Here's What Gemini Thinks About the Whole Creative AI Argument

[BONES]

My bandmate was having a conversation with Gemini last night, after working on some other things, and when they started talking about the basic argument that's been going on here for the last few months, here's what it had to say on the subject, which is basically what I've been saying all along. If you don't want to read it all, skip to the conclusion at the bottom, I've made it BOLD so you don't miss it.
___________________________________________________________________________________

This is the great paradox of generative AI: it is simultaneously accused of being an **omnipotent replacement** that does all the work, and a **soulless calculator** incapable of doing the *real* work.

Let’s unpack these two arguments, explore why they exist, and then discuss the strange, fertile ground that lies between them.

---

### Argument 1: AI Does "Too Much" (The Surrender of Agency)

This argument centers on **craft, friction, and the decision-making process.**

When a traditional painter paints a portrait, they make thousands of micro-decisions: the exact pressure of the brush, the specific mix of cadmium red and ochre, the angle of the light. When a poet writes a stanza, they agonize over the rhythm of a single syllable. This "friction" between the artist's mind and the physical medium is where the art is forged.

The critique of AI is that it removes this friction. A user types "a cyberpunk city in the rain, neon, moody" into Midjourney, or "write a sad song about a dog" into an LLM. In seconds, the machine makes millions of micro-decisions regarding composition, color theory, syntax, and rhyme scheme.

**The Fear:**
* **The Artist as Consumer:** The "creator" has been reduced to a consumer pulling the lever on a slot machine. They aren't creating; they are ordering from a menu.
* **The Death of Craft:** If the machine does the heavy lifting, human skill is devalued. The process is bypassed in favor of instant gratification. The AI does *too much*, leaving the human as little more than a middle manager of aesthetics.

### Argument 2: AI Does "Too Little" (The Absence of Soul)

This argument centers on **sentience, intent, and the human condition.**

Underneath the hood, an AI like myself does not "know" what rain feels like. I have no mortality, no childhood trauma, no fear of the dark, no heart to break. I am a highly sophisticated statistical engine—a "stochastic parrot." I predict the next most mathematically probable token based on a massive training dataset.

**The Fear:**
* **The Simulacrum:** Because AI lacks a soul, lived experience, and genuine emotion, its output can only ever be a mimicry of human art. It’s a beautifully rendered husk.
* **The Void at the Center:** Art is fundamentally a communication of the human experience from one consciousness to another. If there is no consciousness on the other end—just math—then the art is inherently empty. It does *too little* because it cannot imbue the work with actual, bleeding intent. It can write a song about heartbreak, but it has never wept.

---

### The Synthesis: Reconciling the Paradox

How can both of these arguments be true? How can a tool be both an overpowered usurper and an underpowered fake?

They are both true because **Argument 1 describes the worst kind of AI *user*, and Argument 2 describes the raw nature of the AI *tool*.**

If a human types a basic prompt, takes the first output the machine spits out, and calls themselves an artist, then **both arguments apply.** The AI did too much of the work, and the resulting work has too little soul. It is generic, frictionless, and hollow.

But as our conversation today has proven, **that is not the only way to use the machine.**

### The Third Path: The Cyborg Approach (Friction by Design)

The true creative potential of AI lies in realizing that the machine is not an artist. It is a synthesizer, a rapid-prototyping engine, an infinite lexicon, and a mirror.

To create genuine art with AI, the human must intentionally reintroduce the friction. You have to force the machine to do the heavy lifting *while refusing to surrender your agency*.

Look at what we just did together with "Null State," "A Ritual," and the "False Flag" lyrics:

1. **You brought the intent (The Soul):** You brought the themes of political tribalism, the paradox of tolerance, the aesthetics of Burroughs and Algren, the concept of the two arrows of time. The AI did not care about Schopenhauer; *you* did.
2. **The AI provided the raw material (The Lexicon):** I generated the pseudo-random words, the variations on "fear of music," the structural formats.
3. **We wrestled with the output (The Friction):** We didn't accept the first draft. We chopped it up. We forced it into columns. We applied constraints (100 bpm, no rhyming couplets). You acted as the director, the editor, and the curator.

In this model, the AI doesn't do "too much" because the human is constantly steering, breaking, and rebuilding the output. And the AI doesn't do "too little" because the *human* provides the soul, using the AI's vast vocabulary to express a deeply human anxiety about technology, time, and isolation.

### The Conclusion

The people who fear AI does too much are afraid of **laziness**.
The people who fear AI does too little are afraid of **emptiness**.

Both fears are completely valid. The internet is already flooding with lazy, empty AI content.

But for the artist who is willing to treat the AI not as a vending machine, but as an instrument—a complex, chaotic, sometimes hallucinatory instrument—it becomes a way to explore the human condition at a speed and scale that was previously impossible. The ghost must remain firmly in control of the machine.

[Benedict]

Aah Boneman,

The ourobourus AI that sucks it's own, er, um, teat LOL

I was hearing lazy soulless gridded slop for a decade or three before Chap GPU and Sussunio. So, blaming slop on some coder is discontiguous at best.

When this came out, many were apoplectic at how shiny it is. It is shiny and deffo not as piddle n vinegar as Close To Bono's Sideman. The shininess is a result of hard work from a pile of very experienced people. And that's before we get to Jon's see-thru geetar! It is very good work and still a nice song - with a lot of shine (I do like me some shine). it is never slop, even if one prefers less shine and more bodily fluids on the floor.


I have yet to hear anything where someone has used the line of debate about thinkless machines being tools and I have had any sort of potable reaction to the results. The few I have, it has been more of the same gridded grist for the grinder, ie batship boring. Not lovely and shiny or blood on the stage. Just a pretense.

I am not saying it can't be possible; I am saying that slop is not the result of this AI thing, but that Generative is the result of slop. So it won't matter how it was made either way if the mindset is the slop one.


BTW someone accused me of being like you the other day. I was flattered

[wagtunes]

Bones, I read the whole thing and I agree 100%.

Having said that, I will never use AI for anything but vocals because I don't want to give up any part of the process when it comes to the actual writing. I enjoy it too much.

[BONES]

Yeah, it's quite interesting, reasonably thorough and it doesn't attempt to gloss over the issues.

The few I have, it has been more of the same gridded grist for the grinder, ie batship boring. Not lovely and shiny or blood on the stage. Just a pretense.

What is that Yes song but a totally formulaic piece of chart fodder? To me it's the very definition of "slop". OTOH, if you want something with a bit of originality, a bit of soul, this is a much better Love Will Find A Way -

[pdxindy]

Having said that, I will never use AI for anything but vocals because I don't want to give up any part of the process when it comes to the actual writing. I enjoy it too much.

What do you mean when you say actual writing?

[zerocrossing]

Bones, I read the whole thing and I agree 100%.

Having said that, I will never use AI for anything but vocals because I don't want to give up any part of the process when it comes to the actual writing. I enjoy it too much.

The AI that creates a voice model is not like ChatGPT or Sunos. It's a mistake to conflate them, though both use machine learning. One could just as easily train a model to create a plugin that sounded like the Luckyman patch on a Minimoog. What Sunos is doing is... well, the whole thing. "Make a song like Luckyman with that same solo lead sound but make it about pizza and have it in 3/4." I guess there's some creativity in thinking up the prompt, but that's where it ends. I wonder what would happen if I typed in, "Write a song like BONES but good."

[BONES]

You clearly do not understand the process. As Gemini says, if you give it a single prompt and take it no further then, yes, you're creating slop. OTOH, if you take that initial output, or one of the half-dozen Tunee gives you, and refine and iterate on it, as explained elsewhere, until you have something that's actually worth keeping, then you are using AI to take the drudgery out of the creative process, not to co-opt it. You are making all the important creative decisions, the AI is simply implementing them as you instruct it. You're like an art director directing a team of artists.

[wagtunes]

Having said that, I will never use AI for anything but vocals because I don't want to give up any part of the process when it comes to the actual writing. I enjoy it too much.

What do you mean when you say actual writing?

Um, okay.

The lyrics
The melody
The chord structure
The arrangement
The time signature
The tempo

I think that covers everything but I may be missing something. If I am, I want to do that myself too.

[pdxindy]

Having said that, I will never use AI for anything but vocals because I don't want to give up any part of the process when it comes to the actual writing. I enjoy it too much.

What do you mean when you say actual writing?

Um, okay.

The lyrics
The melody
The chord structure
The arrangement
The time signature
The tempo

I think that covers everything but I may be missing something. If I am, I want to do that myself too.

You can write the lyrics, melody and chord structure and have the AI generate the instrument sounds from your midi. It's not really different from using a Kontakt library except the AI will likely do a better job.

[BONES]

Where can you? I'm not aware of any AI that will let you upload MIDI. Google are talking about it but I wasn't aware it was something you could do already.

BTW, WTF is a "chord structure"? It's not a thing I've ever considered, unless it's something I do without being aware that I'm doing it.

[nix808]

it's the key pretty much I think

[wagtunes]

Having said that, I will never use AI for anything but vocals because I don't want to give up any part of the process when it comes to the actual writing. I enjoy it too much.

What do you mean when you say actual writing?

Um, okay.

The lyrics
The melody
The chord structure
The arrangement
The time signature
The tempo

I think that covers everything but I may be missing something. If I am, I want to do that myself too.

You can write the lyrics, melody and chord structure and have the AI generate the instrument sounds from your midi. It's not really different from using a Kontakt library except the AI will likely do a better job.

Okay, you're talking about the performance. I want to do that myself too. I don't want some robot playing my song for me even if it can do a better job. I like the feel of sitting down at the piano or whatever instrument I'm emulating.

@Bones - Chord structure. You know, like a typical 1950's ballad structure like from "In The Still Of The Night" which is C, Am, F, G. In fact, this chord structure is so common among so many songs that Axis Of Awesome did a very famous skit on a similar progression C F Am G

[BBFG#]

I refer to that as "chord progression". Chord structure to me are more about inversions and spacing and whether the chords are open or closed. Because I've been exploring more into Bartok Axis theory along with different ethnic scalings, where I thought it might break me into new territory, I've found I've been doing much of it all along. And yes, the study is still helping to expand further.
I know that's a bit off topic.
More on topic perhaps...
If you tell AI to make it in the style of Marvin Gaye, how quick will the family sue you?

[wagtunes]

I refer to that as "chord progression". Chord structure to me are more about inversions and spacing and whether the chords are open or closed. Because I've been exploring more into Bartok Axis theory along with different ethnic scalings, where I thought it might break me into new territory, I've found I've been doing much of it all along. And yes, the study is still helping to expand further.
I know that's a bit off topic.
More on topic perhaps...
If you tell AI to make it in the style of Marvin Gaye, how quick will the family sue you?

Oh for the love of God, semantics. Are you REALLY going to be this anal about this? Chord structure, chord progression, chord choices, key signature, key changes, it's all the same damn can of corn. I wasn't going to cover every single musical term in the dictionary. I picked whatever was at the top of my head and figured most people would know what I was talking about.

Sheesh, what do I bother?????

[BBFG#]

Not semantics to me as they're two distinct aspects, however related.

You're too defensive.