Cavan’s culture in harmony with AI
AI in Action
Patricia McAlernon
What does ‘Cavan Girl’ and ‘Cavan Cola’ have in common? The former was Cavan’s most famous song based on a true love story and the latter was the county’s well known and loved fizzy drink. Both promoted Cavan’s culture through song and homemade produce. Retaining our culture is very important and it has been suggested by some local campaigners to bring back Cavan’s version of the black stuff which was known to have a head on it like a pint of Guinness. The vintage style of the label and bottle was very appealing and stirred up memories of times gone by. The marketing of Cavan Cola was very successful and it became a very popular soft drink.
To launch similar products today marketers are now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) software to generate images, song and video content. McDonald’s in Japan recently launched a video advertisement created by AI to promote their range of products. AI-generated videos to promote brands and services are becoming more popular and financially attractive. Old songs, like ‘Cavan Girl’, could be accompanied with video content created with AI with surreal and peculiar twists which a human may never consider.
AI is capable of creating versions of old and new songs in a way similar to the production of rap music but with a more advanced mixing technology. The technology is capable of selecting themes or leitmotifs for videos or songs with maximum effect to provoke joy, sadness and other emotions at particular moments. The terminology leitmotifs originates from the German composer Richard Wagner who referred to them as ‘guides-to-feelings’.
AI makes it possible to create songs and video content which are more immersive, personalised and regional to communicate culture. Music in general makes a product more memorable, stirring up emotions and shifting the consumer to purchase that particular item. AI is capable of creating lyrics with leitmotifs which manipulate the consumer’s behaviour. Critics of the technology may say this is dangerous in general if it can influence your thinking and result in a person doing something out of character which may cause harm to others. The AI-fusion of sound and vision to create a video is more powerful at manipulating the mind and may convince a person that an idea triggered on watching the content was generated through their own thoughts and was solely their idea.
It is an era of AI culture in which we need to learn how to safely surf the AI wave. We need to embrace and exploit AI technology in order to be more creative and to avoid drowning in fake cultures created by the technology itself. AI should not be allowed to infringe copyrights on songs or any other material. AI is a culture machine so we need to feed it the correct data to produce an authentic culture for ourselves. The emergence of AI marks the coming of a new society which is being conditioned culturally and it is up to us as individuals to manipulate the technology to create or maintain a culture which suits us.