By Jocelle Koh

I have a pet peeve which is something of both a blessing and a curse. I can read almost any body of text and know if it has been treated by AI (If you’ve trained your AI. Well enough to get one past me good for you), and I hate when people use AI. To edit their responses to me. Be it on texts, email, or basically anything readable.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe there’s a particular intimacy that exists in the way one lends themselves to another through text, from something as simple as a text from a loved one, to an email, or an article or god forbid, a novel.

Writing is my lifeblood. It is possibly my favourite activity and mode of communication of all time. It has helped me to achieve my dreams, to express myself, to gain back agency, and to make lifelong connections, and so much more, all on my own terms.

And so, as someone who has written hundreds of thousands of words in my lifetime, I believe that everyone writes with a voice. This voice is made up of cadence, rhythm, certain sentence structures, slang. It is a signature of sorts for every human being. And the way this voice can evoke feeling in others; from texts to emails to songs, essays, poems, books particularly fascinates me.

When I’m on the receiving end of AI-filtered text, I feel handicapped. I can’t hear that person’s voice, and therefore I can’t feel this individual, with all their idiosyncrasies and trip ups and typos. Significant cues have been wiped without a trace, leaving me feeling disconnected.

And perhaps it is this lifelong obsession with ones’ voice and how it translates to feelings – which has rendered me continuously interested in telling music-related stories on Asian Pop Weekly for 17 years and counting.

In the painstaking layers of creativity, collaboration, and sound frequencies which make up music, we all find our own interpretations. Many of my own exist right here on Asian Pop Weekly. And I believe it important work, to preserve the voices of the artists that we love, and their stories and perspectives. Not so that we can interpret their works exactly how they meant it, but to have it as a point of reference. A moment marked in our shared musical history to look back on, with whatever feelings they evoke.

And I have loved every second of reviewing, listening, and treating artist’s stories with reverence and respect. Almost as if they were artefacts. In the hundreds of interviews that Asian Pop Weekly has done over the years, did you know that all our interview transcripts were transcribed by hand up until 2020? And until today, we have never fed a single line of our pieces into a.i for anything other than interview transcription purposes. Every dot, every dash, every italic, every bold – that’s all us.

I have never thought much of my stance on this at all up until this year. I guess so much of what we do has been centred around storytelling of artists, with stories, motivations, and journeys that have been so infinitely interesting that I’ve just been able to shut the clutter out until now.

But then I caught wind that Esquire Singapore had published an interview with Japanese-American actor Mackenyu, which featured the disclaimer “The following interview with produced with Claude, Copilot, and edited by humans”. And that moment, somehow changed everything for me.

While the platform leaned into the angle, explaining the scheduling issues that led to a ‘last resort’ situation of generating the actor’s answers using AI, this logic was something my editorial brain failed to comprehend; an ethical and moral dilemma that could not be untangled. Who were the gatekeepers that let this go to print? What was the point of a piece like this that was missing a core point of view?!

It just felt like a snake eating its tail, relying on AI to generate a point of view when the purpose of AI was never to generate any point of view, but to echo back our own.

Somewhere along the way, writing articles, or even responses to questions independently without the use of AI Technology has been transformed into an act of activism. And the same has happened in music.

Spanish singer-songwriter ROSALÍA’s groundbreaking, critically acclaimed ‘analog’ album LUX was one such critique against a rapidly digitising music scene with all its poor content and AI Lookalikes. The album wrangled with the concept of female mystics throughout history, featured 13 different languages and was set against the extravagant sounds of the London Symphony Orchestra. A gargantuan and highly ambitious endeavour that was an overt middle finger to AI.

But while some may have the clout in this economy to move the needle in such proactive ways, others face adapting to the AI Wave or being erased. Taiwanese label MRM Room Music was founded in 2024 by Singaporean entrepreneur Oliver Tan and Mandopop acclaimed producer Waihoong Cheong. Their more progressive acknowledgement of AI’s presence in the traditional and mature Taiwanese music market has rendered them one of the fastest growing labels on the scene. Tan shared more about their approach to AI:

“In my opinion, AI music is here to stay, it will be around for the longest time. The difference, is how do we use AI music to complement us. I think a lot of people have this misconception that AI is here to replace us, AI is here to take away our jobs etcetera, but I don’t think AI is here to replace us. Rather, AI is here to complement us and I think at MRM we do it really well.”

Using AI to quickly boost productivity has allowed this music startup to stay competitive and market-relevant with a fraction of the resources of industry juggernauts. From guiding their market analysis of top songs to quickly producing demos that can help artists effectively visualise and align on a song’s vision, the rapid growth of a new generation of artists such as Kuan Hong 宏兒 through MRM not only allow the label to run a sustainable business, but also encourage the industry to diversify and adapt in response.

But yet, at the end of the day, it all comes back down to creating something that has a singular voice, or soul. For Waihoong, who has worked with Mandopop greats such as Qiu Fengze 邱鋒澤, Boon Hui Lu 文慧如 and Nine Chen 陳零九:

“The perfect music is always about stuff that has a lot of soul. It has little, little imperfections, and imperfections make something beautiful.”

So after circling the drain from all possible angles, we come back to the ‘human’ elements of this equation. Does the voice (no matter through music, text, art) evoke feeling? Why, or why not? At the end of the day, I don’t think my stance on this debate really matters. What matters is that I have one.One that my love for music and writing helped me to find.

No matter if you are for or against A.I., we are all called to acknowledge its presence, as a landmark of our unprecedented times.

In executive coach Liz Tran’s book Agility Quotient she advocates for a new type of Quotient more adapted to our current world which is constantly in flux. From the era of IQ (intelligence quotient) to EQ (emotional quotient) to AQ (Agility Quotient), she paints a picture of a new set of skills that is imperative for younger generations to successfully navigate and find success in today’s society. With the rapid advances of A.I. Technology amongst other factors, we have entered an unprecedented age of impermanence where it is no longer just about the value you were honed to create for years at a time – but also about how you redefine and reshape it quickly and effectively to support your next move.

So now – how will you move?