Bas, a rapper, and Derek Ali, a sound engineer, speak at the panel "Creativity in AI with Music" at the Leading with AI conference. The Digital Data Design Institute's director, Karim Lakhani, moderated the panel.

Russ Campbell

• Grammy-nominated rapper Bas talked about AI's role in music at a conference hosted by Harvard.
• Bas said AI can't yet replicate human experiences and evoke emotions in music.
• Bas said human taste is essential to helping AI make music enjoyable.

Grammy-nominated rapper Bas is embracing the AI revolution, but he doesn't think the technology is anywhere near ready to replace humans.

"The core of writing music, you're trying to evoke an emotion out of your audience, whether it's joy, heartbreak, whatever the case may be," Bas said at the "Leading with AI" conference this week.

With AI tools, "when I try to give it those prompts, it's a little tough to get that across."

The "Leading with AI" conference was hosted by Harvard's Digital Data Design Institute and Harvard Business School, which drew leaders in business, technology, and academia to discuss the challenges and opportunities of AI.

During the panel, Bas referenced a song he created with AI. He worked with a producer who created the initial beat, and listening to it, he said, "Instantly in my head, I'm like, 'Oh, this reminds me of meeting a girl at the club, and you're trying to break the ice and maybe get that first dance with her.'"

As he wrote the lyrics and composed the melody, Bas realized that AI couldn't fully replicate that experience. "I'm like, 'man, AI never been to the club.'"

Bas said many artists are concerned about surviving amid advances in AI — especially when there are tools that take seconds to generate tunes, write lyrics, and make music videos.

"There are a lot of people in our industry, a lot of creators, where AI is almost a dirty word right now," he said. "They're just threatened by what it could mean to their livelihood and to the art forms."

But the saving grace for humans, he said, is that they have "taste."

"At the end of the day, there's going to be a certain level of human taste that's still required to prompt the AI to create something that we'll all enjoy," he said.

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