AI IS BAD, wah wah!AI IS BAD, wah wah!
AI IS BAD, wah wah! Intellectual Laziness Was Not Invented by AI
"AI is bad.""AI is evil."
"AI isn't real art."
Ouain ouain, wah wah. Cry me a soundbank.
Let’s be honest for a second.
Loop libraries? Thriving. Presets? Thriving. Sound packs and sample kits? Thriving. These are all fragments of other people’s music and ideas, packaged and reused for decades. Nobody screamed about the death of creativity when loops became mainstream. In fact, the music industry built entire empires on them.
And even before that, in the early days of synths and samplers, people were already getting offended. Remember the outrage when someone used a factory preset from an Emulator or Fairlight? "Oh, they just used a preset." That was the insult. As if touching technology without reinventing it from scratch was a crime. But these tools have always been part of the process. Always.
So what’s really changed?
Accessibility. That’s what.
Now anyone can start sketching an idea without years of training or thousands of dollars of equipment. The tools have opened the gate. That’s what’s triggering people.
But here’s the reality: most people don’t even know what they want to say. And AI won’t invent soul where there isn’t any. Prompt fatigue is real.
Prompt Fatigue is the illusion that everyone has a brilliant idea just waiting to be born.Most people think they know what to make. What kind of music to choose. What kind of video to prompt. But do they really?
Making one song is fun. Two songs, exciting. Ten songs with real intention and personal meaning, now that’s satisfying. But keeping that going? Creating something steady? Building a voice, a soul, a recognizable style people actually want to return to? That’s a whole different level.
You might be able to prompt one amazing image, or a clever scene. But make a film? Tell a story? Build emotional momentum, arc, pacing, truth? That’s where most people crash. That’s Prompt Fatigue.
Even filmmakers with experience suffer from it. They think they know what music should go where, but when faced with thousands of options in a music library, they freeze. It’s overwhelming. Now imagine that multiplied by AI’s infinite possibilities. Limitless options are not freedom. They’re paralysis. Unless you have instinct. Unless you know why the music should be there, what it's saying, and what it’s holding.
So yes, some people will lose jobs. That’s not a theory, it’s happening. And I might be one of them. The roles are shifting faster than most of us can track. What used to take months can now be done in minutes. That’s real. That’s sad. That’s terrifying. It’s disorienting to feel your craft being automated while you're still trying to breathe inside it.
But to say AI brings nothing of value? To pretend it has no place in the evolution of expression? That would be dishonest.
Because I’ve seen what it can do. I’ve used it. I’m using it now. And I know that if you have something real to say, something honest, something burning inside, AI can help shape it, sharpen it, reveal it.
And let’s be clear. The cat is out of the bag. You can’t stuff it back in. Trying to ban or shame this shift will only push it into the shadows, back into the hands of the elite, where it’s already been operating for years. As if they weren’t already using it quietly behind the curtain. They are. Or if they’re not, they will. Guaranteed.
So the question isn’t how to stop it.The question is how to stay in it.
Where’s the space for people like me?
What will be my role in this new terrain?
Because I’m not ready to be erased.But I know I can’t stand still either.
And I’m trying, right now, to understand where I belong in all of this.
Let’s also address the other truth.Dumping random AI content with no purpose is lazy.
Just like dumping loops without thought is lazy.
But laziness is not a new problem. It wasn’t invented by AI.
The real issue isn’t that people are making bad art. That’s always been around.The problem is when a single person automates the creation of tens of thousands of songs or videos, floods the platforms, and exploits monetization algorithms, all with no real effort or expression.
It’s a new form of scamming.
But this time, it’s not just scamming the platform.It’s scamming the artists themselves.
It hijacks the creative space. It steals attention, visibility, and income from those who are actually building something.
It devalues the entire process of creation.
And that’s not just shady.
That needs to be called out, and it needs to be protected against.
And that’s where we should focus.If someone’s uploading faceless content farms or soulless music dumps just to grab pennies, they’re polluting the space. That’s not art.
THAT’S THEFT BY OPTIMIZATION.This isn’t about whether AI is good or bad.
It’s about who’s using it to hijack what real creators spent years building.
Not from some mystical silence, but from instinct, repetition, and lived experience.
Most artists aren’t scared of AI because it exists.
They’re scared because it’s being used to flood the world with content that took no risk, no sacrifice, no vision.
And when that happens,
art stops being meaningful and starts becoming disposable.
But here’s something else I’ve started to see. Something surprising.
In the middle of all this fluff, this flood of auto-generated content, I believe that authentic, powerful, talented musicians will thrive more than ever. The real ones. The ones with something unshakable in their voice or their fingers.
Because as AI gets louder, the hunger for something real will grow deeper. I don’t think traditional music will fade away. I think it will rise. The local, the ancient, the human, the handmade. Instruments that no one remembers how to play. Songs that carry a culture. That’s not disappearing. That’s about to matter more.
Strangely, AI may become the very reason people return to real musicianship. To things that can’t be faked, rushed, or prompted.
At the same time, I know AI will push creative boundaries into places we don’t yet understand. And yes, that scares me. I'm not pretending to be above it. In many ways, I'm out of a job right now. Producers who used to hum a melody now come back with full-blown orchestral tracks that sound like they took months, generated in a weekend. That shift is real. And it’s a pressure I can't even compete with.
But I’m choosing not to fall into despair. Not everything is going to hell. I’m trying to envision the positive side. I want to find what’s still worth protecting, worth building, and worth becoming.
Because the truth is, this isn’t just about losing jobs. It’s about losing meaning.That’s what we’re really afraid of.
The loss of purpose, of craft, of struggle, of the painful but beautiful path it takes to express something real. That pain isn’t gone. It’s just transforming. And right now, we’re standing between two worlds.
Yes, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. That’s the reality. But I also believe something new is coming. A wave of micro-studios. Personal platforms. Independent shows.And we’ll need real singers. Real musicians. Real artists. Not fewer of them, more. We’ll need them to go further, not fade away.
I’ve been attacked by people who said what I’m doing is disrespectful. That using AI is a betrayal of the craft. But let’s be honest. Art was never just about the tools. Art was always about trying to say something true. Trying to understand why we’re even here.
What corrupted it wasn’t the tech.It was the monetization.
It was the giant industries and corporations that stole from artists, silenced them, used them, and threw them away.
So maybe, just maybe, AI will finally give us a small way back.A way to take control.
To create our own spaces.
To speak to smaller audiences, but truer ones.
And if you have something real to say, they’ll show up.
Because they’re still listening.
They’re just waiting for someone to mean it.
About the Author Paul Baraka is an award-winning composer, sound designer, and multidimensional storyteller blending music, technology, and myth. With a lifelong passion for sonic truth and a deep mistrust of lazy creation, he builds bridges between ancient signal and modern tools. He believes AI is not just artificial intelligence, but also Artistic Inspiration, and that we are only beginning to discover what it’s truly capable of when used with intention.
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"THAT’S THEFT BY OPTIMIZATION."This isn’t anti-AI.
This is pro-voice, pro-story, pro-creator.
Not everything generated is art.
Not everything automated deserves a stage.