The Line Between Tool and Creator
Creation? Theft? Impersonation?
I enjoy using AI to generate music on Suno - it’s cool to see things I created get fleshed out and take my music in directions I wouldn’t think of. Do I immediately release these tracks as-is? No.
I’m using it as an idea-flesher-outer, a sketchpad that generates possibilities you wouldn’t have conceived. It’s a rapid-prototyping engine for musical concepts. The power here is in the feedback loop, not the final output. The AI gives me a direction, and my creative process (taste, emotion, story, or a combination of the three) guides my next decision. I’m not interested in outsourcing my creative process completely. The art comes from the choices I have to make after evaluating the AI’s output.
Here’s Spotify’s take on the situation - allowing artists impersonated by AI to give authorization to protect their brand. Pretty smart. I like using AI voices to identify style tweaks that might work in something I’ve written (they usually don’t “work” but often give me ideas.)
We’ve been here before.
Who among us remembers the era of giving credit to “programming” on a track. Think back to the growing controversy in the 70’s up through the 90’s about using a drum machine to keep time (less so as time went on and people realized how awesome the tool was - I see you, LinnDrum.)
When those technological advances first appeared (and especially with the subsequent wave of digital samplers), there was a real cultural anxiety about “inorganic” music. Purists argued that an electronic sequencer couldn’t possibly capture the human feel of a drummer (and there was truth to that). But what happened?
They became instruments in their own right. Think of Prince or Phil Collins. The sound of that crisp, digital clap became the very essence of a musical era. No one was giving “credit to programming” years later, because the programmer (the musician) was using the machine as an instrument to achieve a distinct, human-directed sound.
They democratized music creation. Suddenly, a solo artist could lay down a complex rhythm track without needing a session drummer. This explosion of accessibility led to genres that simply couldn’t have existed before (like early hip-hop and electronic dance music).
Authorship and Authenticity in the AI Era
This brings us to the core of the current debate, which Spotify’s stance on AI impersonation directly addresses: authorship and authenticity.
In the startup world, we’ve always measured value by unique intellectual property (IP). Right now, the music industry is wrestling with what constitutes “unique IP” when an algorithm (trained on a massive amount of human-created work) generates the raw score.
The solution (for now) is going to be in the post-processing and intentionality. The AI voice that gives you “style tweaks” isn’t the artist (it’s a mirror). It’s simply reflecting back patterns that exist in a training data set. The artist is the person who says, “Ah, that inflection doesn’t quite work, but it points to a need to try a more staccato delivery on the second verse.” That is the human edit, and that is the value addition.
Just as a modern pop song gives credit to the producer, engineer, and mixing console, the AI era will simply require a more nuanced understanding of the creative flow. The tool is disruptive, yes, but it doesn’t replace the human filter, and that filter (the human heart and mind making the final call) is where the empathy, the emotion, and the authenticity truly reside.
The integration of AI into the creative workflow (whether music generation or voice styling) isn’t just a technical or legal challenge; it’s a profound empathy challenge for the entire tech sector.
Disruptive empathy means looking past the surface efficiency of a new technology and genuinely engaging with the very human anxieties it creates. In this case, the anxiety is about creative displacement and the devaluation of human skill.
If the tech community just celebrates the AI’s speed and output—”Look what the machine can do!”—they miss the point. The empathetic approach requires asking: “How does this tool augment (not erase) the creator’s voice?” and “How do we build systems that prioritize the human artist’s intent and protect their emotional investment, even as the tools disrupt their process?”
If you’re using AI as a sketchpad, remember the ultimate act of empathetic integration: respecting the tool’s power to generate ideas while asserting your ultimate, human role as the final emotional editor and storyteller. The disruption is real, but the empathy ensures the focus remains on the human experience being created, not just the code making the noise.
Spotify’s post is clear: responsible use of AI will not be punished. It will be interesting to see how that goal plays out.
It makes you wonder: what’s the next great tool that will be ridiculed as “inauthentic” before it becomes absolutely essential?