About once a month, I canvass some local bands that have either been nominees in or winners of our annual Music Awards. Along with asking about gig dates for an upcoming Crosstown Sounds promotion, I recently posed a question about AI. “We’re thinking about devoting a full issue to AI, as its effects are broad-reaching across all our various columns. For a potential music article, do you have some examples of terrible AI slop flyers you’ve seen? And if you are using AI proudly as a tool and want to defend your position, do tell!”
And as my 100% human editor pointed out, we have bigger problems than flyers. Our local musicians had plenty of thoughts and feelings beyond flyers as well, so much so that you’ll need to hit the innerwebs come Wednesday to read everyone’s opinions. They all matter, but we just don’t have the space to make all the voices heard in print. Sean Russell of the Cut Throat Finches and The Nancys had so much to say that we’re publishing it as a full letter. Flyers shmyers, we sure did hit a hot button!
Mandy Hand
I think AI for flyers is a useful tool for quick promos. However, the flyers are starting to look the same and very obvious. Going forward, I am prioritizing human graphic design for all my graphics. I am sympathetic to the cost of design, and I don’t fault anyone for using the pocket robot to whip up a flyer for a lounge show, for example.
I remember working at Guitar Center and hearing guitar guys say things about DJs not being “real musicians” because they aren’t playing “real” instruments. I remember the pushback to programs like FruityLoops and apps like GarageBand, but the difference there is that records on turntables and apps full of loops and samples aren’t generative. They are tools and still require a human with at least a modicum of musical skill to manipulate into something that sounds like a song.
We have crossed the rubicon with generative AI, with which someone can use words, and not even the most sophisticated musical vocabulary, and feed them to a robot that spits out a finished product. What is the purpose of this? If the purpose is to shorten the time between mental idea and sonic object, that’s fine, I suppose, if the sonic object is to be built upon by humans. The release cycle is impossibly short now. It seems like a song or video should be released every month to stay relevant, and we gotta do what we gotta do.
But if the generative sonic object is the product, I think that is dangerous for the future of songwriting as an art, and if we pull at that thread even more, it’s a future where humanity only knows music as “that thing you tell a chatbot to do,” then we lose one of our oldest artforms, one of our oldest folkways.
Songwriters, use caution. Seek human connection. Be vulnerable and let someone tell you, “Sounds good, needs work.”
A final thought: The communities who persist will remain on the map.
Lisa Hardaway, Darstar
I know a lot of people hate AI. I also know a lot of people who use it for various things, both for novelty and professionally. I know that when I go online, I see a lot of hatred directed at people who use it for show flyers, and while I agree that it’s kind of “cheating” and potentially has environmental impacts, and is often obviously rendered by a bot, I think it’s unfair for people to cast stones because what I also I know is this: When people use AI to make show flyers, it’s not coming from a place of evil, and they are just trying to do what the rest of us are, and that is have fun playing music and promoting shows and doing it as economically as possible. Not every musician or band is or has a skilled artist in their midst. Some would say, “Well, then they should hire someone.” In case those people haven’t noticed the price of gas and damn near everything else, contracting artists isn’t always in the already slim budgets of most bands or even everyday people. And in other terms of economy, specifically time, many if not all of us are not full-time musicians and are working stiffs trying to hustle. So, if some band of fortysomething weekend-warrior dads want to use AI to make a flyer for a show on a Tuesday night and play to an empty room, I’m not going to get on their case about it because what does it matter? To be frank, I’ve seen some horrendous show flyers made by humans very recently. They are bad-bad, like I’m talking cluttered and entirely devoid of any design methodology with too many fonts to navigate and text you can’t read where it’s most important. So bad I wouldn’t want my name on it.
I know a guy, an old hippie named Michael, who was an illustrator way back when all that kind of work was done by airbrush. Once programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and the like came up, he felt the same way about those as we younger folk do about AI. He said, “Any idiot could use Photoshop.” Any idiot can use AI, too. You can compare the dawn of AI to things like photography. Now any idiot can point and shoot and maybe get a good shot, but nobody is screaming at them to turn their bathroom into a darkroom or hire a professional. Any idiot can use GPS instead of a paper map and somehow still get lost. Any idiot can use GarageBand and still make crappy music. Technology is always going to change how we do things whether we like it or not. That Pandora’s Box was opened a very long time ago.
My position is basically this: I don’t really care that much if people use AI to make a show flyer because I can understand why they do it. When you’re in a local band, no one works for you. You are your own manager, promoter, art department, scheduler, roadie, producer, and more, and that’s after your regular life.
Fortunately for Darstar, we rarely are tasked with making a show flyer, and I’m glad for that because it’s a time-suck even if you are using an out-of-the-box image-editing program. My advice is if you find yourself on the receiving end of a bad flyer for a bill you’re on, just make yourself your own flyer by whatever means works for you. And, lastly, let’s not forget that none of us are up for a Grammy any time soon, so maybe everybody needs to chill out, log out, and go write some new material.
Matthew Broyles, The Matthew Show
I find AI an odious pestilence in the arts and in more areas of life besides. I work at a college campus and am watching the deterioration of critical thinking among young and old in horror. I don’t have specific examples of slop, because I immediately block every bit of it that creeps into my feed.
Keegan McInroe
I have plenty to say about AI, but none of it would be in support. We actually had a box on our submission process for the Fort Worth Songwriter Festival this year where artists had to affirm that AI was not used in any step, from conception to finished product, of the songwriting process of any song submitted for review, or any song performed at the festival. Obviously, this has to be an honor system, which is a problem, in and of itself, but that’s sadly the world now.
Gabby Minton
AI is destroying the world when it takes our clean drinking water to churn out flyers that look the exact same garbage: terrible fonts, weird sepia-like filter over the entire thing, way too many words on one flyer. It’s made me go in the polar opposite direction and start hand-drawing my gig flyers and ads. I don’t want to say who, but I had a promoter actually run a picture of me through AI for their flyer, and when they posted it, it looked nothing like me. Also, they didn’t ask my permission to submit my entire face and likeness into AI. So, now they have rights to my face, and I can’t do anything about it.
London Morris, Cavano
I do not mind AI at all. I put it in the same category as all things tech. It is going to happen and evolve with or without us. I have not seen anything AI-based as of late. I have, however, seen a few postings online of others upset about AI taking the creativity out of things or even taking the place of some local artists. I myself made an AI flyer a few months back. I hated it but thought the concept was cool, though it seemed too polished. I am not a big fan of art unless it’s very specific, so I only asked a few people if they were available to make it. Alas, they were not, so I resorted to AI for something quick. It is very rare I have an extreme opinion towards something so minuscule, so I didn’t care either way, as long as the word got out. Lately, I have been using AI for quick questions here and there, for stupid questions usually.
Rick Perry, Gammacide
In our new video for “Overload,” we combined live-action footage of us with AI visuals for the background. (The actual music is 100% us. We are totally old school in our approach. We don’t even use click tracks in the recording.) Some people liked the video. Some hated it because of the AI. Nowadays, bands don’t get big budgets to do videos like in the 1980s and ’90s, but videos are still very important for promoting your music on social media. The members of Gammacide make no money off our music. We barely break even. We do it because we love it. We just wanted visuals that matched the theme of the song. For the people who say it is putting artists out of work, I ask: Have you actually bought any music from your favorite bands lately? In most cases, I imagine the answer is “no.” Streaming music for free has put way more artists out of work than AI-generated art. It’s not even close. Bottom line: AI can be another tool for artists to be creative. It can create “slop,” and a lot of it is “slop,” but I have also seen it come up with some cool and imaginative stuff. It depends on the human who is giving it input.
Kena Sosa, Goisagi
I know that a lot of people use these tools now to get out of paying a musician, and as a musician, that is not what I’d like to see, but I know some people will write a riff and have apps like Suno create a recording to let the rest of the group learn the song easier. Then the actual musician can take charge again. Also, for my parents’ 50th anniversary, someone made a song for them using AI (not my choice), and it could not get my name right for anything. So, there’s that.
Mike Terry, Two Guys Walk Into a Bar
Yes, there’s a lot of slop out there for gig and tour posters, as well as venue events. Even with the emerging backlash, we see it still on the rise, and I think most of us can immediately identify AI versus handcrafted work.
Our philosophy is to use local talent and entrepreneurs for photos, album covers, merch, and promotion. We use, for instance, Thirst and Co., Johnny Govea, Brooks Burris, Printed Threads, Short Run Merch, Blackstone Studio, and others locally. Additionally, we’ve used a number of local studio musicians to round out our recordings. We’ve made lots of friends in the process.
Underlying this issue is that there is a fragile ecosystem that makes the whole scene work, including merch, photography, promotion, posters, covers, studios, and, of course, bands and venues. Before AI came onto the scene, every piece of this ecosystem was under some duress to make a living and have a sustainable business. With AI today, this entire ecosystem is under even more duress. A more subtle aspect is that songwriters and producers can now use AI to add instrumentation to their songs, which cuts out the work of local studio musicians who depend on that work to make a living. Essentially, every time AI is used, it cuts a creative person or business out of the picture …
Two Guys Walk Into A Bar have been lucky enough to be in a position to support the above folks in their businesses and creative endeavors and will continue doing so. Given the pressure on musicians and venues to make a living and stay solvent, the lure of AI is understandable, but out of respect for this ecosystem, I hope we can all share a principle to avoid the AI “easy button” and support the full local scene. I’ve met many folks who have arrived here from other locales, and they are impressed by the scene we have. It is something to be respected and preserved.
And don’t get me started on competing with AI-generated music on the streaming services.
David Tribble
The AI conversation is one that never stops, and, yes, I’d say every AI flyer I’ve seen is slop. I’m shocked at how many artists choose to go that route, with the photo itself being altered from the original. I even had a graphic artist friend of mine reach out to me and said If I ever needed any artwork or merch done, to let him know and he will do it for free just to keep it original instead of using AI-generated art. The kindest gesture, but that’s how serious this is. He cared that much!
I’d say to any artist, get on Canva or Adobe Express and make a very simple flyer on your phone even that looks like you had a hand in it, like you had a hand in the music you put out there, at least we hope. Even use the same template. I believe authenticity is highly important above all else, finding the truest version of what you know is there. Sure, that comes with a risk, but it’s a potluck baby! Not everybody likes it, but those who do come back for more.
AI likes to take the emotion and the feeling out of what it gets its hands on. We can call it slop, but really it’s a thief to the creativity that artists need to be a part of.
Addison White, Dream Deleter
We fortunately have not experienced any AI around us with the venues we play at or the bands we play with. Everyone seems to be pretty down to earth about this in our community. I’ve even noticed some people offering free flyer backgrounds with “insert your band name here” and “venue here” and so on to discourage musicians from using AI flyers. I think there’s an important line between using AI as a tool versus using it to replace the creative act entirely. Plenty of musicians use AI for mixing and/or mastering assistance. The tool serves the vision. What I can’t get behind is generating a full song and releasing it as your own artistic work, or copying what the AI generates and replicating it in the studio, or generating a flyer without any human artistic creativity. At that point, you didn’t write a song or make a flyer, you described it to a machine, and it made it for you.
Jennifer Bovee, Crosstown Sounds Editor
As I was perusing the Fort Worth Music Community group page on Facebook, hoping for examples, which were (thankfully) hard to find, as people are being kind and not calling one another out on the local scene, someone had posted this from a graphic designer in Florida, whose collage of bad flyers made our cover this week. While we’ve accepted AI flyers from our advertisers, y’all react quite violently to it. We don’t have a policy against accepting AI art, only against our staff creating it, but we’ve had clients experience negative reactions. That includes art clients, restaurants, and a tattoo studio as well.
“As a graphic designer,” said Max Michaels from Max Michaels: Art+Design, “this hurts my industry. As a consumer, this hurts my eyes. As a human in a perishable environment, this hurts my soul. Perhaps there would be some justification if by using AI and saving money on paying a graphic designer it produced better ads for your business, but stylistically alone all of these sort of AI ads are just trash that uniformly lack any originality or individuality. Set aside the ethical and environment concerns, prompting these sorts of ads hurts your business by telling everyone that you have a critically flawed marketing plan and are cutting corners when it comes to the most important thing about your business: its brand identity. Using AI strips your brand of that unique identity and regurgitates this convoluted cookie-cutter slop that you either willfully don’t care or don’t understand how it makes your business look or its effects on your community and the environment. This graphic includes just some ads that have come across my feed in just the last few days. Hard to tell who is advertising what. It’s exhausting to even look at. The saddest thing is that Jacksonville is packed full of talented indie graphic designers who will work for a fair wage, myself being one of them, especially if it helps out another local business. Do better, please.”
