GaanaGPT, the next new old hit song

They give you answers to all kinds of questions. They solve puzzles that would take experts months, if not years, to crack. They generate images from your wildest imagination with (intelligent, creative) human prompts. So, one next step would be to get AI to create music of the kind you'd like to hear, but is no longer possible - music, as if by your favourite bands or singers, but no longer in existence. Getting ChatGPT to generate a poem of a subject in the style of, say, Faiz Ahmad Faiz or Mahadevi Varma may be the dinner party rage. But we are still waiting for songs that Kishore Kumar or the Beatles could have sung pop out of the AI's studio. Imagine not just a back catalogue of iconic musicians, but a front catalogue.

Connoisseurs would, of course, scoff at the very idea. But how many times have we heard a singer sound like a favourite without being the one, and we derive pleasure from it? Kumar Sanu and others come to mind. A Mohammed Rafi-style new AI-generated song may do that impossible - bring something new to our ears while feeding our nostalgia buds at the same time. This will not just be mimicry of the sort we hear on TV talent shows or in programmes where singers sing old classics rendered in the style of the masters. AI, unlike AIR, will be a whole new old thing that can also tickle our 'What if (they still sang)?' fancy.