That’s a good counterexample. Do you know what “more heavily influenced” means? It means “not always universally every time, but more often”.

An obscure Swedish jazz musician got more plays than most of the tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are—which had just won the Grammy for Album of the Year (not just the best jazz album, but the best album in any genre). How was that even possible?

LOL a couple obvious reasons are that Spotify listeners don’t get to vote for grammy awards - only a few thousand people do - and to be eligible for a grammy an album has to be released in the United States. The awards are more heavily influenced by album sales than subjective judgements of musical quality. Jimi Hendrix never won a grammy. Neither did Bob Marley or Diana Ross. There’s a lot already wrong with the grammys.

The fake musicians and possibly AI-generated songs are more interesting. If the music industry is trying to eliminate musicians it wouldn’t be to avoid paying them - they’ve already figured out lots of ways to do that - it would be to have complete control over the music.

OTOH people who aren’t in the entertainment industry will use generative AI to make original films they otherwise never would have been able to. It seems like a great tool for individual creators who aren’t able to produce images by themselves. Yes, they won’t hire artists to do this, but they wouldn’t have anyway, and we’ll get to enjoy their work, which wouldn’t have existed otherwise. I don’t think we should demonize a very promising technology because we don’t like how some people are using it.

Have to admit I’m surprised. I really expected this to be a romantic triangle or business rivalry thing.

When you “have” to keep making new versions to satisfy market “demand” in the “free” market.