tl;dr
I don’t want ot use AI for music. I’m being creative because I enjoy creating, and because creating things means something to me, and what I create relates to what it means to me. What AI produces, although I cannot state this objectively, feels to me to be less meaningful, subjectively. Yes, people have been tricked into finding meaning in AI content, sure, but that is the meaning I see it in without knowing where something came from. Knowing where something comes from and who or what made it can completely change its meaning. I’ve found ChatGPT very helpful if I just want a very objective and relatively unbiased perspective on something I’m thinking abut that I’m unsureof, and want to seek further material to learn more, whereby I’ll find a book ro something. ChatGPT is also an excellent thesaurus. I often forget words, but know exactly which word I’m trying to rmemeber, and ChatGPT helps me fid it.
Broader answer
I have more thoughts on this, and as I continued writing, I realised I cannot give an answer that I feel does justice to what I actually think if I only talk about AI in music, as it is inexorably related to a much broad and altogether more serious problem, including as it relates to convenience and technology as solutions to problems, and the notion that more solutions = less problems, when in fact we are often completely unaware of the additional problems created by technological “solutions” until its too late; and we often don’t realise we actually stand to lose what may be less tangible, but infinitely more valuable, when we solve the ‘wrong’ problems and replace the wrong 'struggl’e with convenience;, and in doing this anyway, we replace it with a hollow imitation; a hollow imitation often made so alluring in a tangible way, that it can be difficult to look past the pretty lights and bright colours that so often captivate us, and when we don’t actually realise the value of those intangibles that come from ‘struggle’, or the ‘right’ problems, all we have left are the features of a product that increase the convenience of our lives or feel like they entertain us, and reduce boredom (maybe people are just bored because they’ve already lost many invaluable intangibles we never knew we had to begin with).
AI not going to go anywhere. It will get more advanced, and I do believe we’ll develop AGI one day. I think AI has incredible potential to be either the best thing to ever happen to us, or the worst, depending on how it roots in the human culture, and what we do to decide how that happens exactly; and given the human propensity to use technology as a weapon, it is perhaps more likely to be the worst thing. It also depends very strongly on whether or not it is possible to solve the alignment problem (and even if it can be, that some humans can do it is evidence it can be done, but whichever morals it does align to, if it can, should they be? It also depends very strongly on to what extent superhuman intelligences could actually inflict serious harms on humankind if they were somehow able to attain agency in the world, like some means of replicating itself physically or digitally. The movies go for the most dramatic, but also the most cartoonish outcomes, usually, in both directions, so while they’re entertaiing, they’re not worth looking to for guidance.
I don’t want to end up distancing myself from the craft of art, where my art is always testing the limits of my ability. Struggling through complexity, confusion, inconvenience, and as yet unclosed skill gaps between and ability are more crucial than most people realise. Where we inadvertently end up along the way, getting something other than what was initially planned or intended, has time and again been one of the most fundamental sources of new innovation in art. New technology plays a crucial role in enabling innovations in art, too, I’m not lost on that.
Not all conveniences detract from or jeopardise the fruits of the struggle. Many of them enhance it; and many others still enable some things, at the cost of others. For example, having a shit loads of VSTs and a wide array of muscle memory in terms of how to use them makes you less likely to happen across new and novels approaches to making sounds, but that does help enable a creative struggle to take place at a different level: using your array of VSTs and techniques committed to muscle memory like piano keys, there’s still much new music you can play with the same piano keys.
Not all inconvenience is meaningful, or worth the effort. Dishwashers are brilliant! Struggling through the dishes in the sink is not a typically a worthwhile inconvenience, where struggling through, even though there are easier options, will be rewarding. I like convenience when it doesn’t contribute to unhealthy behaviours and habits, where it actually frees up time for me to focus on and struggle through what are actually worthwhile conveniences
Unnecessary convenience, and convenience taken as a virtue, has in many ways become the bane of human existence, yet we’re so enamoured by the illusion of greater freedom it apparently enables, that there exists more and more a hollow, shallow, ‘easy’ form of what came before, that is just unfulfilling. The network accumulation of conveniences in society and the human culture have left behind voids filled with plastic reproduction of the genuine article that once came before, but because that almost everything has becoming a plastic reproduction, it’s becoming normal to us, and people just can’t tell anymore. They can’t tell anymore, all the while they feel unfulfilled on some level, that there’s something missing, and guess what! There’s exactly the medication for that one, too. All the kids these days are taking it, and they’re all just so damn fulfilled, and they’re less anxious and depressed than they’ve ever been… since like the before the 2000s…
Unnecessary technology, outright malicious technology and media platforms, and the dominant culture of solving problems with technological solutions that lead only to more problems, and the systemic incentive to solve problems only in ways that increase the value of shareholders that also lead only to more problems instead of focusing on reworking the core operating systems of the world can go fuck itself 
Sadly, the world is subject the same class of limitation that legacy software and hardware does… it’s a) difficult to rewrite it while it’s still running, it’s vulnerable to exploitation. And when you consider the fact that the legacy core in society that is broken includes us and the people with a vested interest in keeping it broken at the expense of human wellbeing, that makes it all the more a terrible thing.
We’ve been sold the modern culture so completely and fully, most people are oblivious to how deep it actually cuts into the modern human psyche, its roots stretching back thousands of years to the earliest revolutionary technological advancements that started civilisation on the path to where it is today. I think technology has great potential to help us, but we cannot go forward into a radically happier and healthier future, enabled by technology, on a patchwork basis. We must be willing and able to completely deconstruct every thing we’re doing that is hurting us, and as science better understands how to figure that out reliably, that’ll become easier; but stopping and redirecting a civilisation once it’s already running something it believes is harmful to drop (like a Pascal’s Wager), stopping it can only be messy, human ethics is messy…
This is an excellent video that goes into a lot of things my friend and I have thought about over the years as we’ve epxlored the modern problem and sought to understand our situation more.
RIght, I’m out, I’ve been on and off thinking about this all night now, and I haven’t slept in 3 and 3 nights day! 
, but I have been thinking if the fact that I’m not checking out much indie music anymore is related to having seen so many AI covers and just subconsciously expecting lots of AI “influences” in general. It definitely might be more of a time limitation issue (haven’t been checking out much new music in general), but the thought has come up…
