David Rovics & his imaginary friends

I have written about David Rovics at least six times before, starting in 2015 with his primer on refugees.

This year he decided to explore AI rather than just make up theories from the sidelines. He decided to see what would happen if he used it as a tool rather than let it use him.

He writes

If you want to have some idea of how amazing AI music-generation technology is right now, I would like to invite you to listen to Ai Tsuno. Ai Tsuno is the name I chose for my collaborative musical efforts with Suno, which is one of a number of different AI music generation platforms in popular use today.

I know so many people who really seem to be suffering from some form of future shock with all this stuff, and they avoid ever listening to, looking at, or reading anything they know to be AI-generated content. While I completely agree with anyone who says that the internet is massively polluted these days with ever-more abundant and ever-more realistic AI slop of every conceivable description, to just dismiss AI technology because of this is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

First of all, don’t take my word for it. If you haven’t heard Ai Tsuno’s latest album, Army of Robots, or the one before that, Where the Algorithms Rule, take a few minutes to go to the music streaming platform of your choice and listen to a couple songs. Then come back to me here.

You can listen to Where the Algorithms Rule if you choose to click here. There is also a guided tour of the album available.

You can listen to Ai Tsuno for Palestine if you choose to click here. You can also hear Guided Tours for Class War Zone; and Gaza Riviera.

And if you want to access everything on Soundcloud by David Rovics, solo, with other musicians, and with his imaginary friends, you can start here.