While reading through the comments on this TikTok of a producer showing how his remix for a Justin Bieber song came together, I came across a comment from a user named “Oliver” (screenshotted) that says, “Proof that real producers still beat AI.” It’s easy to see this and agree with it at face value, in part because it makes us feel like we are special and above being eventually consumed by the growing, soulless black hole that is AI. However, I believe there is an underlying truth that explains why we resonate with such a comment.
What is that? One answer is that in seeing the process—seeing more than just the end product—we see possibility. In seeing another human being go beyond themselves and tap into something we didn’t know was possible, we see ourselves. We see what we could become if we tried a little harder and put in the effort over time. We see that it is possible to stretch beyond ourselves and become something more. And more importantly, we see that there is more to life than just being caught in this endless race presented to us, where companies want to quantify, consume, and transform every ounce of our lives into a soulless product. There’s a process. A relationship between creator and work, creator and audience (and even between the audience in the comments section).
I see this and think about how the main selling point of AI (points that companies like Suno push) is that it saves us time because “making music is hard.” After all, nobody has enough time to learn how to play an instrument and learn how to mix or whatever. Yet I think about that and realize that the reason most of us do this is because we simply enjoy the process. We enjoy learning and leveling up our skills, and we do it for the sake of the process itself. The outputs are an artifact of that and everything takes as long as it does, full stop.
The process itself is the art. Which isn’t to glorify difficulty nor to say that the process is a recipe. Rather, engaging in the process from your own perspective is the purpose. Who you become, how you engage with your work on a day-to-day basis is the point. You have fun and evolve from doing the work itself, feeding off of your peers in the moment, and letting ideas flourish through your level of talent and openness. Finishing or selling work are non-guaranteed side effects. Garnering an audience and a paycheck is a bonus... we've been conditioned by capitalism to think about this in a backwards way.
When I think back through my decades of life and at all the things I “could” have become, the only thing separating me from those possibilities has been choices. Choices to work on something and follow it through with continued practice. The issue is that most people don’t spend their time meaningfully, and so instant gratification enters the equation (even though it was what caused the problem in the first place).
A lot of the time, these companies are happy with us thinking otherwise. They’re happy with us feeling like we lack these abilities at our core and, as such, need their product to help achieve our dream life. Yet how much meaning is there? There’s something strange at the core of AI culture in doing things like sharing prompts. If someone else can just generate the thing, why does it matter? Why does any of this matter if we lose connection with each other? If we deliberately devalue ourselves in the process of all of this?