Is AI ruining music? | Dustin Ballard

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Did you know that when the phonograph first came out in the early 1900s, some argued that pre-recorded music wasn't real music? In this talk, musician and social media creator Dustin Ballard says, we're still wrestling with that question today. What makes music real music in the first place? Dustin is known for his popular YouTube channel, There I Ruined It, where he uses artistry and AI to, quote, lovingly destroy our favorite songs. He weaves us through a few hilarious examples of different ways he's, quote, ruined songs and complicates our questions around AI's role in music making.

1:00I'll start today with some obscure music history. So if you're a David Bowie fan, you may already know this. But the chorus of the song Starman was actually borrowed from a 1937 blues song by T-Bone Fletcher, which I'm going to play you a clip of. There's a starman waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and read us, but he thinks he'd blow our mind. There's a star man waiting in the sky Now, I love Bowie's cover, but there's just something about a beat-up guitar and an old man singing straight from the soul that to me really gets to the emotion of the song. And I think what's most interesting is that I just made up that entire story.

1:57It was actually 100 % AI. I apologize for lying, but there is a reason for it. I'd like to start with a question. What is real music? Now, this is a question that's come up with synthesizers, with sampling and hip-hop music. Even with the phonograph, when it first came out in the 1800s, people back then debated whether or not reproduced music was real music. John Philip Sousa, the Taylor Swift of his day, was not a fan. He said that phonographs were a substitute for human skill, intelligence, and soul. They reduced the expression of music to a mathematical system. It almost sounds like he's talking about AI, doesn't it?

2:47So is AI real music? I believe that when it's in the hands of musicians, it can be. But first, let me give you some context for why I think that. So I run a parody music social media channel called There I Ruined It. This is just a, thank you, this is just a weird evening hobby of mine. My day job is as an advertising creative director. But the purpose of the channel is to ruin music, or as I say, to lovingly destroy your favorite songs. And AI is one of the tools that I often use to do that. So, for example, here is my cover of the 50-cent song, In the Club, as performed by an AI version of country music legend Conway Twitty.

3:35You can find me in the club, a bottle full of bug. I'm into having sex, I ain't into making love. So come give me a hug, if you're into getting rubbed. Go shoddy, it's your birthday We're going to party like it's your birthday When I pull up out front You see the bands on the doves Thank you. So how did I create that song? The band you heard is actually a real band. In fact, that's me playing the fiddle. There's just one extra step in the process where I ran my vocals, my impersonation of Conway Twitty through a custom AI voice model trained on his voice. So to give you another example, along with a peek behind the curtain, in this next clip, you'll hear my actual voice, followed by the post-AI version.

4:32And this is from a song that I call The Red Hot Chili Peppers Make a Grocery List.

4:41Tinoa bananas, ravioli Canned tuna, pickles, macaroni Teen white bananas ravioli Can't tuna pickles macaroni Now, the David Bowie blues song I played for you in the beginning, that was actually created in a totally different way. That was 100 % AI from a text prompt, which to me is a little more unnerving. In fact, when I first generated that song, it kind of messed with my head a little because I love old music, I perform music from that era, and to hear the pain in that man's voice, who never existed, something about that just felt a little wrong to me. And that's why I lied to you guys up front.

5:27I suspect that some of you may have enjoyed that song up until the point you found out it was AI. And to me, that would imply that maybe there's more to music than the music. So is music melody and rhythm and chords? Or is music expression? And to a listener, does it always matter? If I hear a song I love on the radio, am I going to stop everything and research how that song was created? Maybe not. It gets even messier when you look at the range of ways that AI can be used to create music. So for example, what if I used AI to help with some song lyrics? Is that much different than, say, a rhyming dictionary?

6:10What if I used AI to create a new instrument sound that's never existed? Is that much different than a synthesizer? What if I trained an AI model on my entire body of work and it created a new song in my style? Is that something I would put my name on? Or what if I wanted to use different voices, like a guitarist can use different guitars? or am I just stuck with the voice that I happen to be born with? So I have a co-worker with a great baritone voice and he was very amused one day when I asked him if I could purchase his voice for a song that I was working on. So I'll play you a clip of that.

6:54So this is my singing through my co-worker's voice and it's the song Baby Got Back but set to the tune of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen.

7:12I like big butts, I cannot lie You other brothers can't deny When around things in your face You get sprung When a girl walks in You pull up tough Cause you notice that her butt was stuffed My homeboys tried to warn me, me so horny. Thank you. Thanks.

7:48I did enjoy just looking across the faces of this esteemed audience as that song was playing. I'll give you one more example. So in this next clip, you'll hear a melody I made up on my violin. and then I asked AI to turn that into a dramatic movie score.

8:20So all this to say, there are a million ways to use AI. The term AI music doesn't really clarify anything. And in fact, even our own lawmakers don't really seem to understand this. So there was a recent U.S. congressional hearing on AI music where they played my mashup of AI Johnny Cash singing the song Barbie Girl, to which Representative Matt Gaetz replied, robots should not be subject to free speech. Now, for the record, I am not a robot. But I do think this illustrates some of the confusion around this topic, which kind of leaves musicians like myself to come up with our own guardrails for how to use AI, what's right and what's wrong.

9:06And for me, it kind of comes down to three things. The first is, is it deceptive? Could somebody believe this is actually real? Next, is there artistic intent behind it? So if you're one of these people that's mass-producing AI songs, hundreds of songs, and uploading them to Spotify, your intent is probably not artistic. And then finally, how does this affect the musicians? And oftentimes, the victims of the songs that I create actually end up sharing those same songs on social media. So for example, here's a clip of Snoop Dogg reacting to a mashup I made called The Bare Necessities Are Gin and Juice.

10:09Thank you.

10:14So when I see people like Snoop and Ed Sheeran and Nicki Minaj and others sharing these things, to me it's hopefully an indication that in my own weird way, I'm using these technologies to contribute something new to the world. And I think at the end of the day, even with all of the many downsides of AI messing with our music, I think a lot of artists are discovering the same thing I did, which is there are ways to use AI that can actually increase creativity. I think we could see new songs, new sounds, new styles that maybe we can't even imagine today, much like it would have been hard for somebody like John Philip Sousa to have imagined this final monstrosity I'm going to play for you.

11:01And this goes out to all the Nickelback fans.

11:22Makes me want to take a photograph I should probably hang that photograph Next to my photo was a photograph Look at this photograph Every time I do it makes me laugh Hear the sounds of the night time dance All the dolls want to get in my hands But back to that photograph It reminds me of the photograph Before the photo of that photograph When it was just a normal photograph Thank you all so much. Thank you.

12:11That was Dustin Ballard speaking at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, Find out more at ted.com slash curationguidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmanivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Student by David法定 pronounced leads Diaries We are now again Thank you.