AI is never replacing beatboxers! but...
I was browsing Twitter and came across another one of those discussions about AI replacing artists. Someone replied to a person defending AI with, "You only think that because it's not your art." That got me thinking about AI and Beatbox.
Honestly, I think AI might never reach the same level of realism in beatbox that it has with music or visual art. Not because it can't recreate sounds or understand strings and combos, but because of sound placements.
If AI ever gets to that point, I think one of the biggest signs that a beatbox performance is fake would be the use of physically impossible sound placements. For example, performing a Spit Snare + Inward Tooth Whistle with the same consistency as a Spit Snare + Kiss. I'm not an AI expert, but I have the impression that AI would eventually generate combinations like these because it isn't constrained by human anatomy.
It's not impossible to make a video that sounds like those combinations are happening, but performing them live is a completely different story. And this issue only becomes more complicated once you move beyond Basics into styles like ABO ICE or Osis.
Another area where AI could become relevant is something we already saw years ago in an advertisement by Colaps for software that translated human vocalizations into beatbox sounds. Even in that demo, you could clearly see how difficult it was for the AI to recognize an Inward K Snare and a "Peh snare" (idk de name for this snare). Even though the sounds were very similar, it could only translate one of them correctly.
I started thinking about all of this and decided to write it down because I'd like to hear your opinions.
Do you think AI could ever become a real problem for people who practice beatbox?
After thinking about it, my answer would actually be yes. but not within the beatbox community itself. I think the bigger impact would be on people outside the community. Someone who doesn't understand the physical limitations behind certain sound combinations would probably just hear it as "extremely difficult beatbox," rather than realizing that some of those combinations are physically impossible for a human to perform.