There’s a conversation happening around AI and creativity that has started to feel more like a moral litmus test than an actual discussion. And I say this as someone who genuinely believes in the inherent value of human art (Here’s my article about it).
But that belief is exactly why I think the conversation we’re having deserves more honesty than it’s currently getting.
The Target Has Shifted: Small Creators vs. Corporate AI Scraping
There are legitimate criticisms of AI in creative industries: Mass data scraping without consent, corporate monopolization, the flooding of platforms with slop content that crowds out actual artists, and the systematic devaluation of creative labor are all real and serious problems that shouldn’t be minimized.
What I’ve noticed, though, is that the visible target of anti-AI discourse is not primarily aimed at the billion-dollar corporations building extraction machines at industrial scale. More and more, it lands on the independent artists and musicians using AI to organize ideas.
We’re led into a witch hunt that shifts the blame and moral responsibility to the small creator generating temporary artwork because they can’t afford a designer, the disabled artist using generative tools to express something they couldn’t otherwise, and the hobbyist who just wants to hear what their D&D character theme song could sound like after a ten-hour shift.
That distinction matters. Collapsing everyone into a single moral category (“AI users”) does something convenient for the corporations: it makes them invisible while redirecting scrutiny onto individuals. A company replacing creative work to maximize shareholder value doesn’t hold the same weight as an independent artist using available tools to keep creating and survive.
A friend of mine recently confessed to me that she stopped making her music because she couldn’t afford to continue making the visuals in a way that reflected her vision for her videos without the help of AI, and she felt guilty using it. This broke my heart, as she’s one of the most genuinely creative, talented artists that I know of. This case, I believe, is a net loss for human creativity.
”Real Art” and the Class Divide in Traditional Craft
There’s something else I’ve been sitting with. A lot of anti-AI rhetoric revolves around ideas of purity: real art, fully human, made by hand, earned through discipline, no shortcuts taken. And I understand the emotional instinct behind that; I share it as well. However, I also think there’s a class dimension hiding underneath it that doesn’t get acknowledged nearly enough.
Creating art entirely through traditional means requires time, education, energy, stability, access to tools, and often years of unpaid practice, which not everyone has access to. And this isn’t a new tension, as we’ve seen it happen over and over in the past decades with tools that have now become so mainstream we don’t even think about it:
- Photography
- Digital painting
- Synthesizers
- Sampling
- DAWs
Every time technology made creative participation more accessible, there was a backlash from people who had built their identity around mastering the previous set of tools. Eventually those tools became normalized because, over time, we recognized that the tool itself wasn’t the source of meaning: The human intention behind it was.
I think we’re watching the same argument play out again, this time with higher stakes and more algorithmic amplification. The “human-only art” narrative starts functioning less as an ethical position and more as a marker of cultural distinction.
In other words, it’s the new way of signaling taste, discipline, or authenticity. Having the time and resources to create entirely by hand, without shortcuts, is itself often a privilege. That’s not an argument against traditional craft, but a rightful observation about who gets to participate in culture and art.
Where to Draw the Line: Supporting Creativity vs. Replacing Artists
Personally, I don’t use generative AI to write music, because let’s be real, why would I want to replace the music-making parts? To write more emails and get more time to do my taxes?
What I do use AI for is closer to support infrastructure around the art: brainstorming themes, refining descriptions, researching genres, learning about stylistic traditions, placeholder visuals, vision board, etc.
But many of the people I work with nowadays use AI-generated vocal demos to help them communicate a creative direction or emotional reference.
Moralizing at creatives for using a tool that helps them communicate with me more efficiently would be wrong to me on so many levels. I always appreciate when people I work with are trying their best to present me with their vision before we start working together. If they come to me, it’s specifically because they need me to help them solve a problem they cannot solve by themselves, otherwise they wouldn’t need me to begin with!
Believe it or not, I’ve gotten more work than ever as a vocalist since AI vocals have become available: those who want to use it in their final product were never going to actually hire artists anyway, they never really valued it (they may be missing out, though), and the ones who always wanted to hire artists but were afraid they couldn’t communicate their vision are now empowered to work with me.
I think there’s a real difference between using a tool to support creative work and using a tool to replace the creative worker entirely.
To make my position crystal clear: distributing and commercially profiting from fully AI-generated music is unacceptable. However, using it for your own listening pleasure, for education, brainstorming, to help with communicating an idea to collaborators, or to learn new songwriting techniques is an entirely different matter.
Not all uses are ethically equal, and I think it’s worth being precise about which one we’re actually criticizing, instead of lumping them together because it’s easier, more convenient, or feels “righteous”.
I will never be sitting here telling everyone they need to learn music theory or sing their own demos before they can work with me, and I will always believe that the human-made stuff will always be more valuable. Using AI doesn’t necessarily render the rest of the creative work meaningless or soulless.
Nothing Is Pure Under Capitalism: The Compromised Pipeline of Modern Creative Work
One thing that bothers me about these conversations is the implied existence of a clean, “ethical” creative pipeline. Modern creative work already runs on compromised infrastructure: exploitative streaming platforms, mass-manufactured virtual instruments, social media algorithms that surveil and monetize behavior, corporate software ecosystems, cloud services with their own labor and environmental costs.
That’s the water we’re all swimming in, whether or not we acknowledge it.
That’s not an argument for resignation; where you draw the line still matters. But there’s a real difference between thoughtfully using tools to lower barriers and continue creating, versus building systems designed to replace humans at scale for profit.
Why I’m Not Afraid of AI Replacing Human Artists
To refer back to my last post, the value of human music was never in the wav file.
I believe human art has a kind of value that can’t be mechanically replicated, not because humans are more efficient or more technically precise, but because humans are conscious: we love, suffer, sleep, grow, make things, and die.
Art carries the weight of that existence, and THAT is what gives it meaning. And here’s the thing: people don’t only seek technical outputs from art. They seek connection: another human being reaching back across loneliness and saying, genuinely, “I felt this too.”
No model will ever be able to do that, not because the output isn’t convincing enough, but because the experience behind it isn’t real. Because human consciousness, in and of itself, is transcendental. A simulated feeling will never be the same as a shared one.
So I’m not particularly afraid of AI replacing artists. If anything, it might finally force us to reckon with what we were always really looking for in art.
The Real Ethical Questions to Ask About AI Art
I believe the real ethical questions around AI in art aren’t “did someone use AI at any point in their workflow?” The real questions are:
- Who owns the systems?
- Who profits from automation?
- Who becomes economically disposable?
- Are artists being empowered or erased?
- Does the tool support human creativity, or replace it?
Those are harder questions than pointing at individual creators and demanding to know whether their process is “pure enough”.They’re the ones that actually lead somewhere useful.
Now, let’s go make some art in a way that feels empowering to our creativity, and let’s always make sure regardless of the tools we use we always infuse it with our own humanity..
If you are looking to bring your musical vision to life, I can be your featured vocalist or create a fully customized song.
Let’s keep the human connection in our music alive!
To make my position crystal clear: distributing and commercially profiting from fully AI-generated music is unacceptable. In my view, that’s plain theft. However, using it for your own listening pleasure, for education, or to learn new songwriting techniques is an entirely different matter. Not all uses are ethically equal, and it’s crucial to distinguish between creation and consumption.
