> Again, Jimmy kind of likes it.

And Sarah.

>> Kind of.

>> Well, it sounds like.

Honestly, what it sounds like to me is a soundtrack to a Netflix movie or TV series.

What it sounds like an intro to that.

I like country western music, so I like the vibe of its entertaining.

Well.

>> That's supposed to be Christian, but it's all.

blending together.

Yeah, it's all the same sounds.

>> It all sounds like it all sounds the same when I buy it.

No, I enjoy it's entertaining to me because I like the vibe.

I like the musicality of it because I'm a country western fan.

However, like Cyrus said so eloquently, it all sounds the same.

Yeah, there's no I can.

People like me and Sarah, when we write music, we sit down at our pianos with a piece of paper and a pencil, and we figure out chord changes.

We have an idea in our head on how to write a song, and we have a melody, but we based around different chord changes.

How do I want to be a minor song or a major based song?

It's what we do with this A.I.

stuff that doesn't happen.

>> Yeah.

Also lyrically, so many cliches like for me, a lot of my writing.

I mean, sometimes I do start from a music standpoint, like melody or chords, whatever.

But a lot of times I'm really starting more from like a lyrical place, and the last thing I want to do, not to say that I haven't done it, but I don't want to have my music full of lyrical cliches.

And like all of this, like as it was playing, I'm just like, oh, my God.

Like rolling my eyes like every other line.

Like, yeah, yeah, okay, your roots and the sin and blah.

But I think what's so I agree with with Jimmy about it like, well, it's entertaining and I actually I don't really have a problem with that.

Like yeah okay.

Just like make some A.I.

music that's entertaining.

But I think what's really interesting here, and I'm not saying this as a Christian because I'm not Christian, but like, isn't it supposed to be more than entertaining?

Isn't it supposed to be deeper than that?

>> It's 2025, Sarah.

Come on.

>> Oh, okay, I don't.

>> Know, but.

>> You realize I was talking.

I was at another station last month, and we're talking about the same subject.

And there is an app now where Christian can talk to Jesus.

It's A.I.

generated.

>> Oh, geez.

>> No no no no, I'm serious.

>> I'm serious.

>> No no no no no no.

>> I'm serious.

>> Similar Jimmy to the A.I.

creations where if you have a deceased family member.

>> You can talk.

>> To them.

>> You can talk to them.

And I am not comfortable with that either.

>> No, no, I you know, I am totally anti A.I.

Everything I know I am, I really am.

>> Is like the only person more anti A.I.

>> Than me.

>> I refuse to even approach A.I.

I refuse to touch any shape, form or fashion.

You know, I listen to NPR radio because I hate what I hear on the radio.

>> But you're kind of.

>> Grooving to these bops that.

>> We're playing.

Sarah is sitting there going like, no, well, it's entertaining.

>> I'm not anti A.I.

The funny thing is, like I do use, I do use A.I., not in my music.

The most I've ever done with my music is like, and it's never worked out.

I'll like it.

I'll like feed it my lyrics and be like, can you give me a critique on this?

Or point out things that I can maybe adjust?

And it's like rarely anything worth everything it tells me is just like, it's this you're not helpful at all.

A.I.

but otherwise, you know, I do.

I use A.I.

for my job when I'm writing, like a professional type of email, I will definitely have A.I., like, spruce it up for me.

you know, I made a post on Facebook yesterday where, like, my guitarist from my band, he, he used A.I.

to make pictures of us that make it look like we have little characters that you could buy, like these boxed sort of characters.

And I was like, oh, that's funny.

I bet a bunch of people will think this is real.

And I put it on Facebook and I'm like, come to our show tomorrow and you can come and pick up one of these cool gifts for Christmas, you know?

>> So I.

>> I mean, obviously I hopefully everybody knew like, this is a joke.

but the point being, like, I'm actually not really against A.I.

overall, it's just that to me, music and art in general, but maybe especially music.

I just think it's like it's so it's value is just so beyond what?

A.I.

can even come close to being able to touch when you are creating it yourself, like from your own heart, from your own like stream of consciousness, like it's coming from something I believe it's coming from something other than our own minds.

And so I think that the saddest thing to me about using A.I.

to create this art is like, I really think that we are actually cutting ourselves off from this beautiful, undescribable thing that we're cheating ourselves, basically.

And I think the thing is, the ones that I think feel like are being cheated the most are the people who could be doing something on their own, could be creating the art on their own, but they're not like they're actually the ones cheating themselves more than anyone else.

And that's why, at the end of the day, I'm not as concerned because I'm like, I'm just going to keep I'm going to keep making music.

I'm going to keep going to venues and playing my music and connecting with people.

I'm still going to get from music what I need to get from it.

Will I make lots of money?

Probably not.

Especially competing with A.I., but to me, I'm still getting the most out of it anyway.

>> So.

>> So here's what we're going to do here.

After we take our only break, I'm going to take some phone calls and emails, and we are going to have a discussion before the end of this hour on what these two human music creators, number one, where you can consume their work, which I love human creation, but also a lot of people run off to Spotify.

I'm guilty of it myself, and they would like us to maybe stop doing that and find different ways of consuming.

And I think it's good to be educated as consumers as we go to break.

Maybe what we'll do is this Rob, maybe we'll play child Pets Galore as we go to break.

This is another charting A.I.

song on the Christian charts.

I'm laughing because this is the one that I found.

This is the one where you go.

This feels like an uncanny valley, an A.I.

written thing that doesn't fully understand the human experience.

This is a song called The Only Thing I Can Take to Heaven, and it's supposed to be about a parent talking to a teenage child about death and saying that when when I die, the only thing I'll take to heaven is your soul, which is I don't fully okay, but it's it's charting on Christian charts.

It's the only thing I can take to heaven.

Well, listen, we'll come right back on Connections.

>>, because you're the only thing I can take to heaven, not the house, not the job, not the money I'm giving.

When I stand before God at the end of my days, I wanna say I showed you the way.

It's not control.

It's love that's been driven.

Cause child, you're the only thing I can take to heaven.

>> Coming up in our second hour, a conversation about the real life story behind a film that is in theaters now called Nuremberg.

80 years ago.

Yesterday was the opening statement at the International Nuremberg Trials, where the surviving Nazi leadership after World War II was put on trial.

It's the story of Robert H. Jackson, the lead prosecutor who's from Jamestown, New York.

We're going to talk to the president of the Robert H. Jackson Center about history.

All Americans should know.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Cariola center, supporting residents to become active members of the community, from developing life skills to gaining independence.

Mary Cariola center Transforming lives of people with disabilities.

More online at.

Mary Cariola.

Org.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson producer Megan Mack.

My teams just blew up, so maybe you can text me who's on the line because listening to all this A.I.

music, synthetic music has lit up our phone lines.

I say line four is we're going to try to get as many as we can.

Let me start with Adam first.

Hey, Adam, go ahead.

>> Hey, thanks for taking my call.

A great conversation.

I am a musician as well.

I bring music into people's homes, people with disabilities, and I help them learn to sing or play instruments or just enjoy.

It's the greatest, greatest thing in the entire universe.

And I love it.

And what I remember is that music comes from, you know, from from human to human.

My dad taught me so many different songs that I still sing today, and I want to just remind everybody that regardless of the commercialization of music through A.I.

and through any other things, including, I have to say, the pitch of the pitch control stuff that people would do.

You know what I'm talking about.

it just escaped me for a second.

I apologize, but that that was like the seed of what grew into this horrible generation of music in per se.

Anyhow.

Autotune.

That's what I was thinking of.

You can always recognize autotune.

but the real music comes from person to person.

And as long as we continue to play for our families, for our children, for our parents, for our friends, for people we don't even know, but just keeping it alive within, between ourselves as humans that will preserve music as it was essentially created.

And, and, you know, in my heart and my hope is that it will remain that way.

Let them do all the selling and greed and nonsense that they want to do.

Have at it.

People enjoy it.

I hope it doesn't hurt you too bad, but I hope that we can continue to keep music like your guests today.

Continue to play.

Don't stop and it will never die as long as we keep it alive.

>> Adam and Adam in Canada.

Thank you.

Wonderful sentiments.

Jimmy was saying during the break that you can you can listen to A.I.

if you want.

Again, although I take Sarah's point, it is it's kind of a form of theft here.

This is a creation of a sound from existing human based music, but no one can really track why or what was pulled in there.

And now you're listening to that.

The original creators of the sound that it was drawn from don't get paid, don't get referenced.

And you're also not listening to other human music that you could be listening to right now.

So I keep that in mind.

But Adam, Jimmy's point dovetails with what you're saying when, during our brief break, Jimmy was mentioning what it is like playing live music and seeing the way a real live audience reacts.

>> To you.

>> I mean, there's no greater feeling than to sit at your piano and write a song that you then teach your band to play for an audience, and the audience connects with that music and appreciates it.

And it's like it's the greatest thing.

Then I got nominated for a Grammy because of that.

That is the greatest thing in the world that someone loved what I created from scratch.

And with A.I., you'll never have that feeling.

You will never, never, never have that feeling.

>> I'm going to add one thing to that.

>> For those of us who are not Grammy nominated, or maybe not even like great musicians or whatever, like I, I have written many, many, many, many songs.

Like every February I have a challenge to write 14 songs, and generally I accomplish it.

The only way I can do that is by writing a bunch of pretty crappy songs.

I call them my ugly children, and I call them and I call them my ugly children.

Because even if you write a song, it's really not that good, and you kind of know it's not that good.

Believe me, there's a part of you, there's a little part of you that's like, I still love it.

I still love it because I made it.

It's.

I'm looking at a piece of myself.

It's ugly, but I still love it.

You're ugly, child.

So even if it doesn't get played by a band and get Grammy nominated, it's still has this intrinsic value that maybe you as its parent, you're the only one who can really see that and feel that, but it's there.

And so even if you're not some great musician like make art, make art and forget A.I., screw, screw A.I.

>> Okay.

Got it.

Screw it.

Thank you.

>> Oh, no, you're quoting an A.I.

>> Song, which was actually.

>> Probably quoting a human.

>> Jackson.

>> And Rochester next on the phone.

Hey, Jackson, go ahead.

>> Hey, this is Jackson Cavalier calling in.

yeah.

I just want to say we need to be completely steadfast against the use of A.I.

and art and music.

I you know, beyond just the detriment that it's causing musicians like myself, Jimi and Sarah it's it's creating, you know havoc on our environment, too.

I mean, there's whole towns that are being sucked dry of their water because someone wants to generate an image of a unicorn or something like that.

You know there's a huge environmental impact with all this stuff.

beyond just the degradation of, of art in general.

we cannot be passive about any of this stuff.

you know, it's it's one thing to, you know, write an email with ChatGPT, but it's another thing to generate, you know you know, art, you know, music movies with this stuff.

It's it's terrible.

It's taking away real jobs and real income from artists that are already struggling to get by.

yeah, I don't know.

In my mind, we all need to be very openly against this stuff.

I mean, truly, like, you know, this this, I don't I don't really care how this sounds, honestly.

But anyone that I know that is like, oh yeah, that song is great.

It was A.I.

I'm like, I've just lost a lot of respect for you.

This is this is something that needs to be dealt with and it.

>> Needs to be dealt with.

You need to be very much.

>> let me just jump in, Jackson.

Just because we're losing the quality on the call.

But I think we definitely got the theme of the call there.

I mean, that's pretty stern, Sarah, but I mean, he sees the risk here.

>> Yeah, actually.

Thank you so much for bringing that up, Jackson.

And I know of Jackson because we have some mutual friends, so.

Hello, Jackson.

although we've never I don't know that we've ever formally met.

but he brings up an incredibly important point to me, which is the environment.

And I do think that and it's it's, by the way, not just A.I.

Also bitcoins and other.

>> Cryptocurrency.

>> There's a lot.

Yeah.

So and I do think a lot of times we forget understandably because it's digital.

And I think for a lot of people, even myself and I, I work for a technology company and even I sometimes forget it's not like it's just, you know, like, whatever something coming from the air, like there are actual physical mechanisms that are affecting our planet to create these things.

So I'm so appreciative that you bring that up.

And I think that is really important that we remember that.

>> Let me also ask both Jimmy and Sarah.

You know, Jackson brings up already struggling artists who are probably going to struggle even more.

It's hard enough now and set aside the impact of A.I.

What about the impact of the digital streaming services that we have?

What do you want us to know about the spotifys of the world?

>> Jimmie Highsmith Jr.

do not stream your favorite artist, download their material, or buy their CDs or albums.

Spotify.

The payout on Spotify is less than a penny 0.0016 per stream.

Literally less than a penny per stream.

The guy who started Spotify is a multi billionaire.

He built an algorithm.

He charges us as musicians to be on his platform.

He charges U.S.

consumers to subscribe to his platform and he resells our music and pays us less than a penny per stream.

That's criminal.

If you want to support your artist, download downloads pay better than streaming or buy their CDs, go to their concerts, pay a ticket cost that supports your artists, not streaming.

>> Sarah De Vallière.

>> yeah.

I'm not as anti streaming, but I'm very anti Spotify.

there are many, many, many reasons, but I'm just going to give like one very concrete example of why I'm very anti Spotify.

So Spotify actually has I don't know the guy's name but he they have they have hired people whose job is to and they're probably using A.I.

to do it at this point.

Just construct music and give that music.

so they do it very heavily with jazz actually this sort of like background cocktail hour or coffee shop jazz.

And they will construct band names for it.

there's one person doing all of that.

And then here's, here's the thing.

Spotify.

So this is a Spotify employee.

And then they are putting all of these bands, fake bands, fake music coming from the one person into playlists that are Spotify sponsored playlists that they are pushing and that they are trying to get people to listen to, which means they are funneling the the money back to themselves.

And so I don't think I don't I could be wrong.

I don't believe like, for example, Apple Music is doing that.

So that is why that is my streaming of choice is Apple Music, though I do agree with Jimmy that like at the end of the day, best way to really stop all this nonsense is just start to download music by CDs or whatever.

But if you're going to stream, please don't stream Spotify.

>> Yeah.

Because that that, that argument built in it's criminal.

Is that it limits the access to real musicians, to the Spotify playlist.

They say it has 20 songs in the playlist, 18 Spotify, two are regular musicians, and you would never know as a consumer, it all sounds the same to you, and they're making all the money from.

>> It.

>> And again, they he's reselling material that was paid.

It's like going to pays me to give me a can of beans, and they pay me to give me the beans, and I will talk to you for a higher price.

And I make money off of that.

They they created nothing.

Everything they have was sold to them by us at a minimal cost for them.

A lot for us.

And they resell it again and pay us less than a penny per stream.

>> But you know, Jimmy, this is the similar to the model we have for coffee producers who often live in poverty.

People all around the world are often not paid a whole lot.

Loggers.

We talked about that earlier this week on this program.

The people who make a lot of money off the labor are often very far from the labor.

>> Exactly.

>> You know, and so good to know what's going on with Spotify.

We appreciate that.

What do you like if if the streaming is there any good streamer or better streamer?

>> Probably.

Apple actually says.

>> Apple.

>> Yeah.

I mean I.

>> It would be Apple.

>> Here's why I like I'm sure there's other ones that are maybe even better.

But the reason I have Apple is because you can actually very easily get the full list of credits.

And as long as the artists have provided that information, I can know literally down to like exactly who played.

And I like that.

I like to have that information.

I like to know, like, who are the string players on this?

who is the producer?

Who's the mixing engineer?

And again, as long as the artist provided that or whatever the label, the distributor provided that information.

I have that fully available in Apple Music.

You don't get that much information on Spotify.

Also, the quality, the actual audio quality is higher.

on Apple.

>> As well.

And and I agree with Sarah on that 100%.

I mean, I'm old school.

My first album was recorded on two inch reel, literally analog recording, and now everything is digital.

And it sucks because you get a song mastered at the mastering house.

But when it goes to Spotify, it's compressed so bad.

All the quality from that matching is lost in the recording.

but no, I mean, again, I'm a real proponent of downloading and going to concerts.

That's the way to really support your favorite artist.

But if you have to stream, I concur with Sarah.

Apple is the better, better choice.

They pay better than these other ones, but it's just I get because what they're paying the artist is just criminal.

That's just criminal.

>> We are not sponsored by Apple.

By the way.

>> No, not at all.

Charles writes to say A.I.

songs.

Wcmf trying to convince us that 90s bands are classic rock.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in general.

We used to be a proper country.

>> That's true.

Charles.

Cheers.

>> Charles.

>> Cheers.

Tough indictment of the Rock Hall.

>> Of Fame.

And it's in Cleveland, my hometown.

And I kind of agree with Charles.

Oh, boy.

That's that's a hard one.

Gary and Bloomfield's been waiting.

Hey, Gary.

Go ahead.

>> hi.

Thank you.

I love your show all the time.

I quite often I have two, two, two kind of points to make.

so far.

And one is about the music itself, and the other one is about the production of the A.I.

you know, country.

I think all music to me is inspirational.

And country music in particular, and gospel music, they actually their sales pitch, they're, they're the, let's call it the soul of the music.

I mean, country music has for like 40 years been touting themselves as three chords and the truth A.I.

>> Interesting analogy.

>> The opposite of that.

There's nothing truthful or cordial about there about this A.I.

invented music.

and in terms of the gospel stuff, gospel is expected to be the expression of a true spiritual experience of someone.

That's what's inspirational about it.

A.I.

has no soul.

Anything that anything is expressed can be manipulated and including the audience or the listener.

So I think it's actually becoming dangerous because it's so easy now.

It's not just somebody expressing their true beliefs.

It's some corporation trying to convince you of what they want you to think about.

And that's what's going on.

It's it's the corporatization of thought.

And we can carry that out into the actual political arena, too, because that's what's been going on.

You, when, you know, lies about obvious lies are just repeated so often that people start to believe it.

>> Well, Gary, listen, let me jump in.

I think a lot, a lot there.

And I appreciate the phone call when when Gary says they want you to believe it's the truth, but it is not.

And three chords and the truth.

Gary's not a fan.

>> Of.

>> To begin with.

I go back to what Sarah is saying about what she looks for as a music consumer, which is not always to get hit over the head with the same thing.

You want to be surprised.

You want to be excited by something different.

At times.

That doesn't have to be a total reinvention, but it can be moving away from cliche.

And when we talk about the way that A.I.

steals from existing work, there's obviously a lot of cliche out there.

That's the reason it's cliche.

There's a lot of phrases that are common.

Sarah was picking up on that in some of the cuts we were listening to earlier this hour.

I think about phrasing that I like, that I think is unique.

I can think of a lot of I mean, I'm kind of a sap for the Indigo Girls.

I think they're pretty smart writers.

I grew up on them.

there's a Counting Crows song that opens with the phrase, she walked out the front door like a ghost into the fog, and no one noticed the contrast of white on white, which is a really cool way to say she felt invisible in the world.

I mean that that is not cliche at all.

That's a really interesting image.

That's powerful.

That stayed with me.

Eventually an A.I.

will use a fragment of that and someone will think it's clever and they won't know where it came from.

That's part of the problem here.

You can't trace this.

You can't source it.

So I don't know, Sarah.

I mean, Gary feels like corporate corporations want to manipulate you to feel a certain way, and they think they can control what you're going to want to buy and listen to and download.

And unfortunately, in a lot of ways, he's right.

>> Oh, yeah.

Well, and it's been happening.

That's that's kind of always what I come back to like like I'm not again, I'm not trying to condone A.I.

I don't condone it.

But I'm like, guys, this has been happening for centuries.

>> Probably like the logical technological.

>> Extension of what's been going.

>> Yes.

It's a it's an extension of what's already been happening.

I mean, I really like Jimmy's bullet train analogy, which was maybe.

>> Not on.

>> The bicycle chasing.

>> After.

Right.

Slow down.

>> So, like, the bullet train like, to me, that that's kind of what it is.

It's like, you know, we've had modes of transportation forever.

It's just this is way, way, way, way faster.

So have people been trying to manipulate how we think?

Yes.

That's been happening forever.

Now I do I do agree, though, that the A.I.

makes it a little, maybe harder to discern that that may be true, but I don't know.

I get the feeling like this has been happening forever, and we've always had a harder time discerning it.

And maybe this whole A.I.

thing is a good thing.

Maybe we're going to actually start to wake up.

>> It's going to force a reckoning.

>> Maybe that.

>> Is so.

>> Optimistic.

I know, but I love it.

>> I mean, I do I do believe in the human spirit, I guess, like, yeah, like, I, I just I, I'm not I'm not I have a lot of problems with A.I.

and what's going on.

I don't get me wrong, but I'm not that worried.

Maybe because I am overly optimistic, because I do really believe in the human spirit.

And I do also believe that I can only control what I can control.

>> That comes through in your music.

>> By the way.

>> Oh.

>> Thank you.

>> We got a minute left.

I want both of our guests to tell you where you can either find them live performing or find their existing work.

Sarah.

>> well, the show I'm most.

I have a bunch of shows, but the one I'm most excited about is I have a holiday Hootenanny, volume two with me and a great band and a bunch of my friends that's going to be at Levon Cup.

It's going to have lots of like, you know, common sing along Christmas and holiday tunes.

but also a bunch of original tunes.

None of them written by A.I.

>> And when is that?

>> That is December 13th at the Lovin Cup, and you can find out more about that, as well as all my other shows at Music.com.

That's Sarah.

>> Music.com Steve Music.com Jimmy.

>> So I have an event next month with my lovely wife.

We're celebrating 30 years of marriage this year, and we're having a poetry and smooth jazz event at the French Quarter in the old bathtub Billy's on December 20th, and also in January.

There's going to be a huge smooth jazz event myself, Phil, Danny, Felicia, Ray, Jacob Webb at the new Coulson Room.

All these are on my website Jimmie Highsmith Jr.

Com that's Jimmy Hyphen junior.

Com thank you.

>> Evan Jimmie Highsmith Jr..com.

And I'm going to think about what Jimmy said a lot here.

Learn an instrument, resist the temptation to say there's now tech that can just do it all for you.

I'm going to try to I'm going to try to pick up an instrument more often myself here.

and even if it's not my my career.

Thank you guys.

Thank you very much for a great conversation.

Jimmie Highsmith Jr.

Sarah De Vallière.

Great to see both of you.

>> Thank you.

>> Likewise.

>> Great to see live human musicians, not the synthetic type.

More Connections coming up.

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