✘ The context paradox: bias in the AI and creativity debate
And: A Sense of Rebellion; Manifesto for the Environmental Ecology Lab
The debate around AI and creativity often feels like a pitched battle between total adoption and outright rejection. In 2019, I represented an early AI music company called AI Music (yes, that was the name) at a SXSW event in Austin, hosted by Abbey Road Studios and the UK's Department of Trade. It was one of the first major music conference panels addressing AI's potential impact on music creation, and we weren't exactly welcomed with open arms. My unexpected ally that day came from Nick Cave—specifically, one of his two notable posts about AI from his Red Hand Files blog. Though Cave would later describe AI-generated lyrics in his style as "a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human", the ideas in his earlier article saved me then and still resonate with me today.
His reflection on what makes music meaningful, for me captured something essential. Personal perception of the value of a given song, wasn't created from how the music was made, he argued, but from the personal context and ephemeral moments that surround it. Song + People I am with + Shit going on in my life etc.. Using Cave's words to defuse a hostile music biz crowd wasn't exactly what he had in mind, but his blog post is something I have come back to many times in the years since. I have truly lost count of how many people I have sent it to.
Back in 2019 we had a hard time selling AI x Music in most circles. Five years later, at the end of 2024, what mostly dismissed as an absurdist fantasy has become our lived reality. It’s impossible to avoid the discussion of generative AI in music.
Evolution of the Debate
Cave's argument in The Red Hand Files resonated precisely because it shifted the conversation away from how music was made to why it mattered. When he wrote about Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," he wasn't just describing a song but a constellation of meaning—personal struggle, cultural context, human limitation and transcendence. It’s this that he feels AI cannot replace.
Looking back, it's striking how that early defence of human creativity helped bridge what seemed like an unbridgeable gap between AI development and musical authenticity. But it also revealed something that would become increasingly relevant: our biases about what makes music "real" or meaningful often say more about our own perspectives and experiences than about the music itself. This I feel is undoubtedly true for our stance on the development and uses of AI in music.
AI: In The Wild
This summer, I witnessed two experiences that made me reconsider these arguments about context and authenticity. The first was in a festival tent, watching an impromptu AI music session unfold. Clearly no one had brought a USB to the Open Decks slot and with no budding DJ’s stepping up, someone had begun playing songs created using Suno and Udio through the system. With the flair of an old school MC, he announced each track, proudly declaring "No Human Hand Has Touched The Making Of These Songs." The tent, initially sparse, became packed with dancers.
Between songs, I captured a moment that crystallised something for me. At his announcement some of the crowd pause, shock, confusion, a moment wrestling with the implications, then a shrug as the music kicked back in and we are all off again. No shits given. This likely unexpected need to process ethical implications in festival tent, quickly followed by surrender to the collective experience has stuck with me, ever since. Do music fans and fandoms care as much as the industry does, where their music comes from? Does Cave’s constellation of meaning hold?
The second was at London's Jazz Cafe, where legendary producer Tom Middleton staged "AI vs The Bays" - a slightly tongue in cheek human vs the machine performance where he took on the role of "AI Jockey," feeding AI-generated music elements to The Bays, a band known for their improvisational and musical prowess. Their motto "Performance is the Product" says it all. What you experience is what you get. The result was a packed venue moving from chilled grooves to euphoric drum and bass, demonstrating how AI x human collaboration could enhance rather than replace human creativity. In terms of the battle - I believe the consensus was The Bays won.
The Power of Context
The role of context in creative expression runs deep. Cave's emphasis on the personal journey behind "Smells Like Teen Spirit" reflects a particular view of authenticity rooted in individual struggle and narrative. I guess this is also the root of his disdain for the ChatGPT generated fan lyrics. Yet my festival experience suggests how new forms of meaning can emerge when that context shifts—when a nervous laptop operator's bemused announcement of AI authorship becomes part of the performance itself, creating its own kind of authenticity. Maybe they’ve been here all along. Keep calm and rave on.
Different musical traditions —from singer-songwriters to dance music to jazz improvisation—have always carried their own assumptions about what makes creation "authentic" or meaningful. Whole fandoms seem based on these notions (ever met a Fugazi fan?). These biases colour not just how we create, but how we listen, perform, and assign value to music. The Bays' collaboration with AI-generated elements suggests that meaningful creative expression isn't tied to a single notion of authenticity or context, but can evolve as our relationship with technology changes.
The Bias of Experience
Towards the end of 2023 I read an article published in Frieze magazine, titled "The Face of the Deep." A transcript of a round table, where visual artists and curators explored the philosophical debate around machine artistry. As one participant noted, "We want to offload our problems onto this technology, but it always comes back to the humans behind it."
Many of the thorniest issues associated with the change represented by AI are force multipliers to existing issues, we’ve been debating for decades (remuneration of artists, lopsided distribution structures, data systems etc..). This gets to the heart of the matter: the important question isn't whether AI will replace human creativity, but what happens when it becomes a core part of our creative toolkit.
I keep meaning to re-read Walter Benjamin’s Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction (prescribed reading when I started Art School nearly 30 years ago). It seems timely right now, maybe ChatGPT or Claude can read it for me. It was written as a way to consider the value/purpose of art in relation to the mass adoption of photography. We may soon view AI tools as naturally as we do paintbrushes or camera lenses—not because they've replaced anything, but because they've simply become another option for creative experimentation.
Artists across disciplines are beginning to approach AI not with reverence or fear, but with curiosity about what might emerge from playing with new tools. What is striking about the AI debates I mostly end up in is we expend most of our energies on the defence of the music business, and little to none on creative experience of artists and the contextual experience of music fans. I guess that makes sense, I work in the business of music after all, but I also spend much of my time thinking about marketing, the adoption of “new” music themes, trends, business models and technology. It seems at odds to me, that in working towards a sustainable future to AI and creativity these voices are so often sidelined.
Beyond Individual Bias
The challenge isn't just individual bias - it's how these biases are woven into the fabric of our creative industries and appreciation itself. When we debate AI and creativity, what are we really debating? The nature of creativity itself? The economics that sustain cultural production? The preservation of traditional roles? The authenticity of expression? The future of collective experience? How and where are our arguments co-opted for profit.
Conclusion
It’s clear the future of creativity won't be determined by a single perspective. This is a very messy, wonderfully human problem. It is likely impossible to disentangle our biased view from our sense of personal music fandom, the value we attach to music and if you work in the business the very real desire to maintain your way of life. How these new tools will interact with the many ways humans create and experience meaning together and what kind of systems we build for the artists that create and the music fans that appreciate them is the challenge ahead of us. Understanding the source of our biases and different contexts doesn't resolve the debate about AI in creative fields, but perhaps it helps us have a more nuanced conversation.
LINKS
🎧 A Sense of Rebellion (Evgeny Morozov)
✘ A Sense of Rebellion is a podcast series created by Evgeny Morozov. It’s an at times odd but fascinating story of how the foundation of the technologies we live with today were laid and that perhaps there was another way forwards. The pace and scale of change can feel like it robs you of agency. We are living in a time of great change so the idea that way ahead isn’t written seems timely. It’s a rabbit hole be warned…
🛝 Manifesto for the Environmental Ecology Lab (Warren Brody et al)
“We want to put him into control of a responsive dialogue with perceptual grasping of communication about himself inside and outside and in time and space, larger and smaller than he has had access to formerly in his living spaces: on earth and in houses, under the water, in his clothes, at his job, outdoors, his communication with others, his understanding of cultural flow and change, his transportation systems, his reuse and recycling of waste materials, his potential for communication with other species, his potential for high-information exchange: verbal, non-verbal, physical, metaphysical, with technology, without technology, his understanding of how complex systems work by being able to plunge his hands or himself into a facsimile or computer-based model and thereby become part of that system; such embodiments require on-line, real-time application of a “dedicated” computer.”
✘ The manifesto from the E.E.L. needs to be read through squinted eyes to be understood properly. They were trying to rethink our relationship to technology and how it mediates our experience of the world around us. The tech wasn’t quite there yet to make this work, but it’s all about rethinking the techno-solutionism we’ve gotten so accustomed to in the decades since.
MUSIC
The unlikely product of JUNGLE, WeTransfer and a remix competition producing the best and possibly first Transylvanian Dub record you’ll hear for sometime. If that doesn’t talk to the power of human creativity, reinvention and the subversion of norms and silos, I don’t know what does…