#18: Creative Writing, Dubbing, Music Production

Ian Bowie
Hello and welcome to AI unfiltered with me, Ian Bowie, and our resident expert, Michael Stormbom, where we will be talking about everything to do with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

Michael Stormbom
We discussed AI and creativity before so my contention in that episode was that AI was simply learning from what has been done before.

Ian Bowie
Exactly yeah. So you see, this is a thing because human beings..

Michael Stormbom
But I mean finding novel ways of… So that’s called fusion of previous material, why not? Yeah.

Ian Bowie
I mean, I would argue that almost everything in life is creative. Even getting out of bed in the morning can be creative. If you want to make it so. But the thing about human beings is you know, you say AI will always base whatever it does on what has been, gone before. Because it’s it has to be based on what it already knows. But human beings are constantly also inventing and innovating and creating things that have never been before. So can AI replicate or even replace that eventually?

Michael Stormbom
And just to contradict myself from the previous episode, I think to the extent that it takes, well I mean, the same way that human beings that we are our experiences, right, and so creative, like novel things are born from past experience, right. So yeah, so why not? Why not in that sense?

Ian Bowie
I mean, would it would it be possible one day for an AI algorithm to talk to another AI algorithm and say, Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s start a podcast about artificial intelligence.

Michael Stormbom
Then we are in deep trouble.

Ian Bowie
This is what I’m saying. You know, I mean,

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, but there it’s actually not to go too deep into these AI algorithms. But when it comes to image generation, there is this. It’s called GANs. So the idea here is to to generate new images, but the way it works is that are actually two in a way two AIs is there. So one creates an image and then there’s another AI that will try to determine whether the image is a fake image or a real image. And then you feed that information back into the original AI. So the first AI tries to learn to the best of its ability to fool the other AI entity. And that’s how the system learns to generate, so you can generate is actually quite photorealistic images and that is based on that very idea that you have one AI that tries to its best of ability to the best of its ability to fool the other AI into that this is actually a real image and not a created one.

Ian Bowie
So basically, if you happen to be on Tinder looking for your next lifelong partner, you better be careful.

Michael Stormbom
It might be an AI. Well, I think there’s been actually several movies and TV episodes about the very concept of people falling in love with a virtual assistant.

Ian Bowie
And I think also, I was reading an article about dubbing the other day, which was quite interesting. And they were saying that, for example, there’s this one Netflix series called Lupine. Yeah, it’s a very big hit.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, it’s is very good.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, but the thing is, actually what they said in the article and, I agree with because I watched a couple of episodes, is that when you dub, you can’t sync with the lips. And what they were saying is actually it completely destroyed the whole feeling of the series. But then if you watch it with subtitles, so you listen to it with French and watch it with subtitles. It’s much much better, it completely changes the whole series.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, I’ve only watched it with subtitles so I don’t know…

Ian Bowie
Yeah, well, dubbing destroys it. They dubbed it into English, and it does destroy it. Yeah. But then somebody was saying, well, not somebody but whoever was writing the article. And what they were wondering was whether it would be possible to use some kind of algorithm to better sync the dubbing with the actual lips.

Michael Stormbom
So you could conceivably do it such that you change the lips to sync with the audio.

Ian Bowie
For example, yeah, something like that. Yeah. Yep. And then, but of course, one of the problems with French is the French use a lot more words than we do to describe something. So of course, with the English, you don’t need so much speech. So then the French person’s lips are still moving and the English actor has stopped talking. But if you could use an algorithm to somehow manipulate that, that would actually be quite cool, wouldn’t it.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. I wonder if anyone has done anything in that field. But yeah, that would be quite interesting. If you take… take an algorithm to actually modify the video part of it too to sync up with the audio that would be quite interesting indeed.

Ian Bowie
What about a completely AI scripted film?

Michael Stormbom
You know, there is that AI scripted advertisement? It was a little bit of a gimmick some years back. I think it was a car advertisement. But the gimmick was that the script had been written by an AI

Ian Bowie
Really, yeah, wow, okay. It’s quite cool.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. So what they had done it basically taking the scripts for, I don’t know how many 1000s of car advertisements and the alrogrithm then learned and how to create a car advertising script.

Ian Bowie
Classic.

Michael Stormbom
I’m sure you could do the same with like a crime series because they’re all..

Ian Bowie
It’s a recipe. Pretty different locations and different actors, but primarily the principal sort of story is the same, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah. So there you go. Script writers, authors, et cetera, et cetera. AI is coming for you too, which actually means me, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Michael Stormbom
We’ll write the script for a podcast in the future as well. And then we just have to, we don’t have to do any research. We can just read up from you know…

Ian Bowie
I wouldn’t care less. If I actually personally had access to an AI algorithm that could write a best seller that I could then pawn off as my own and make a million from it.

Michael Stormbom
We should make an experiment to just to feed the best sellers. And…

Ian Bowie
I would actually love to do that. But no, I mean, the way to do it actually, is to write get an AI to write a series of, let’s say, crime novels, and then just publish them through Kindle on Amazon. Yeah, and then just see what happens. Now, we didn’t say that you didn’t hear this. And we’ll never admit to it.

Michael Stormbom
But if any novels show up with our names, we definitely wrote it ourselves. Yes. Anyway.

Ian Bowie
Yeah but what does it matter? How long would it take to do that?

Michael Stormbom
Let’s, let’s start working on it.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, no, but I mean, for example, if if you take 100 crime novels from 40 different authors, how do you feed that text? I mean, would you have to sit there typing the whole thing out?

Michael Stormbom
No, well I’m sure there are digital versions of those, right, so you don’t even really…

Ian Bowie
You buy the Kindle version?

Michael Stormbom
Well then we get into the question of the day they might have some concerns about using their IPRs…

Ian Bowie
But it’s not plagiarism. Is it? Because all you’re doing is you’re just feeding a load of stuff into an algorithm. It’s only words, isn’t it really. And then the algorithm then creates a totally unique new work, which,

Michael Stormbom
Well yeah, I am not an intellectual property lawyer, so I will… don’t quote us on these people, no but…

Ian Bowie
But how would they know I mean, you know, it’s like you take 100 novels.

Michael Stormbom
Well, they have this podcast now as evidence.

Ian Bowie
We’re not publishing this.

Michael Stormbom
Okay. This is cut.

Ian Bowie
Stop recording immediately!

Ian Bowie
I quite like to write, but I’m very tempted with his idea of going back, you know, like a broken record to the idea of just getting an algorithm to write a bestseller. Then I can earn lots of royalties. Yeah. And if thewfirst one doesn’t work. It can write the next and the next and the next the next and the next. I mean, maybe I can have an algorithm that writes a couple of 100 books for me, and each book earns 50 quid a month. But you times that by even a 100 and you’re on five grand.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. I wonder if there already are those AI produced…

Ian Bowie
They have to be. But I mean, think about it, you know, you come up with, what you come up with. Haha. The machine comes up with a good character. And you know, you’ve got an antagonist as well. And just a formula.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, no, indeed. I mean, aren’t only those seven basic stories or however many?

Ian Bowie
So they say yeah. Yeah, no, I would love that. It’s the same with music. It’s the same with anything, wouldn’t it?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, I, I mean, there are I think there is this… This was a couple of years ago, but I’m sure it’s still around, that creates sort of like lobby music. You know, the thing is, when you’re on the phone waiting, so it can sort of generate that automatically. Yeah, yeah. And, of course, the thing there is that is of course, royalty free music, so you don’t have to pay anything. Yeah, well, you can have it in you know, in a hotel lobby playing and in the background or whatever. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. So created by machine, all the tinned music that you get when you walk into the supermarket. Actually, that you see that that’s an interesting one, isn’t it? I mean, like me, I can’t sing really. But could you use an AI algorithm to enhance my voice?

Michael Stormbom
Oh, you don’t even need… I mean, that’s been that’s been the case for many, many years already. Yeah. Even so called professional recording artists, that their voice or that their voices are heavily processed. That’s been…. for example, autotune, you know, so if you’re singing out of key that it can put you back in, so yeah, that’s been I think it’s pretty much standard practice, even for..

Ian Bowie
So then in that case, in theory, you could take somebody like me. I mean, I could write a song. No problem at all. But I couldn’t sing it. Yeah. But could we then use that kind of technology? For me to sing the song I wrote and make me sound good enough to then launch onto Spotify or YouTube or Tik Tok or?

Michael Stormbom
I would say so. So I don’t think it’s not even all that state of the art. I think that’s been standard practice in the music industry for… Yeah, if you remember what was the name of that band? Milli Vanilli? The scandalous band, the scandal was that it was not actually them singing, that was a big scandal, right? Yeah. So that was a whole big thing. I don’t think, today no one would raise an eyebrow.

Ian Bowie
No, no, no. Well, you got all these boy band girl bands and they just manufactured. Yeah, Because they look good.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah no indeed. Not necessarily a whole lot of talent. At least with singing talent.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, no, it’s all about looks. So can I mean like for example, can you do it in real time? So for example, could I start singing? And it would in real time?

Michael Stormbom
You mean sort of like, you know, live performance?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Stormbom
I think so. I think it’s, I think it’s definitely at that level where it couls. So even the live performers, they weren’t necessarily

Ian Bowie
Making you think, doesn’t it? Well, of course, I mean, in live performances, they’ve been doing a lot of playback for donkey’s years haven’t they.

Michael Stormbom
Playback and singback and whatnot. I’m sure.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, cuz I mean, I remember actually, there was a music program on television in the UK called Top of the Pops, went on for years. And it was all, I can’t remember. It was always in the UK number one, I think. And then lots of other kinds of in the top 40 songs. And there was a period where they actually told the performers you’re not singing. You’re only miming.

Michael Stormbom
I don’t remember. Which artist it was. But it was some artists that just refused to do it. No we want to…

Ian Bowie
Yeah, they did. Yeah, yeah. The ones that really could sing Yeah. I mean, of course, it was a godsend for those who couldn’t.

Michael Stormbom
Oh now I remember so it was actually in the in the Queen movie Bohemian Rhapsody. There was a there was a scene there where where they made Queen then do it playback.

Ian Bowie
That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And they didn’t want to do it. Or they didn’t. Yeah, I

Michael Stormbom
I don’t remember how it went ended. But we but yeah, or how accurate the movie is, but anyway.

Ian Bowie
Well, yeah, of course. It’s a great creative license in there as well. Isn’t there? I mean, there’s bound to be. But I mean, you know, Freddie Mercury really could sing.

Michael Stormbom
That he definitely could. No doubts, no doubts there at all. Yeah, but I think I think if you want to go into the AI route, you probably don’t even need a human singer. You can just regenerate the the singing voice.

Ian Bowie
I was actually thinking about taking that idea into music as well. So for example, all right. imagine that you have written something. I’ve written many poems over the years, but I had a poem and I showed it to a guy who was a musician. And he said, Oh, he said, I could turn that into a song very easily. Basically, setting it to music, maybe a little bit changing the lyrics.

Michael Stormbom
That would be an interesting AI application, take a piece of text and you fill it in and then it creates a song for you based on that would be quite interesting, too.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, wouldn’t it? Yeah, yeah. Or imagine that even you have an idea for a rhythm in your head. But you actually don’t know how to write the music. But you could use AI blocks to create that rhythm for you. So that you know by a process of just trial and error, you put the blocks in this order, and you get, that it’s not quite right. If I take that block out and put this block in, and then eventually you end up with the rhythm that you’re looking for.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, and I mean, also a lot of modern pop music, it follows a very, very sort of standard… there’s like a standard sort of pop song structure, you know, the three minutes and then you have the, you have the verse and the drop and the rise and whatnot. So it is a very, very sort of predictable how the songs are structured, actually. I remember being in the gym one day and I had watched like an… or read an article about this very thing how these are structured and then it was the latest Robbie Williams song at the time and you could literally like pick out the exactly the Lego blocks. Like okay, well he followed exactly that structure to a tee like, no deviation whatsoever.

Ian Bowie
So yeah, so it’s basically just a recipe.

Michael Stormbom
Basically a recipe, so just taking it one step further. So you have this box. Actually, I remember as a child, I had some program for the computer where you just take like different pieces of music and then you just so you have some drums and some basically just a puzzle, puzzle them together. And then you have a song, voilà.

Ian Bowie
Okay. All right. Yeah. So AI, perfect platform for creating those kinds of things.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, absolutely. But that would definitely be an interesting thing. You take a piece of text, like a poem, and you feed it and then it would generate the song for it. That would be quite interesting. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. And also potentially profitable for the songwriter. But yeah, no, I mean, why not? Absolutely. No. I actually there’s another article that I read the other day, and the UK Government are now… they’re actually going to they’re going to make it a criminal offence to create fake news. Yes.

Michael Stormbom
Okay, that might affect this next segment I had in mind because I’ve been playing around with these text generation algorithms. So what you do is that you give it a text prompt, and then it generates a piece of text for you. So I asked these algorithms to create some conspiracy theories for us, right? Would you like to hear some?

Ian Bowie
Yes.

Michael Stormbom
So this is the first one I did so the prompt was create a conspiracy theory about hedgehogs. And the conspiracy theory is that there is a secret government organization that is actively breeding and releasing hedgehogs into the wild in order to control the population of small animals. The hedgehogs are being bred to be super predators, and they’re becoming a real problem for other small mammals. The government is using hedgehogs as a way to control the population of small animals and they are becoming a real problem for the environment.

Ian Bowie
And that was…

Michael Stormbom
That it was entirely automatically generated by these text generation algorithms based on the prompt that I gave them.

Ian Bowie
My goodness.

Michael Stormbom
So I also created a conspiracy theory about myself if you want to hear about them. So again, fake news, so don’t come after me. So Michael Stormbom is a secret agent for the CIA. He was sent to infiltrate the Swedish government in order to destabilize it from within. He has been working to create chaos and unrest in the country for years and his ultimate goal is to overthrow the government and install a puppet regime that will be more compliant with US interests.

Ian Bowie
My goodness. I mean, I’m absolutely blown away by this.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, but this is what you get when you scrape the entire internet for text and then it can…. And would you like to hear your conspiracy?

Ian Bowie
Yes.

Michael Stormbom
So the prompt was to create a conspiracy theory about Ian Bowie. So Ian Bowie is a secret agent for the government. He is tasked with spying on other countries and gathering information that can be used to help the United States win wars and gain an advantage in the world. Ian Bowie is a cold blooded killer will do whatever it takes to complete his mission.

Ian Bowie
Shit, how did it know all that?

Michael Stormbom
It’s obviously on the internet somewhere.

Ian Bowie
You know that’s true. I’m joking. Really, I’m joking.

Michael Stormbom
But the final one I did so create a conspiracy theory about the AI unfiltered podcast. So listen up now folks. The truth is about to be revealed. So the AI unfiltered podcast is a front for a sinister AI empire. The host, Ezra, I don’t know who is, but he’s apparently host is a puppet for the AI overlords. And the guests are all carefully curated to present a positive image of AI to the masses. The podcast is a way to control the narrative about AI and to keep people from learning the truth about the true nature of these machines.

Ian Bowie
That is just so cool.

Michael Stormbom
So you can create a very, I mean, they all sound perfectly grammatically correct.

Ian Bowie
Nothing wrong with that at all. You know, if I just read that, then I would say that that has been written by somebody with start with a native speaker with somewhere between average to above average vocabulary. Yes, absolutely.

Michael Stormbom
So again, so this was a piece of fiction that I just read.

Ian Bowie
Wow.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai