By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Most of the time, I don’t care much for celebrity gossip. Life is too short to worry about which singer wore an oh-so-wacky dress to the Met Gala or what crazy movie star rocked the red carpet. However, every now and then, a celebrity I respect says something amazing dumb that it forever changes my view of them. Recently, this happened with one of the most popular movie stars in Hollywood, Jeff Bridges. On Theo Von’s podcast, i The big Lebowski The star couldn’t stop talking about how cool the AI music platform Suno is.
If you don’t know, Suno is an application that allows you to produce relatively sophisticated music with very little effort. You can plug in custom lyrics and control little things like music styles and breaks, or you can just feed in the basics and go to town. Of course, like all AI, the app is built on pirated content; in this case, the songs have their data stolen from the original music artists. Although it can be stressful to hear anywhere a celebrity who fights for such technology, that is the most painful hearing from Bridges, whose The big Lebowski the actor remains the ultimate counterculture hero in cinema.
Boomer gets AI
Recently, Jeff Bridges appeared on Theo Von’s This past weekend a podcast. There, he introduced Von to Suno, and began with words of caution: “AI is scary, man,” he said. “It’s very scary.” If he had stopped there, all of his followers would have been happy with his (admittedly very obvious) statement. Unfortunately, Bridges kept talking, declaring that AI is “a combination of all our intelligence, our soul, our stuff.” Digging deeper, he continued to play Von a song he had made for his wife using the Suno.
“You can put in your demos and your music and your singing. Then it will edit it and put in the voice,” he said before hitting play. After the song, he told the host, “All the guys in Nashville are using it now instead of going into the studio and paying, you know, $10,000, they can do this for free, man.” Brilliantly, Von asked the obvious question: “But do you think that’s a big deal, or does it matter?” To this, Bridges replied with disappointment, “That’s it, it changes. Everything, it just changes, man.”
You Can’t Spell “Stay” Without AI
Obviously, Bridges offered a caveat by calling AI “scary,” and he’s right that everything is changing. But it’s impossible to see this piece as anything other than the brilliant AI enablement. This is stressful on several levels. For example, Suno has an obvious appeal to those who can’t play music, in the same way ChatGPT has an obvious appeal to those who can’t write or draw. But Bridges is a seasoned musician with a band and everything! If he wanted to write a beautiful song for his wife, he could do it himself. Now, like many other AI cults, he takes the easy way out instead of prioritizing anywhere effort.
This is doubly pressing when you compare Jeff Bridges’ AI statements to some of his more famous characters. In The Big Lebowskihe played a counterculture icon who was a radical protester in the ’60s and worked as an anti-establishment fringe. Now, real bridges connect AI, which is the way of innovation. In Tron: Legacyhe played a gifted editor who eventually learns that a flawed personality is always better than an artificial perfection. Now, Bridges is deliberately underestimating a person’s achievements and creativity in order to let algorithms do all of his thinking and creating for him.
Ironically, Jeff Bridges has become very close to Obadiah Stane, the villain he played for the first time. The Man of Steel. In that film, he taunts Tony Stark that Bridges taunts artists right now: “You think just because you have an idea, you’re one?” The answer for everyone who has an ounce of true creativity is a resounding, “yes!” Seeing bridges being sold for no real reason other than AI caping is one of the most disappointing things in the world. Which idea is the most disappointing, though? Simple: garbage comments left by your AI brothers who can’t even imagine their newness!
