7 Thoughts on AI in Music (2026)

Since the invention of AI, opinions on its application as a tool for music creation seem  to be split into two camps. One side sees it as an unprecedented new step in the availability of music creation for untrained music appreciators. The other sees it as an attack on the nature of human creativity itself. See the CEO of SUNO AI, a generative AI company solely designed to create music, express his thoughts on music creation.

"It’s not really enjoyable to make music now… it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of time they spend making music.” - MIkey Shulman

I’m sure you’ve seen this clip before as this quote was met with backlash from folks all across th e internet, musicians and otherwise, as the sentiment seems to address a general disdain for a phenomenon that for eons we recognized as being a primary facet of what it means to be a human being. As a musician myself, I am offended at how someone could miss the point this hard and in such a spectacular manner. It brings to mind the Max Frisch quote “Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Despite my fears around this topic, I’ve learned time and time again as a Zoomer what happens when some existential threat infects the news cycle, which then infects the internet, which then infects the general discourse around anything, which then infects how everyone thinks and feels about themselves and each other. This is not to suggest that AI is simply a non issue and we are all overreacting, all I am saying is that you can be both concerned for the future while simultaneously analyzing every perspective that might lead us to that doom we so dread. In the spirit of devil’s advocacy, I'd like to consider some aspects of the use of AI in music without judgement or fear of a terminator-esque future, and simply understand the lineage of what got us here to potentially understand where we might be headed, as well as give some personal takes.

1. Is There a Place for AI in Music?

Put away your images of lead poisoned boomers and ipad babies mindlessly consuming ai generated brain rot slop and consider the fact that perhaps this technology may not be inherently evil but rather has just fallen into the wrong hands. We are currently living in a goldrush of every single industry on earth figuring out how they can harness the power of this technology faster than their competitors and, of course, the result is going to be great for business and shitty for the consumer. Imagine an anarchist society of artists with AI technology but no market incentives or greed to influence their art. Would there be a place for AI as a tool for music in that society? Maybe one day we will find out, but for now, this society has plenty of industry-established, legend-status artists who see a use for AI in their work.

On Lil Wayne’s last album The Carter VI, the first proper song features a prominent AI “soul” track, with lyrics referencing young money as well as the name of the song “Welcome to the Carter”. This track eventually gets chopped and flipped into a beat made by ONHEL, a human producer. Wayne’s lyrics are rapped entirely by the real Lil Wayne and I find it unlikely that ai was used at all in the process of recording the vocals or writing the lyrics, but of course nowadays it’s hard to tell. This is not strictly “AI Music” (as in music that is entirely AI generated) as the majority of what we are hearing is still classic human workflow and creativity. Sampling is not new and is an artform in its own right, so sampling a song generated by AI is not a far cry from the tradition. Metro Boomin did a similar thing on his viral BBL Drizzy track. Despite using the same technique, The Carter VI came and went out of public consideration rather quickly, while BBL Drizzy went quite viral. Of course, this has to do primarily with itsit’s context within the highly publicized Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar beef. It also probably has to do with Metro Boomin being far closer to (if not still in) his commercial prime than Lil Wayne is. Despite this, I'd argue that there is an artistic intention factor at play here as well. Lil Wayne unabashedly opens his album with 20 uninterrupted seconds of AI generated material, as if to say, “I am pro AI in music; in fact, I think it’s great” with utter sincerity. Metro Boomin is just trolling. I feel that I do not need to explain why suggesting that Drake has a Brazilian butt lift is funny, but I do want to highlight that that humor is what gives Metro Boomin a pass here. Both of these artists are at points in their careers where they have nothing more to prove to anyone, and with that comes artistic freedom, but with that artistic freedom comes a greater chance for artistic risk. Lil Wayne knows he’s a legitimate goat candidate, but with his own self-perceived genius, he bought into AI being the “new hot thing” in Hip Hop. As if AI was the new trap beat. His attempt feels just like another opportunist wanting to cash in on this new frontier, and less like a genuine artistic expression. Also, putting this in on album named “The Carter VI” is going to immediately draw comparisons to the all time classics of the same name; He was setting himself up for failure. Metro Boomin, on the other hand, released his track as an instrumental beat that served essentially as an accessory to Kendrick's lyrical onslaught of Drake in 2024. It was always meant to just be “bonus material.” It was light, funny, not meant to be taken very seriously, and so no one did. Even Drake himself used the beat on his Sexyy Red feature, acknowledging the inherent humor of it. 

It’s also important to note that Lil Wayne’s use of AI was generated explicitly for his album, while Metro Boomin’s was not. The original BBL Drizzy sample origin had already existed on the internet prior, making Metro Boomin’s sample flip more authentic to sampling’s roots.

All this to say, the artistic intention of BBL Drizzy was met, and part of that process incorporated the use of AI. Therefore, AI was successfully used to make “good music.” Case closed…

Obviously this is facetious. Complimenting BBL Drizzy for being a good song is like complimenting a Big Mac for being a great hamburger. It is what it is. If your musical goals are to make a novelty track good for a laugh or two, then perhaps that’s when AI is useful. This is what the previously mentioned SUNO AI gets used for the most from what I can tell anyway. It may seem extremely generous of me to even consider BBL Drizzy “art”, but I am, even if it’s a more unserious form of it. And so, the successful use of AI in this “art” leads me, the devil’s advocate, to believe that there may be more successful uses of it in the future. What those uses will be, I do not know. Someone might know right now, but is currently being smothered by the heaps of ai excrement that are being algorithmically shoveled onto us each day. Regardless, I count this as one successful use of AI within music, artistically speaking, and because it happened once I  think it’s likely to happen again and probably has happened since, which answers my initial question: Is there a place for AI in music? Yes, if you consider BBL Drizzy to be real music.

2. The Evolution of Home Recording

Like it or not, the SUNO CEO is successfully solving one “problem” through his technology, and that is continuing to bridge the gap between music and musicians. I cannot help but feel as though this is all not very surprising. Unchecked technological advancement has been the name of the game since the industrial revolution, and the ease of manufacturing anything has steadily been ramping up since, music being no exception. 

Consider how, for example, a Baroque composer would have had to work in order to have his music heard. First and foremost, the luck of being born a financially well-off, connected, white man in Europe is a lottery pull in of itself, but now consider having to be born with an exceptional gift for music and receive a proper education. And that’s all simply the prerequisite necessary for being able to write the music in the first place. To actually hear it as it was intended to be heard, first you must write it all out by hand, gather the musicians to play it, perhaps rehearse, and barring any mistakes made by the performers during the performance, only then, in a live context, could your music ever be actually experienced the way it was intended. 

Now compare that to the early 1900’s. A great deal of privilege was still required to be able to even have the opportunity to write and have large scale pieces performed, but now they could be recorded. If you wanted to hear your music, you could literally capture the moment into a physical medium which could be played back atd nauseum, thus removing the fleeting nature of all music before it. 

Now consider an innovator like Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, recording different elements of one piece at different times, in different studios, and even recording right at home. Then how about Elliott Smith in the 90s, recor ding whole albums (albeit stripped down ones) with a 4 track recorder. The technology made it possible for the intimate nature of these songs to be captured and recorded. Now take Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest, who released 4 albums in a year by recording into his computer and recording vocals in his car. The history of music creation as we know it has been leading to making the recording and playback of compositions more and more streamlined. AI seems like a pinnacle. It is the first time that the playback of the music we want to hear has become so fast that it bypasses the human mind altogether. We simply have to vaguely describe the kind of music we want to hear with some details about lyrics and style, and without having to elaborate on those ideas or realize them in any meaningful way; and Boom, they exist. 

Many believe this is not a “problem” that needed to be solved. After all, the examples I listed do have a certain range in quality. Elliott Smith’s 4 track 90s output may be simple in their arrangements, but that doesn’t account for The excellent songwriting, vocals, lyrics, and guitar performances. As for the first couple Car Seat Headrest albums, they are essentially a collection of stream of consciousness lofi experiments. Their raw creativity is alluring, however they are clearly a portrait of an artist in their infancy, and at times are frankly unlistenable. Yet, Despite the harsh walls of noise, goofy electronic beats, and Will Toledo screaming into the microphone of a 2010 macbook, these records are still preferable to the empty vapidness that is AI Generated music. 

AI Music exists purely to be finished. This is the strongest case I have against AI in music being art at all. No art can truly ever be finished. Anyone who has tried to create an album or other long form piece can attest to this. At some point, you need to stop tweaking it and just walk away. SUNO AI is done as soon as you press the button. It exists to be complete and consumable, while real art is never complete, and needs no audience in order to legitimize its label as art. 

As music technology has improved, it has helped musicians be able to finish their art faster than they may have previously. However, now a line has been crossed. The technology is capable of finishing the project for you, which to me and many others, defeats the whole purpose of the endeavor. Perhaps the struggle of creating the art is part of what makes it so special in the first place, Mikey.

3. The Pop Music Machine

AI is still young and although many people are able to discern when they are listening to an AI generated track, AI generated musical projects and songs are still racking up heavy streams on Spotify and other streaming platforms. Personally, I do not buy into the 1,000,000+ monthly listeners held by the AI band The Velvet Sundown. I do partially buy into the Dead Internet Theory However, at least on some scale, so I’m gonna call BS and say that these are artificial numbers inflated by bots. I’ve not heard of a single person in the real world actually expressing any affinity for this band whatsoever, and anyone I know who has actually heard of them just interprets their perceived success as a sign of the end times. The filling of “vibe” playlists with AI background music is disturbing, and I do know people in the real world who listen to those and are totally being taken for a fool by the greedy fuck that is Spotify. 

Ultimately, music made for mass consumption off of an assembly line is nothing new. Look at Motown for instance. The purpose of the label was to make danceable, singable, consumable records for a wide audience as fast as possible. It’s no coincidence that Motown is from Detroit, home of Ford Motors, whose leader Henry Ford is often seen as the face of 20th Century American Capitalism itself. The spirit of the assembly line was in the air in Michigan in the 60s, no doubt having an influence on the music produced there. There are plenty of classic Motown records which have stood the test of time. Despite the capitalist intentions of the label, there were still a lot of talented writers and musicians behind the product, and it shows. Still, there remains a certain, unchanging Motown formula. Like an early form of creating content geared around maximizing output by the algorithm, Motown would create explicitly FOR an audience. Certain lyrics, certain chords, certain timbres, certain song structures, certain lengths, these are all things that were distinct about the Motown sound and could not be changed for risk of alienating buyers. In 1971, Marvin Gaye received much pushback from executives for his single “What’s Going On” which had lyrics about police brutality, the war in Vietnam, protests etc. The label saw it as changing the recipe to Coca-Cola. They thought the people wanted to hear songs about love and dancing and whatnot. Acknowledging the very dim and frightening circumstances of life in the late 60s and early 70s would just serve to sadden consumers and, more importantly, have them not buy any records. Of course, What’s Going On became an instant classic, and remains both incredibly popular as well as highly regarded critically. 

Motown’s reliance on formulas may have worked then, but most of the relevancy of these songs have faded with time, leaving a select few that withstood. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that many of the songs of that time that have survived did so because of the artist's name attached to it, and what they went on to do after breaking the formula later in their careers. Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Little Stevie Wonder, to name a few. Not to suggest that Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, For Once in My Life, and I Want You Back are not great songs, but I do question their popularity today had each respective artist not grown so far out of the mold in their own right later on in their respective careers.

Despite this, music industry executives are still risk averse. If you release 10 cheaply and quickly recorded songs all using the formula and one of them becomes a major hit, you receive a return on your investment. Recording any Gunna song is way easier and more sure for success than recording a “Good Vibrations.” AI, which is solely designed to think formulically, is the wet dream of these executives. Never again will they need to argue with Marvin Gaye, who wants his music to be politically and socially conscious at the risk of scaring away customers. Now they can generate the product themselves, without pesky creativity getting in the way.

4. A New Extremity

Any music that is able to push the envelope and tests the parameters of genre, style or technique is music that deeply interests me. I call this “extreme music” . I will likely make a standalone video about this phenomenon one day, but I must bring it up here first.The easiest example I can think of when discussing “Extreme music” is metal music.

In 1970 Black Sabbath released their debut studio album “Black Sabbath.” It had a blues rock sound not too unlike other records of the era, but was exceptionally more heavy and dark than their contemporaries. This style of heavy blues was retrospectively labeled a different genre altogether, and thus “heavy metal” was born. Black Sabbath took Rock and Blues, and toned up a few of the elements to such a degree that it demanded reclassification. This would become a trend within Metal Music. Black Sabbath turned up the darkness, The New Wave of British Heavy Metal turned it up some more, then Thrash Metal, Black Metal, Death Metal, Grindcore etc. It was all a glorious arms race of what band could play faster, have more distortion, be more brutal. I will get more into Metal music at a later date, but “how does this relate to AI?” You’re probably wondering.

When I hear AI music, it makes me feel something extreme. At risk of sounding like an elitist, some Non AI pop music of the past sometimes evoked a feeling within me of disgust and shock, at just how creatively bankrupt and shameless some artists could be, and how we as a society could allow “art” so disingenuous and clearly manipulative of both algorithms and young minds to get so popular. This feeling is increased tenfold when listening to AI music, with a dose of dread dashed in there.

I do not particularly like this feeling, but in a way, I am astonished at how music could evoke something so strong within me. How it could take a familiar style and my feelings associated with that style, and exacerbate it so much.

I see most AI music as, essentially, extreme pop music. It is at a higher echelon of bankrupted creativity and hyperformula than anything to exist before it. Does it deserve props or scorn for that? I am honestly not sure.

5. Hyperconformity in a Self-Conscious Generation

By now, most of the general population understands how AI functions on a basic level. It gets trained using huge swaths of data from the internet that it processes at lightning speeds to inform its decisions. AI cannot actually come up with new things or think like we can. It can simply rearrange things that already exist to create the illusion of a thinking creative being. This is why so much AI music sounds exactly like specific songs that were already written by humans. The human work is stolen by an AI company and fed to the machine which spits out a mangled version of it. Therefore, nothing truly new can actually be created using AI, at least stylistically speaking. The machine cannot invent new genres or pave a new aesthetic path for us to go down. That will always remain human. If all of humanity just vanished today, but AI was left to endlessly create song after song after song after song, there would be no stylistic difference at any point on the timeline.  That being said, Generative AI music was never intended to create truly new or innovative music. It was made to cater to the status-quo. 

I am concerned about the potential that AI art has for a generation as self conscious as ours. (Assuming you are Gen Z if you are watching this, cool if you’re not though). I don’t need to explain specifically how social media and current common lifestyles, at least here in America, can lead to isolation, depression, and insecurity, but I should mention that this lack of self assuredness symptomatic of these greater societal issues leads folks to take less risks socially, personally, and artistically. It keeps people locked in place. Afraid to stray too far from normalcy for fear of being dogpiled or outcast. It is here that AI music, a soup of the most mainstream ingredients coddled together for easy consumption, might appeal to a young person unsure of who they are, and perhaps remove their incentive to search for something more. Furthermore, a young Creative interested in art but lacking confidence in their ability to make it, or fearing how people may receive it, could potentially rely on the easiness and safeness of AI music to kill both these birds with one stone. 

Do I really believe this to be happening on a wide scale? No. Do I think it will happen? Also no, but I dislike any sort of system that incentivizes complacency in expression. There is a reason most of the AI music I hear is pop or country. The status quo of today is what’s going in, and so that is what will come out. I just hope that the general population going forward will have higher standards for the art they will consume than the content they now consume.

6. Fascist Propaganda Machine

AI generated content of any kind is a fascists dream. Endless images at no expense whatsoever, immediately mass produced and beamed straight in front of the eyes and ears of the masses addicted to the very thing serving it to them. Bleak, I know. This is the reality of AI, and music plays a part in it. Donald Trump tweets an AI generated video every few weeks. The Daily Wire uses AI music as the theme song in their shitty animated sitcom thing. We Are Charlie Kirk has taken the whole internet by storm, and I believe that it was initially an unironic attempt to appeal to the emotions of conservatives mourning Charlie Kirk and was not intended for Liberals to laugh at it in an ironic way. Fortunately, there are many many people who can see right through the slop. In the case of We Are Charlie Kirk, I believe the popularity of that meme is coming from the masses seeing propaganda so outrageous they can’t help but make fun of it. I never thought I’d see the day where I found the popularity of an AI-generated song mourning the death of a far right grifter to be endearing, but here we are. 

AI’s role in the current fascist takeover of the American government may have something to do with my disdain for the technology. The right wing embrace of AI is on brand for the corporation worshiping, artistically bankrupt, wine moms and wrap-around-sunglasses-dads who unironically hang “Live Laugh Love” up in their houses and set up nativity scenes during Christmas. The government and their collaborators use AI as a tool to manipulate the most media illiterate Americans into acting directly against their own best interest. Nobody who creates an AI Jesus video on facebook or an AI X video of trump dropping feces on protestors has any respect for anyone consuming that content. This is the worst use of this technology in my opinion, and I fear it may be exactly what it was designed for.

7. You don’t own shit/Who is AI for?

I’m sure you are all painfully aware that many of the services we use day to day no longer charge a one time fee to allow us to own whatever it is we purchased, instead opting for a subscription plan to keep charging on a weekly or monthly basis in order to increase their profits. There are countless videos about this topic online, but this slow theft of property and rights applies to so much more than Hulu adding ads. As previously stated, since the inception of any sort of music industry, a throughline has existed of how to expedite the music making process. This is only half the truth. Truly, the only goal of music industry executives is the same as any big business monkey, and that is to make the most money possible. Unfortunately for them, the poor musicians and artists want a cut too. AI may just be their solution. No human artist means less people to pay, Hooray! 

But, I’m referring to something even more sinister.

Under US law, copyright protects original works of authorship as soon as the author fixes the work to a tangible medium. This includes photos, books, paintings, and of course, music, just to name a few. This copyright provides exclusive rights to the creators of these works. Whether or not training AI models on preexisting music is copyright infringement is still a legally unresolved issue, but that hasn’t stopped companies from doing it of course.

 The precedent has been set; any company past a certain threshold of size and influence can take whatever they want from the people, including their art, without their permission. 

I know that at the beginning of this whole video I stated explicitly that I do not wish to fearmonger. Take this with a grain of salt, as with all the other thoughts in this video. It is simply a perspective we need to consider and be prepared for. Who is AI really for? Is it really for you to do your AP Lang homework? For your safety? So Chat GPT can tell you how to change a lightbulb? Or is it for the most influential and powerful class of people who have shown their absolute disdain and hatred for their employees to finally get rid of them? You know, The ones who bust unions, deny bathroom breaks, don’t pay a living wage. I wanted to focus primarily on AI music today, but I must put that in the larger context of the world in which we currently live. Call me a Luddite if you will, but just the attempt to automate the entire economy should let you know the priorities of the people who shoot themselves up into space while you bust your ass working for them. 

Conclusion

Is AI a tool of the machine? Or Can the people figure out how to use it to their advantage as well? As of now, the only thing this proposedly groundbreaking, world changing, society saving tool has truly given me as a musician and young man, is a good laugh at BBL Drizzy some dank Charlie Kirk memes, as well as a whole lot of anxiety.