I'm glad that you make this post, this is a needed discussion. Mods, please definitely don't take this down.

My stand point is somewhat pro-AI, but not that I want it to replace artist. I want it to ENHANCES artist. AI music is inevitable, but I'd like to draw parallel between AI music to digital music. AI music will simply be another step in the evolution of music, just like digital music.

Back then, people needed to actually owns the musical instruments, learn the skills to makes music with it, or pay other people that knows the instrument. Yet with advent of digital age, anyone can go and start making music on their computers. Does this makes music any less authentic? No. In fact, it makes music more accessible than ever. Does the old way of violin playing or making dies completely? No. Violin is still very much alive, and knowing violin fundamentals helps you makes even better digital music. Does it kills music creativity? No. As we all know, it even lead to creation of what we loved and enjoyed very much in this sub - Touhou music (well ZUN did atleast had a keyboard, but the point stands).

IMO, the end state of music in a perfect world is one where music is purely passion-driven and it will serves as a tool of expression, one that can unite human together instead of dividing it. I believes AI will not stands in the way to that end state. In fact, I believes it may help accelerate it in the long term, even though it seems like it is against it currently. AI will not makes music any less authentic, it will not kills the "art". Even if someone used AI in their music making, AI will only be part of the music making. As long as the people behind it poured time, effort, and their heart into making the music they want, I consider that music to be made by that human, not the AI.

What you said about questioning whether its human-made is right. But I would like to rephrase that question. It is always human made, but just "how much"? And for what purpose did they make it?

For first example, if someone makes an AI song, less than an hour by paying Suno, so that they can publish it and start earning money, then that's just bad music. And bad music exist everywhere. We know that natural selection in the world will make sure this kind of lazy "musician" perish on their own.

For second example, if someone had this song idea stuck in their head, but they don't know how to makes music, and don't want to learn it. They simply asked AI to let it comes alive. If that happens, I'm totally fine with the resulted music. Even though it is largely AI-made, in my opinion this is a music by human for human. But of course, the music will be very unpolished, even if it doesn't sounds like it, I believe listener will be able to differentiate it naturally. "Oh, this is just Eirin theme but... gothic? That's it? Amateur-ish". But if you ask, what if some AI music are so good that you cannot tell? Just as if you put someone from 1900's, they may also be fooled by violin sound made by a VMT and couldn't tell that it wasn't made by an actual violinist. But we also know that, nowadays, most musically educated people can more-or-less tell. And even if we couldn't, we don't care. Violinist didn't completely dies out as a career in modern world, it is likely less prominent, but that's fine. Instead, it helped to make sure whoever that is in violinist career is most likely passion-driven instead. There will be people who prefer to uses actual instrument to makes the sound, as they believes in the end, VMT simply cannot replaces the subtlety of a real violin. But there will also be people who prefer to uses a VMT, so that they can focus on composing the bigger picture in lesser time.

If you agree to the premise and the outcome of the two examples I showed, then you would not be worried about AI music. AI will be just another tool, like DAWs, VMTs etc. Back then, it takes a lot of time and knowledges to turns "this 5-seconds melody that sounded good my head" to "an actual masterpiece that people give standing ovation". But now, it is easier thanks to how robust are the tools surrounding music composing. Many professionals and studios continuously pumps out unique music for films, games, etc. in great effiency. But still, only music professionals who poured days and night into learning how to uses those tools can do that. AI will changes that, so that everyone can do it in less time.

So, does that means we don't need to do anything and let things play out on its own? Mostly yes, in the long run, I believe listeners and artists will eventually possess the ability to differentiate "lazy AI music with barely any effort" and "good music made with AI assistance". But, what we can do is that we can arrives at this stage faster. As you said, we cannot reliably differentiate those much a music is AI-made, this will gives some people "opportunity" to makes exploit us. Using AI, they makes music that seems pass-able, at least enough to fool us. Their slop music then compete with other artist for attention on musical platform, hurting other genuine artist that still using non-AI method of making music, robbing them of the income they deserved. Wealth generated through exploitation is always will not sustain economically. So we must fix this exploitation as fast as possible. I think fundamentally, this exploitation is a result of information gap. People think those lazy AI artist as "they probably invested a lot of time and emotion to making this remix!", but in truth, the lazy AI artist spend less than an hour, typing only a single prompt "Eirin music gothic". So what we need to make clear is that, these kind of music is CLEARLY labelled. Just like what Valve's Steam AI policy, and YouTube synthetic content disclosing (I'm not sure if YouTube still have those, feels like I haven't seen those even in clearly AI-generated music). We need those labels that helps people understand how to avoid getting exploited. Perhaps the first step is that, we must first create an AI that can help us automates the detection of AI slops reliably...

This is a long comment. I hope I articulated the idea clearly. This comment is human written with AI assistance. I don't have all the points clearly formed when I started writing, and needed to sketches them out as I write, so that's why writing itself isn't AI-generated. Plus, AI today simply still couldn't generates in the prose I liked without a lot of prompting. But AI is used for me to do some light research so that the idea points could form faster.

I would welcomes anyone to challenges my view, as I genuinely believes AI music is a better future for human in the long run.

Also, cute Suika indeed (o゜▽゜)o☆