Opinion: AI vs live performance?

At least you can’t hack into my viola,’ I sometimes reflect when I hear about some act of cybercrime. ‘Hack at it with a bow, maybe. But not into it.’ It’s good to remember in this digital age how resilient and productive we can be with our barely mechanical instruments. It’s worth being sanguine too when it comes to generative AI (artificial intelligence), a technological development that sometimes appears to threaten the very foundation of what we do. Who needs musicians when developers boast of machines that can write new music, create new sounds and bring it all to life for anyone who wants it?…