A.I., I Apologize

On February 3, 2023 I used Chat GPT for the first time and trashed it for not being funny enough. I took it a step further by generally trashing the direction of technological advancement. “I’ll be safe,” I declared, confident my skill could not be replaced by a machine.

Yesterday on February 11, 2023 I had a mix session with Joe, the engineer who’s mixing all our music this year. There was one edit I wanted to make to my vocal because it sounded a little wonky, like my voice suddenly disappeared. When Joe found the spot in the track he said, “Wanna know a secret? Your voice is generated by A.I.”.

It turned out I was too close to the microphone, so the audio signal was a little too strong and would distort. Rather than asking me to re-record the take, Joe just plugged my audio into a machine that processed the information and regenerated a cleaner version, which he then mixed into the song. That’s right, just a week after I claimed to be irreplaceable, I was replaced, on my own song.

So, A.I., I’m sorry for all the shit I talked last week. Turns out you’re pretty nifty. I won’t tell you guys which song it was, so maybe it can be a fun game you can play, trying to guess which one of the upcoming releases features a vocal from a Joe-bot. I’d be surprised to find out you were able to identify it. I didn’t even really notice. They would’ve gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for me and my meddling dog.

-J.P.