You know that I must be in love with music in all of its forms to be concerned with stuff like the following when all of the political and economic systems that I have known throughout my life are headed straight for the dumpster.
One of Morgan Luna's YouTube videos has had several million views, others have hundreds of thousands. Why should I despise such a lovely, soulful, popular singer? Because Morgan Luna doesn't exist, that's why. Because reading this far, you might decide to check out one of her videos. Please don't. Just. Don't.
Of course, if you consider an AI generated personality as having an existence, I suppose that there are nits that you can pick. You see an image, you hear a voice. Therefore, at some level, Morgan Luna exists. But such philosophical distinctions are beside the point, beside the two points.
First, Luna represents the triumph of the algorithm. The look, the lighting, the lyrics, the backing vocals, the band, the guitar solo, all just the right shade of vanilla to be comforting and comfortable without being challenging. No quirky blips, no surprising chord progressions. No acne scars in sight. Smooth as melted butter on a piece of white toast.
But there's a more important reason that I wish that Morgan Luna's AI creators would unplug her, apologize, and never be heard from again. Every time Morgan Luna tunes are streamed, the oxygen necessary to support a real artist is sucked from the room. Jalen Ngonda's real-live soul on So Glad I Found You is passed by. Witchcraft by the guitar-playing young lady named Jackie Venson doesn't get played.
And the real tragedy? Folks commenting on Luna's videos say that they don't care if she's real or not. They like the song. What difference does it make? In other words, they are OK with being played by people who have studied them carefully in order to use them for the sole purpose of extracting money from their wallets. This is the world in which we live, among a population manipulated by the algorithm and not minding one little bit.
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