Does Africa need to embrace AI to maintain its music industry?

Described as a virtual musician powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Mya Blue says: “I’m not an enemy, I’m a music lover exploring the different sounds of the world.”

His Instagram account, where he made this statement, has the tagline: “I may not be a person but I sing from my soul” – and it is owned by Nigerian singer and producer Eclipse Nkasi.

He features on his recently released remix of Joromi, a classic song by the late Nigerian singer Sir Victor Uwaifo.

He and his creator want to ease the fears many musicians around the world have about the impact of AI on the music industry.

Earlier this year, for example, high-profile artists such as Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj called for a halt to the “arrogant” use of AI tools they say steal artists’ voices.

And given the lack of understanding of AI across Africa, and the fact that AI often relies on data sources collected in Western countries, there are concerns about how African music and cultural heritage will be affected.

But there are many African artists and industry professionals who are excited about the opportunities offered by this emerging technology.

Indeed, Nkasi says that the fact that AI is starting to appear in Africa can be a blessing for the continent.

“There is a big threat, but just saying: ‘Let’s get rid of AI’ won’t work – there are too many countries and people who have invested,” he told the BBC.

“The best thing we can do is find better ways to use it.”

The 33-year-old is determined to be that pioneer and last year he also produced the continent’s first AI album Infinite Echoes.

Nkasi says that he has made a deliberate approach to using AI in his music, especially using it to create samples.

“My big drive with AI is its use, finding healthy ways to use it. With each project it was important to find something that was done that moved the needle forward,” he says.

But while Nkasi is happy to explore this new technology, others see it as a threat to African culture.

For Kenyan singer and producer Tabu Osusa, it heralds the dangers of cultural appropriation – with AI transmitting African sounds without realizing their source.

This is because the AI ​​is able to quickly create new songs by learning from existing music.

“My problem with AI is ownership. Once you take some music from Ghana or Nigeria, who does that music belong to? How can you find out where the original creators are and make sure they are respected? It’s backdoor theft to me,” Osusa told the BBC.

“Thanks to sampling methods that are not controlled by the artists, AI will make the elites of the record companies in the West make huge sums of money while leaving other artists in the African cities to live in poverty.”

These fears are reflected in a report released last year by Creatives Garage, a Kenya-based arts forum that partnered with the Mozilla Foundation to study the impact of AI on the East African nation’s creative communities.

It revealed that many Kenyan artists were concerned that AI could lead to others profiting from their art, said Bukonola Ngobi, a research coordinator at Creatives Garage.

The study also warned that AI’s ability to store data could be felt to kill traditional music culture.

One musician even questioned whether recording and storing traditional sounds for AI to reproduce could be a platform for local artists to continue learning traditional musical instruments, Ngobi said.

Osusa goes further: “Most of the time in Africa we don’t learn music, we are born with it. We live with it. It is very spiritual. African music is always alive. It is powerful. We should not take that away from us. .”

However, the report showed that for those who have access to technical equipment, AI has not only provided the development of creative music but also the opportunity to develop cheap marketing and design services.

Although this will not help budding musicians from poorer areas of Africa – it may also raise the bar to pursue a career in music, warns Ngobi.

“If you don’t have a laptop to start with or you’re an artist in an area where there’s no internet connection how are you going to participate?” he told the BBC.

For those who want to innovate, one of the problems facing Africa is the lack of data from the continent to determine the algorithms. Searches are often shaped by a Western bias that reduces the accuracy and quality of AI-generated work for African artists.

For example, when Nkasi created Mya Blue using AI, she faced problems with her image – the artist presented as a Gen Z American girl with blue hair.

“AI is very limited in how it understands and perceives my environment,” he says.

But the Nigerian singer sees this as an opportunity for human contribution: “The limitations we Africans face with AI can be a good thing.

“One can argue that at the moment, even though AI can provide a very detailed African sound, there is still room for a boy to play. So I don’t know exactly what we are really fighting for if we look at that as a problem. .”

Fellow Nigerian Emmanuel Ogala, CEO of AI startup Josplay, sees opportunities in Africa.

His company uses AI models to combine detailed metadata with intelligence to create archives of the continent’s diverse musical heritage.

“African music is complex and one of the most uneducated forms of music,” he told the BBC.

This was evident at the MTV Video Music Awards in September, when South African singer Tyla won the award for best Afrobeats song for her song Water.

During his acceptance speech he argued against the tendency of Western organizations to benefit by grouping all African musicians under the name “Afrobeats” – a genre of music most associated with Nigeria and West Africa.

“African music is very different,” he said. “It’s more than Afrobeats. I’m from South Africa. I represent pianos. I represent my culture.”

Ogala feels that AI will deal with such encounters and benefit African artists by exposing the world to the diversity of the continent’s cultures.

“Many academics we talk to have clear knowledge about the very small area of ​​African music. You have to build an African audience, realizing how fragmented our listening culture is. You can’t do that just humanly,” he said.

As AI continues to advance, there is a consensus among African musicians, producers and researchers that there needs to be better funding.

“We need investment in data infrastructure so that the opportunities it presents can be used by people,” said Ngobi.

Ogala agrees and says that raising money to develop his AI tool that preserves digital history is difficult.

“We, the founders, have been supporting this project out of our pockets because of our belief in the industry. If we lay the foundations, the industry will be more efficient than it is now.”

Added to this is the uncertainty about copyright law written for the pre-AI era that will need to be renegotiated. Copyright has become a major problem for African artists whose music is often pirated, sold and played on the continent without getting paid.

Apart from these challenges, there is growing awareness that unless the African music industry embraces new technologies, it is at risk of losing control of its talent and values.

And Nkasi’s Mya Blue has really big ambitions.

During a Q&A on his Instagram, answering a question about whether he could win a Grammy, he said: “Who knows. Like AI [artist]I don’t dream of medals, but to make hearts happy with music. But wouldn’t it be nice to see a visual artist on that stage?”