A conversation with Sherrin Varghese on the future of artificial intelligence evokes a mixed bag of emotions: for the most part, he’s optimistic, often, he’s enthusiastically enraged; and sometimes, he’s willing to entertain a contradictory opinion. Varghese is certain that, despite all the pushback it faces, the evolution of AI is imminent, and, he says, beneficial for music composers.  

Often he finds himself employing Chat GPT to “sweeten” sentences to “avoid ruffling any feathers” when a payment fails to come through, or enhance his responses when invited to participate in a written interview. “I don’t think it is overwhelming. It is growing at a healthy pace. A few years ago, when musicians had to lay down a track, they had to [invite players]  in the room to [record] an acoustic or an electronic segment, which was then arranged, and  produced in an organic fashion. Now that has become quite mechanical. We needed to have a bunch of musicians who would arrive on time and play together. Now, you can record [sounds individually] using a ready pack of loops and have the ensemble that you require,” says the musician, who participated in a discussion on the subject as part of his association with the Indian Performing Rights Society. “So, it’s markedly different from needing to call 24 musicians to conduct six sessions and work on the song over a period of a month. Now, I can just tell an interface to play melancholic, light music with a tempo of 69, and it will cough something up.”