Are We Still Talking About AI?

Of course we are. The question keeps circling back because the thing itself isn’t settling down.

AI isn’t some distant horizon anymore. It’s already part of our everyday creative landscape, nestled into the software we open without thinking: Microsoft Word suggests rewrites while you type, Photoshop fills in the gaps you never bothered to mask, and every DAW from Pro Tools to Presonus to Cubase now arrives with built-in tools that lean on machine learning to clean tracks, fix timing, shape sounds.

You don’t have to chase AI anymore. It’s already here. And it’s quiet in its inevitability.

There is no rope you can throw back to the past anymore. No “pure” workflow untouched by learned systems. Even if you avoid the buzzwords, the infrastructure has already crept into your daily life. And not always in dramatic ways; sometimes it is simply a smarter noise reducer, a tempo assistant, or an EQ that guesses what you meant to do. That’s literally the reality of the situation.

It’s become mundane. And once something becomes mundane, we start to argue about its meaning.

The Pushback Isn’t Against Tools — It’s Against Meaninglessness

A lot of the discomfort around AI in music isn’t about technology. It’s about authorship.

When people hear lifeless tracks generated from prompts alone (which I also hate) — songs that feel hollow, interchangeable, or bereft of any real narrative — they aren’t just hear bad songwriting. They hear a breach of something deeper: the sense that something from themselves is missing.

And I get it. Bad music has always been bad music. But there’s something old-fashioned in the pushback. Not in a regressive way, but in a way that still values struggle, craft, and intent.

Bad art always existed. AI just accelerates its production. So the question becomes less about the tool, and more about what it reveals about the creator’s relationship to the craft. AI doesn’t make art lifeless. Unexamined intent does.

The Tools Were Never the Villain — Just the New Frontier

Here’s what most people miss when the conversation boils over: AI isn’t actually new in music production. The industry has been quietly integrating machine-assisted features for years.

• Intelligent noise reduction

• Adaptive tuning

• Timing quantization

• Automated mixing assistants

• MIDI generation aids

• Mastering helpers

These tools have been folded into the creative process so seamlessly that most musicians stopped noticing, until now. What was once a feature has become a philosophical battleground.

We (well…most) never treated those earlier tools as threats because they were useful. They helped us solve problems we already acknowledged. Nobody cried foul at pitch correction when it made late-night session vocals less exhausting. Nobody lamented drum quantization when it kept grooves tight without losing feel.

The resistance now isn’t because the technology is inherently worse. It’s because people sense a loss of agency, or think they do. But agency was never erased. It’s always lived between intention and execution.

Misunderstanding Modern AI Workflows

Platforms like Suno often get reduced in conversation to one thing: type a prompt, receive a finished song.

And yes, if you treat it like a magic music factory, that’s what it delivers. A finished track that sounds like something, but often not like someone.

But that’s only part of the story.

Today’s Studio DAW versions (including the new Suno Studio program) function much closer to a DAW than a jukebox. You can:

• Record guitars and vocals

• Arrange stems

• Edit sections

• Shape transitions

• Use AI for texture, suggestion, or variation

If you’re doing all of that, you’re not replacing authorship with automation. You’re augmenting your workflow with new tools.

And that’s a different conversation entirely. The question ceases to be Did you use AI? It becomes Did you choose what this piece is trying to say? That, not the tool, is where true creativity lives.

Why the Difference Still Matters — and Is Still Audible

People talk like these systems will eventually produce something indistinguishable from human music; emotionally, narratively, spiritually. Perhaps someday they will. But today they don’t. Not consistently. Not meaningfully.

AI, no matter how sophisticated, doesn’t possess intent. Even the best systems don’t have lived experience, emotional stakes, memory, loss, longing, humor, grief, or contradiction. They simulate patterns, trends, and structures. They emulate human expression. But they do not experience it. Because of that, there’s still a perceptible gap.

Music shaped by someone who’s felt the weight of a phrase, the soreness of a chorus, the uncertainty of a bridge, that still carries a different resonance than something stitched together by averaged data. You can hear when a piece was considered. Authenticity isn’t a buzzword.

Craft Matters — Always Has, Always Will

Let’s be clear: learning your craft isn’t a nostalgic ideal. It’s a survival strategy.

Guitar technique. Rhythm. Arrangement. Song form. Dynamics. Theory. These aren’t relics of tradition. They are the vocabulary of music.

AI can suggest, assist, generate options; but it doesn’t understand empathy, paradox, contradiction, or narrative arc. Those are human domains. And they still require human ears, human judgment, human risks.

AI doesn’t make you creative. It can make you more efficient at whatever you already are. If your foundation is curiosity and discipline, the tool can multiply that. If your foundation is convenience and imitation, the output will reflect that too.

Hobby vs Meaningful Expression

There’s nothing wrong with making music purely for the joy of making it. That’s a perfectly valid path. But when you ask others to listen deeply, the terms change. Art isn’t a commodity. Art is a conversation.

When creators expect listeners to invest attention, they owe something in return: vulnerability, intention, narrative, blood, or at least a reason to care. AI can help you construct layers. It cannot choose what matters to you. Only you can do that.

AI can help you find your voice. It cannot give you a voice.

The Divide Isn’t Digital — It’s Intentional

The future of music isn’t a battle between analog and digital, human and machine, pure and impure. The real divide runs between: Creators who direct tools with purpose and Creators who allow tools to direct them.

AI will continue folding into production. It will become more integrated, less noticeable, more seamless. That’s progress. And progress doesn’t need a manifesto.

What matters, what always matters, is why a piece exists. Ultimately, listeners still feel intention in sound. They respond to resonance, honesty, risk, truth.

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Originally posted on my Substack at Fragments and Frequencies.

Seth Metoyer is a writer, artist, musician, and audio engineer exploring theology, metaphysics, music, and modern creative tools. With 25+ years in music and film, he writes for outlets like Heaven’s Metal Magazine and runs the independent label Broken Curfew Records. His work lives in the tension between faith, doubt, tradition, and the questions most people avoid asking.