Local businessman Alistair Dickinson has told Island Echo of his attempt to create an artificial intelligence (AI) global popstar – Isabella Delgado – here on the Isle of Wight.
Alistair was sceptical of the power and reach of artificial intelligence at first, saying:
“As a technology geek and business owner, I first heard the noise about AI and the launch of Chat GPT and how the world would change forever back in 2022 and, I thought great another technology stack I have to learn about and pretty much dismissed it at the time.
Article continues below this advertisement “In January 2023, my curiosity got the better of me, and I started to research what this technology meant to business and society and very soon fell down the proverbial rabbit hole and got lost in hearsay, speculation and sales pitches for the next best thing since sliced bread.
“After a deep dive and not really bothering to venture out to local business events, I got an invite to run a one-day workshop for local Island business to give an overview of AI tools, how they can be used and how it should be used.
“For this, I used everything at my disposal to create a fictional popstar and used AI to generate Images, video and music.”
Alistair is not only a businessman and information technology geek, but he also has a creative and artistic side, saying:
“I have always been a song writer and poet at heart and that I find it very easy to create songs in context of human emotion, this is not something I learned, it’s just something I can do.”
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Alistair soon realised that his AI creation was having a real world impact.
“The time came to run the course, and I had used public channels for the case study, including YouTube for the pop star. The initial songs had only been on this new channel for about 2 weeks when I realised that we had gained over 150 organic subscribers just through YouTube, with several thousand plays of each of the songs.”
He then came to believe he could create an AI pop star with real world, global reach.
“After completing the workshop, I thought to myself is this really a thing, are digital fictional pop stars a thing? My justification was if Marvel movies are all computer generated images (CGI) and cars can be built by robots run by computers, then I could probably create a digital pop star.
“It made me think – if AI is going to change the world and take everyone’s job as we are told – then could I create a record label and create multiple artists? Could I then make it a commercial success, basically do something different, try a different way?
“After some trial and error and various feedback, the first artist from scratch was created in November 20024. This artist is Isabella Delgado, a fictional RB singer. I say from scratch, as it was brand new songs, brand new YouTube and social media – zero likes and followers.
Last Friday (27th June), the release of Isabela Delgado and Breathless was completed on all streaming platforms, on Vinyl and on CD for purchase online.
Alistair adds:
“We can’t predict what is going to happen in the music industry, we can’t always predict the weather, but the future for this project is to create more artists and hopefully also work with human artists to use our digital production and marking skills in a hybrid model as in doing what we have done so far. We have realised it is not always the music that carries an artist but the marketing and presentation.
“As a business owner on the Isle of Wight I hope to create a new business and create up to 4 new permanent jobs that will vary around AI production and AI content, while looking for artist collaboration to see if the same approach can be applied to marketing and help create a non-fictional music artist.”
Isabella Delgado’s YouTube channel can be found here. She can also be found on Facebook.
two questions,…
1. are the real human artists / people, who’s work / images were used to train the AI, to produce the music and images for this creation, going to receive credit, and royalties from any money made from the sales of CDs etc ?
(or are you happy to make money from someone elses work ?)
2. will she be playing the Isle of Wight festival next year ?