Millions and counting
A video of two musicians is generating millions of views on YouTube. A guitarist and a drummer clad in what can only be described as polka-dot space suits jam out for around 28 minutes. Together, they produce some of the strangest, most chaotic, but somehow perfect music that many people have heard in a long long time, if not ever.
That KEXP video of French duo Angine de Poitrine, which at the time of writing has 7.7 million views, has opened a new dialogue about artificial intelligence (AI) and the impact it might have on creativity. It’s a conversation that bleeds from the world of music into slot design, as well as any other creative industry.
How many cowboy, Ancient Egypt, oriental, or fruit-based slots are there in existence?
We now live in a world in which a slot designer can simply type a series of key words into AI and produce the visuals, features, and music for an exciting new game – that’s within an industry that has already regurgitated the same ideas for years. How many cowboy, Ancient Egypt, oriental, or fruit-based slots are there in existence?… too many to count.
Many experts over the past few years have expressed their view that AI will dim creativity even further, not just in the slot space, but in music, art, marketing, even writing. Well, now a small group of music fans believe Angine de Poitrine are the loud, clear, polka-dotted signal that in fact, the exact opposite could be true.
Triangular space music
It truly felt like all hope was lost for the music industry.
Lyria 3 is an AI music generation model from Google DeepMind. Released in February, it essentially makes AI-generated music mainstream. Just by providing a few prompts and clicking a button, any Tom, Dick, or Harry can now make tracks that sound like they are produced in a world-class studio with the best musicians in the business.
turning that drawn out process of cannibalization into an instant formula
Lyria 3 appeared to be the death knoll for a music industry already inundated with copies of copies of copies. Much like a slots industry awash with near-identical games, the music industry is swamped with millions of artists trying to replicate the sound of their forbearers, destined to never produce anything truly unique. Lyria 3 essentially cuts out the middle man, turning that drawn out process of cannibalization into an instant formula. X + Y = Huge Pop Hit.
Then, in stepped Angine de Poitrine like a beacon of hope. They sound like nothing we have ever heard before, and that’s because they are breaking the rules of music. They use strange time signatures and a microtonal scale with twice as many notes, adding new ones that are halfway between the standard notes we hear all the time. A loop pedal also allows them to create complex arrangements, all controlled with the lead guitarist’s toes, and their clinical delivery is a sight and sound to behold:
That’s not to mention their bizarre style, which many have likened to Dadaism, an art movement in the early 20th century that rejected traditional art and logic. This spawned Surrealism in the 1920s, in which artists created bizarre dreamlike art with the intention of expressing the unconscious mind. Basically, artists didn’t just start thinking outside the box, they threw the box away and drew a circle instead.
From Dadaism to AI
So, the question is, how on earth does all this relate to AI? Well, the reason for Dadaism in the 20th century explains this.
Many experts believe Dadaism came about partly as a response to the evolution of the camera. In 1888, George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera, essentially making photography accessible to the public. Suddenly, anyone could take a picture of a mountain, a tree, or even a person. They could hold a perfect depiction of anything in the palm of their hand.
they began to break the rules, creating illogical art
Realistic paintings, in which artists depicted these landscapes, objects, or people in the most accurate way possible, lost a lot of their significance. Suddenly, artists were faced with a dilemma, when a camera can produce the exact thing that I can, how do I create something of value? So they began to break the rules, creating illogical art that captured the world in the abstract – something that no camera could ever replicate.
In essence, this is Angine de Poitrine. AI cannot invent new ideas, it can only draw from what has come before. Faced with the terror of a world of soulless AI music, the French duo have decided to create a sound that AI could never create, simply because it has never existed. In a sense, AI has forced them to throw the box out, much like the Dadaists of the 20th century.
A new world of design
If we adopt this optimistic outlook on AI and it’s positive impact on creativity, then the future could look bright for slots and their players.
Wanted Dead or a Wild by Hacksaw Gaming is one of the most popular slots of the past five years. Released in 2021, it has contributed to some of the biggest wins for slot streamers, catapulting the game to fame and driving its popularity across the world. It’s fair to say the game isn’t exactly unique though, adopting a classic cowboy theme that has been duplicated countless times.
the two games look pretty much identical
Hacksaw Gaming released Duel at Dawn in November of 2024. On the surface, the two games look pretty much identical. If you had provided AI with Wanted Dead or a Wild and told it to come up with a similar game that could generate the same success, Duel at Dawn wouldn’t be far off the end result. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” seems to have been the memo.
But on the other side, there are slots providers pushing the boundaries. Nolimit City is the leader in this area, releasing unique slots with tongue-in-cheek themes such as Seamen and the upcoming Golden Shower. In their top slots list on their website, there is not a single Ancient Egyptian in sight, and while they do offer a couple of cowboy titles, they do so with a morbid twist, in Tombstone R.I.P.
Ultimately, new online slots must prove their worth more than ever before in an overcrowded space. Much like the music of Angine de Poitrine, Nolimit slots are breaking the mold, offering something that even AI couldn’t come up with. As the market saturates further and AI continues to spread its roots in every industry, this kind of thinking is more important than ever – necessity is the mother of invention after all.
