AI takeover the plugin industry
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@David-Healey said in AI takeover the plugin industry:
@SampleScience said in AI takeover the plugin industry:
a quality audio plugin
How do you know the quality if you can't read/understand the code?
Because it gives the sound and results users want. And it's also stable; bug fixes can be provided by AI now. I'm the first to be shocked and surprised by this! I didn't see it coming.
Now, what I see is a new phenomenon: YouTubers who create their own plugins and give them away or sell them, effectively bypassing plugin developers in the process.
Worse, if they want to, they can copy a cool plugin concept that they received in their email inbox, clone it using AI, and sell it to their audience without anyone between them and their customer base.
Business-wise, it makes much more sense for them. For developers, it's a new nightmare.
My income is now slashed by 50%, and my traffic is a third of what it used to be. Even if I release a quality freebie, it doesn't mean anything anymore. It has much less impact than it used to.
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@dannytaurus Love your work by the way. You did amazing things with Maize Sampler.
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@SampleScience
I don't know how to put it, I just feel lost. AI seems to have invaded every industry. In my country, tens of millions, or even more, have lost their jobs in recent years. Then, they all stayed at home, using AI to make videos, write code, and build websites or apps to earn money. Ultimately, all that money went to the giant companies because only they provided the platform, servers, domain names, and other resources. -
@SampleScience You were the person who inspired me to start!
I've used your plugins from way back. I built my first Maize plugin around 2016 but didn't follow up on it.
Then I saw you included in a Gumroad article about creators who had made over $100,000 selling digital products on the platform. That really inspired me to start properly with plugins and now Meat Beats has been my living for 3 years now.
I'm very concerned about the future. I don't think AI is going away.
HISE dev latest / herdr + Claude Code / Figma + Affinity
Meat Beats: https://meatbeats.com
Klippr Video: https://klippr.video -
@dannytaurus said in AI takeover the plugin industry:
@SampleScience You were the person who inspired me to start!
I've used your plugins from way back. I built my first Maize plugin around 2016 but didn't follow up on it.
Then I saw you included in a Gumroad article about creators who had made over $100,000 selling digital products on the platform. That really inspired me to start properly with plugins and now Meat Beats has been my living for 3 years now.
I'm very concerned about the future. I don't think AI is going away.
That's so cool to hear! It made my day!
I'm also very concerned about the future because of the disruption caused by AI pretty much everywhere. It's changing the way people find my business, how they learn about updates and new releases.
On the plus side, I've never had better feedback from my customers and after 10+ years I have a loyal following, but for how long?
That's the question!
Personally, I'm currently moving from software to reviewing hardware under a new brand name. I want to stay in that industry for as long as possible as I don't see myself doing anything else.
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Davids right, it's more than a plugin, its the entire user experience. People still like interacting with people, they just don't care how the plugin came together, especially if it works great and solves the problem.
I started off nearly 15 years ago creating music, sample packs, midi packs, construction kits, etc.
I certainly wouldn't consider myself a professional coder, hense why I came to HISE years ago. It was a way, with limited coding experience, to expand my brand.
AI has done that x10.
My opinion is adapt and move forward, not retreat. I don't think AI is going anywhere. Praying for its downfall wouldn't be a hill I'd be willing to die on.
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What i've noticed about using AI is that some people love it and some people hate it. In the live music scene specifically, everyone is tired of seeing ai flyers and are starting to revert back to more primitive techniques to attract people. I feel the same sentiment is on its way with software although I dont know enough to call what that looks like exactly. I predicted that DAWs would include more vst creation options when I first found HISE because if I was the creator of a DAW....why not? I also think the 'why not' in everyones head has been the fuel to a lot of slop and also a bunch of useful niche applications so again, it just goes both ways. I think we'll always be divided in opinions. Ai is here to stay and I just think its a matter of time before things balance out and the HYPE dies down and we're left with the left and right of software politics.
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@SampleScience In my opinion, I think it's a mistake to believe that AI is the only major technological revolution we've ever experienced. Since the invention of the steam engine, there have been countless technological advances: the emergence of computing, the internet, Google... And I get the feeling that there's always been the same sense of chaos surrounding these changes, with concerns about being replaced, losing jobs, or seeing the value of one's work diminish.
People who went through these changes, for example by losing their jobs, simply had to adapt, retrain, learn new skills, and move forward.
Years ago, if you wanted to record a track, you had no choice but to go to a recording studio. When the first DAW software started appearing, anyone could install Cubase on their home computer and record music from home. Did recording studios disappear? At least in my city, they didn't. In fact, there seem to be even more of them now. They've simply become more specialised or started offering additional services.
In my own case, AI has actually helped me increase my income over the past two years. It saves me a lot of time and money.
I think that while it's true that anyone can now create a plugin in an afternoon, not everyone has the perseverance to build an entire brand, develop its identity, handle promotion and marketing, and so on. Ultimately, I think that's what builds trust with potential customers.
And I don't know if anyone else feels the same way, but for quite some time now, whenever I come across content that's obviously AI-generated, I automatically see it as less valuable.
To me, it's like fast food. You can go to McDonald's, but when you want a proper meal, you go to a good restaurant.
That's just my opinion.
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@lijas90 Time. This the the one & you've hit it on the nose.
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With regard to the 'worth' of plugins created using AI as a tool to help with coding... i think a large part of it is to do with the intention behind the plugin by the creator/developer, whether they have previous coding knowledge or not.
For example, if it's just to make a quick buck, then the creator will probably spend as little amount of time as possible testing, honing, redoing, versioning, iterating, bug searching and fixing, optimising, code signing etc etc, and certainly not spend any time supporting, updating, bug fixing etc. after release. Which would make the plugin very questionable to say the least.
I've been using AI as a tool to help with coding a plugin over the last 2 and a half years, mostly boilerplate UI stuff, but also a couple of custom c++ nodes. I have had no previous experience with script coding really, only visual node based coding, but i've been producing music over the last 20 something years, and my education has been in music production, acoustics and a small amount of DSP, so i know how plugins should behave and what is generally required of them in this day and age.
So I'm very meticulous with how i use AI, for example, although I dont always understand the literal code, I do understand what it should ideally do in the realm of the plugin at that juncture, and i test and retest as many times as it takes until it works as flawlessly as possible, not only to my eyes and ears, but also to proper published benchmarks, theories, equations and math, as far as i can. I also plan to have the code reviewed by a professional plugin coder once i feel it is finished. I often audit the script for security issues, cpu usage, optimisation and whether AI has per verbatim used open source blocks of code (there are third party tools for this) and other such issues.
I never ask AI to help with more than one thing at a time, for example, "make me an audio plugin that does x, y and z, make it cpu friendly, give it this ui and that ux etc" , and the one thing at a time that is worked on is always thought out as much as possible by myself beforehand, and split into many smaller parts so it's easier to get right and the management and maintainability of the code is easier.
I also have a vision for my newly created company that includes long term support, proper codesigning and packaging and full testing of the plugins, both the actual binaries and via code reviews by a professional coder. Plus demo's of the plugin so potential users can decide for themselves if the plugin is worth their time and money.
I started because I needed various plugins to help with mundane tasks in production, found HISE and enjoyed building my own plugins, (at first without using AI at all). But now I truly believe that the plugins i have lined up will be genuinely useful, fun to use, sometimes educational, sometimes tongue in cheek, and sometimes quite niche or intriguing. And I'd like to be in it for the long haul, being a solo plugin dev making useful plugins and offering full post release support.
I understand people's objections to plugins built with the help of AI, especially if the creator doesn't have much, or any script coding or plugin development experience. But I do believe that the intentions of the developer, how they use AI, and whether they spend the time to check their plugin and the code in various ways are of importance. Hopefully my plugins will be useful, enjoyable to use and most importantly safe and secure, if not, I'll do whatever is necessary for them to be so.
