To say we live in weird times is an understatement. And as amazing as the technology is, the world of artificial intelligence is making life in a weird world all the more so. In the past month, the song at the top of Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart was not written and sung by a down-on-his-luck guitar player with boots and a cowboy hat. It wasn’t even sung by a pop star as a crossover hit, as has recently been the trend. The No. 1 song, “Walk My Walk,” by the artist Breaking Rust, was 100% generated by AI. It’s a catchy tune, with pop-like beats and a depth of lyric that rivals most chart-topping country songs—which is to say not that deep. The chorus is defiant: “You can kick rocks if you don’t like how I talk, I’m gonna keep on talking and walk my walk.” I’m not sure if telling someone to “kick rocks” is a real insult in certain regions, or just an AI hallucination, but it gets the point across that the singer is going to go his (its?) own way. If I had to be honest, it’s not all that bad, compared with the balance of popular songs on the market. It so perfectly hits the spot of the music market that I suspect the AI prompt that started it was something like, “Write me a catchy country song that mimics the style of chart toppers over the past two years.” Real Music on Ice? It’s not just country music that’s getting the AI love. A group called Fake Music Lab (at least it’s honest!) made a video called “Reimagining ‘Ice Ice Baby’ as a soul song,” taking the ’90s hit rap song by Vanilla Ice and using AI to generate what Ice himself might call a pretty dope melody. In fact, in a twist, Vanilla Ice apparently thought the AI version of his song was so VIP that he reposted it on his own YouTube channel. I guess anything less than the best is not a felony after all. If ’90s rap is not immune, then other genres are certainly fair game. Fake Music Lab also has a bluegrass version of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” and an outfit called ReGrooved has a “dark country” version of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight.” For these AI cover songs, the flattery of imitation (and paid royalties on the songs) may outweigh any copyright or brand-dilution concerns the artist might have. Given that they’re all robotic voices, no singers were harmed in the production of these songs—except the ones who didn’t get the job. In Praise of Robots When it comes to praising the Lord through music, Asaph the psalmist said it best: So we will not be silent before You. Morning and evening, Your praise will dwell on our lips. Our children will learn the refrain of Your faithfulness, and their children after them will proclaim it anew. For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; His steadfast love is the song that upholds the world. Except Asaph never said that. ChatGPT said it when I asked it to write me a psalm in the style of Asaph that talks about singing praises. It turns out AI is well-versed enough in the Scriptures to write a pretty decent psalm.  And it’s not just chatbots writing verse on demand. Just like in country and pop music, AI is generating lyrics, music, and vocals for Christian songs. For example, a YouTube channel called Bible Folk has released in recent months a spate of long videos that contain dozens of songs based on books of the Bible. One video, titled “If the Apostle Paul sang Romans in Folk, it would sound like this …” tackles themes from the book of Romans. With folk backing tracks and a country-like voice, the “album” features songs with lyrics like: I am not ashamed of the gospel call It is the path that saves us all To everyone who will believe the gift of God we freely receive. Like Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk,” the music is not awful, especially when compared with its contemporary Christian music competition. Though the Bible Folk lyrics are generally pretty simple, they are at times more theologically robust than some CCM songs. The lyric above is, after all, a paraphrase of Romans 1:16—and if we apply poetic license broadly, a real person writing such songs might be applauded. But a real person is not writing, and a real person is not singing, and any applause would fall on deaf ears—if there were any performers’ ears to hear. These AI songs are at best arrangements of material that living musicians have explored and written in the past century or so of recorded music. All in good fun, there’s nothing inherently wrong with using a computer to make ordered sounds. The Wisdom of Ick But there’s something about AI music—especially of the Christian sort—that doesn’t sit well. And it’s hard to say what that wrong feeling is. A certain “ick factor” presents itself when you find out that it’s a machine writing the song, writing and playing the beat, and packaging it all together. The late ethicist Leon Kass, when describing a similar feeling people get when thinking about human cloning, called this the wisdom of repugnance: Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday’s repugnances are today calmly accepted— though, one must add, not always for the better. In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it. That wisdom is an echo of what David the (real) psalmist sang about in Psalm 8:4-6: What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet Machines may be shiny and new, but they are not crowned by God with glory and honor. And last I checked, machines are still included in the “all things” under the feet of mankind. When those things get turned upside down, the world feels a bit more icky. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the lasting difference between AI music and music made by human beings will be that AI music will not be lasting. The classic AI tracks of yesteryear will fade into obscurity within months, to be remembered only by future AIs who train themselves on available music.  Only real music will persist, and anything less than the best is a felony. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Originally published by The Washington Stand The post Artificial Music for Artificial Ears: AI Rocks the Jukebox appeared first on The Daily Signal.