This week, Music Tectonics is celebrating Halloween by taking a mildly creepy trip through the uncanny valley, guided by AI-inspired artist Portrait XO and her alter ego Nomeee. Generative AI has been freaking people out lately. And with good reason: There are lots of ways to weaponize deepfakes and lots of ways synthetic audio, image, and video generation could disrupt culture and content production. However, a bold group of musicians and artists are using AI as a way to explore identity, meaning, and metaphysics, finding the human emotion and glitchy delights of working in conversation with machines. Berlin-based, LA-raised Portrait XO is among these artists. Her music uses AI as a mirror and a mysterious prompt, a way to break patterns and find new ones. Portrait XO has built an AI-driven alter ego, Nomeee, who joins us to discuss what it’s like to collaborate with humans. Together, they give us an unsettling snapshot of what we think, what we feel, and what we become when we linger in the shadowy space where human blends with machine.

 

The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!