12 Principles for Using AI as an Artist
I've found AI to be really helpful sometimes. I also really, really hate generative AI slop. So I created some rules for myself when using AI in my creative process.
This week, YouTuber and prog jazz fusion bass explorer Adam Neely has a long video takedown of Suno and AI content generation (genAI). It also quotes my friend and Soundfly instructor Dr. Ethan Hein who has written very astutely about the limitations of AI in both music and education here.
For those who don’t know, Suno is a company that allows anyone to make music by just typing in a descriptive prompt, and the app spits out a song to match. The Suno argument is essentially that it makes creating music easy for anyone — and that’s a beautiful thing, in their view.
On the surface, I can relate to this. I do want people to be able to make music. Making music is really fun. I’ve devoted a large part of my life to it! I started an online music school! I’ve always taken an expansive view on what a musician is (anyone making music) or what makes a piece of music good (if you enjoy it). Our first slogan was “no snobs allowed,” and we explicitly set out to help people become musicians.
And yet, I agree with basically every part of Adam’s video. AI content generation is not inspiring. It offers no role models. It’s boring, mediocre, and, quite frankly, soul crushing. It’s not helping us grow our skills, but might be doing the opposite. It’s already flooding the world with forgettable slop. There are lots of reasonable studies showing that it is already or will soon take royalties and other earnings away from working musicians, with actual things to say in their music.
Sure, I can imagine that making music from a prompt could be fun as a lark from time to time. But let’s be clear about what that is and what that isn’t: That’s not creativity and it’s not art. It’s a gimmick, essentially what should be a fun game for kids or a drunk night with friends when you try to see what sort of absurd stuff you can prompt into existence at a moment’s notice.
That’s not how Suno is marketing themselves. Suno is making the same mistake so many would-be online innovators have made over the past 2 decades: Mistaking convenience for progress, and ease of use for nourishment of the soul.
And yet... I’m not really anti-AI writ-large. I do find some AI uses fairly compelling. I also know it’s easy to be reflexively scared of change and uncertainty, and I want to check that impulse in myself. I’m very curious about what AI can do for education, especially in regards to one-on-one tutoring and support.
I also personally use ChatGPT quite often, and think it has added value to my creative life in certain ways. The essay I wrote last week on types of creativity was one of my most popular to date, one that I really enjoyed writing and learning about, and I couldn’t have written it (at least not in the time I did) without research and fact-checking support from ChatGPT (no actual writing). It pointed me toward some important papers on the neuroscience of creativity, and helped me understand the distinctions specific researchers are making. I’ve often used it to suggest specific avenues of study, and I’m currently working with it to try to design a DIY light show for my band’s live shows.
One of my favorite uses has actually been Dungeons & Dragons. I’d never played before when my kids asked me to be Dungeon Master for a campaign, so I used ChatGPT to help me flesh out some adventures. I often run specific situations and questions by it, given I’m new to the D&D universe, and I find it’s advice helpful. It makes our campaigns more creative. It’s actively empowering me — giving me the tools and support to do something I might have struggled with otherwise while also spending more time with my kids. Hard to criticize that.
So... how should someone like me navigate this new universe? AI is proliferating fast, for better or worse, and I am interested in what it has to offer creatively and educationally. At the same time, I only want to integrate it into my process in a way that feels creatively uplifting, challenging, and enabling, not deadening. Maybe you agree.
To do this, I thought I’d try to lay out some principles for myself around using AI in creative work. This is not a call for legislation or a call for revolution or anything like that, although I’d be happy to support efforts I agree with — it’s more like a note to self. This is the stuff I think I need to keep in mind in order to use AI to support my creativity without degrading it or taking it away.
What do you think? What would you add or refute? I will likely adjust and change this over time, as I continue to learn more about when AI can fit into my process.
12 Principles for Using AI as an Artist
Art is made by humans. Content generated by AI is not art, it’s content.
AI can be helpful for the creative process, but only with limitations. It’s a powerful tool, but needs to be used as such. That’s the point of this list.
Good uses of AI support human agency. Bad uses take it away. Examples of AI uses that support agency might be educational, research-related, technical, or opening up areas of exploration and thinking you haven’t considered before.
Making meaningful art requires decision-making on the part of the artist. If you are outsourcing your creative decisions to AI, you are missing out on what makes an artist an artist.
An artist should never let AI speak for them. In general, I would rather never use generative AI. That said, there may be ways to produce art that calls on generative AI, as Holly Herndon has recently pointed out. In those cases, don’t sub in an AI’s voice for your own.
AI is more intern than collaborator; don’t accept its input uncritically. If AI gives you a list of options, you should consider and challenge them rather than using them uncritically. If AI gives you information, you should look for ways to verify that information through primary sources rather than simply accepting it.
AI should support human connection, not try to replace it. There’s no greater feeling than writing a song that connects with another person, that creates a moment of deep emotion for others where they see you and feel seen by you. Making music with other people is similarly powerful. AI would be a woeful, insipid substitute in these roles, especially given how important human connection is to human flourishing. We should not let AI take the place of other humans in our creative lives, especially at a time when so many are feeling isolated and alone. Honestly, my favorite moments of using ChatGPT so far, when it felt the best, were when it facilitated human connection, like the D&D group.
Effort leads to growth, messiness leads to meaning. Meaning, growth, beauty, and human connection most often lie on the other side of effort, discomfort, and a certain amount of messiness. If AI smoothes out the latter too much, you won’t find the former. As such, don’t do stuff via AI that you can do yourself with some effort, unless it’s supporting deeper effort elsewhere.
Good uses of AI challenge your thinking and advance your skills, rather than deskill or deaden them. One of the obvious risks of AI is deskilling. We should use AI to open up new doors of study and growth, rather than taking over those roles from us. We should use it as a tutor and teacher where possible, but never as a way to cheat and get the answers without really understanding them.
Artists should be transparent about how they’re using AI. If I ever use AI in my work, I will be open and honest about it, as should other artists, musicians, and writers.
AI shouldn’t ever be a crutch. As artists, we need to take risks. We need to push ourselves outside our comfort zones. We need to hop into a jam session even when we’re scared to do so or send out a request to a collaborator that intimidates us. We need to share our music and try things we’ve never tried before. I can see how AI could serve as a crutch to avoid doing those scary things, but we shouldn’t let it.
Art is about the process more than the outcome. Making art can be messy. It can be hard. It can take a lifetime of study. But because of that, it is life-affirming. It leads to growth and builds confidence. It facilitates human connection and gives us a sense of accomplishment. The outcome of producing art is always up in the air, but the process is what really matters. We must hold the process inviolable and not pretend that if we allow AI to fast-forward through it for us, it will hold the same meaning or power.
If there’s one thing I love most about being an artist, it’s caring deeply about the things I do, even when no one else will ever hear, see, or experience them. It’s the hours spent on a doodle, just for the love of the craft, or the care put into a piano improvisation when no one’s around to hear it.
If these principles share one thing, it’s preserving that — the care we put into our lives and the work we produce. It’s making sure we remember the simple joy of doing things. Don’t give that up to AI without a fight.
Feel free to suggest other principles in the comments. I’d love to hear them.
Yours, in gritty, hard-fought, messy, human creativity,
Ian
Ian Temple
Founder, Soundfly
Ian@soundfly.com
Five Interesting Things
Speaking of the human aspects of music making, OPIA has a beautiful short video about the creative power of collaboration, made through interviews with some amazing artists like Ólafur Arnalds, Dustin O’Halloran, The Vernon Spring, and others.
“New Orleans has always been different… the Africanization of American and European culture was practiced openly in New Orleans.” I’m such a sucker for musical history, and this article was an amazing history of jazz drumming in New Orleans.
“Many Strange and a Lot of Wonderful Things.” This little essay opens your eyes up to wonder in the mundane and unexpected little moments of each day with such beauty.
Shortly after watching Adam Neely’s video, I read Chris Dalla Riva’s article “The Slop Problem is Worse Than You Think.” The story he tells about Bill Johns and his work showing up Amazon when you search for Memphis blues is highly depressing.
Two songs from my band Sontag Shogun have been added to this Lowkey playlist on Apple Music, and are getting lots of listens. It’s always such a thrill to be included on a playlist with heroes, like Jon Hopkins, Sigur Rós, Yann Tiersen, and so many others. Give it a listen!
A nuanced stance on the use of AI in music! What a rare delight.
You’ve given this subject a lot of thoughtful attention, so let me ask what you would do:
You just found out that one of your favorite songs of all time - let’s say it’s Norwegian Wood, was created not by your beloved Beatles, but by AI. Do you still listen to it because, whether made by man or machine, it is a great song? Do you stop listening to not only Norwegian Wood but everything the Beatles wrote out of concern that all of their songs may have been generated by AI? Do you embrace AI on the basis that if a machine could produce a song like this then you want that machine (à la
Estelle Reiner’s famous line, “I’ll have what she’s having” in When Harry Met Sally).