It seems to me that your argument is operating on semiotic-pragmatic and economic grounds, seeking legal frameworks through which value can be appropriated from content produced by generative systems. That’s consistent with the goals of those who hold IP rights over generative AI.
My quibble is ontological. If George Harrison and a generative AI each produced an identical recording of He's So Fine, completely absent knowledge of the other, I would argue only the human-authored version constitutes an act of meaning-making. It unfolds within a phenomenological, historical, and ethical horizon. The AI version, by contrast, is an incoherent amalgam of decontextualized data points. It is meaningless because it was not created in and through time, and thus it cannot participate in a culture’s unfolding. This is where the ontological tether comes in to try and rescue some semblance of meaning.
Your closing sentence: “the right to monetize doesn’t stem from originality, it emerges through creative convergence” seems to accept and legitimize encounters with outputs that are, by their nature, meaningless. In doing so, I see this framing as reinforcing and accelerating a cultural economy grounded in simulation rather than meaningful expression (which is what music is).
Would Habermas actually agree that meaningless outputs from generative AI systems constitute a shared participatory lifeworld? Under my reading of Habermas AI outputs are not communicative acts and are incapable of fulfilling the terms for rational validity claims and expressions of recognition.
Hey Jeffrey, great comment! I actually meant that that creative convergence only happens through the meaningful interactions between people. Do I understand correctly that you are trying to analyse music as an ontology unto itself?
Ahh, okay, your clarification on creative convergence does resonate with both Habermas and my own understanding.
And yes, treating musical expression as an ontology unto itself is a fair reading. I’m arguing that music is not merely a medium but a symbolic form (in Susanne K. Langer’s sense) that discloses temporally-situated meaning. It functions ontologically by externalizing inner temporal tensions, what I’d call lived time, through melody, harmony, and rhythm. The form itself is constitutive of a particular mode of being that is just as real, and just as epistemologically rich, as discursive reason.
So when AI outputs music, I’m not denying it can be responded to by people. I’m arguing that what is being responded to is no longer music as ontological disclosure, but an aesthetic simulation - one that lacks any originary temporal gesture, and that absence has a severe cost.
This distinction matters deeply to how I understand participation, and to what kinds of meaning we are (or are not) building shared culture from.
It seems to me that your argument is operating on semiotic-pragmatic and economic grounds, seeking legal frameworks through which value can be appropriated from content produced by generative systems. That’s consistent with the goals of those who hold IP rights over generative AI.
My quibble is ontological. If George Harrison and a generative AI each produced an identical recording of He's So Fine, completely absent knowledge of the other, I would argue only the human-authored version constitutes an act of meaning-making. It unfolds within a phenomenological, historical, and ethical horizon. The AI version, by contrast, is an incoherent amalgam of decontextualized data points. It is meaningless because it was not created in and through time, and thus it cannot participate in a culture’s unfolding. This is where the ontological tether comes in to try and rescue some semblance of meaning.
Your closing sentence: “the right to monetize doesn’t stem from originality, it emerges through creative convergence” seems to accept and legitimize encounters with outputs that are, by their nature, meaningless. In doing so, I see this framing as reinforcing and accelerating a cultural economy grounded in simulation rather than meaningful expression (which is what music is).
Would Habermas actually agree that meaningless outputs from generative AI systems constitute a shared participatory lifeworld? Under my reading of Habermas AI outputs are not communicative acts and are incapable of fulfilling the terms for rational validity claims and expressions of recognition.
Hey Jeffrey, great comment! I actually meant that that creative convergence only happens through the meaningful interactions between people. Do I understand correctly that you are trying to analyse music as an ontology unto itself?
Ahh, okay, your clarification on creative convergence does resonate with both Habermas and my own understanding.
And yes, treating musical expression as an ontology unto itself is a fair reading. I’m arguing that music is not merely a medium but a symbolic form (in Susanne K. Langer’s sense) that discloses temporally-situated meaning. It functions ontologically by externalizing inner temporal tensions, what I’d call lived time, through melody, harmony, and rhythm. The form itself is constitutive of a particular mode of being that is just as real, and just as epistemologically rich, as discursive reason.
So when AI outputs music, I’m not denying it can be responded to by people. I’m arguing that what is being responded to is no longer music as ontological disclosure, but an aesthetic simulation - one that lacks any originary temporal gesture, and that absence has a severe cost.
This distinction matters deeply to how I understand participation, and to what kinds of meaning we are (or are not) building shared culture from.
Yes, I love the idea of aesthetic simulation. Time to bring Beaudrillard into the discussion as well :)