Over the past twelve months - and, in fact, for considerably longer than that - CMU has been following the evolution of AI and its intersection with the music industry very closely.
In 2018 we presented a full day of content about artificial intelligence and music at The Great Escape - the Brighton-based UK music business conference.
Five years on from that we've been working a lot over the past twelve months with a range of industry organisations in the UK and Europe to help explain what AI is, to help people in the music industry understand the challenges, opportunities and threats of AI, and what things they need to be aware of when it comes to AI.
We've delivered bespoke training and workshops to companies, organisations and boards; we've spoken at conferences, and offered insight, consultancy and support to companies and organisations trying to get their head around what AI means to their business, members, or the wider industry.
And, of course, we've written - what feels like almost every day - about the rapid advance of artificial intelligence and its evolution and impact on the music industry.
There was no shortage of news about AI in CMU in 2023.
As with society at large, artificial intelligence became a much bigger talking point within the music industry, as music creators and music companies explored how AI can enhance their work and enable new creative and commercial opportunities.
With AI technologies getting ever more sophisticated, with more tools to employ and opportunities to pursue, and with many of the important legal questions yet to be answered, it's important to understand what happened with AI and music in 2023 to be fully prepared for 2024.
CMU
Music + AI: what happened in 2023?
2023 was the year when debates around artificial intelligence started to top the agenda in society at large, and also in the music industry.
Of course, the recent attention is simply the latest chapter in the ongoing story of AI. Artificial intelligence technology has been in development for decades and the impact of AI on the music industry has been discussed in some quarters for years.
Nevertheless, AI is now much more in the public consciousness, partly because the sophistication of AI is increasing fast, and partly because lawmakers are now giving much more serious consideration to how they should regulate it.
However, the watershed moment that really catapulted AI into the public consciousness was the launch - in late 2022 - of OpenAI’s product ChatGPT which, for the first time, made powerful AI available to almost anyone and offered an intuitive chat interface to interact with the underlying technology.
ChatGPT is an example of what's known as ‘generative AI’ and is a type of ‘Large Language Model’ or LLM that uses a ‘generative pre-trained transformer’ - the GPT of its name - to create its output.
