For Father's Day this year, I made my husband an original storybook starring him and our daughter as superheroes. Every illustration was AI-generated using a combination of ChatGPT and Midjourney, but the story, the memories, and the feelings it captured were entirely our own.
As AI-generated images, music, and writing become more common, the conversation around AI and creativity has become impossible to ignore. While I've been an ongoing critic of many of AI's potential impacts, I've also been consistently hopeful that AI ultimately pushes us to think more deeply about what makes us human. Creativity is one of those things.
I don't believe AI-generated art or music can replace human expression, nor should it. Great art reflects lived experience, perspective, emotion, and years of dedication to a craft. As these tools become more capable, protecting and celebrating artists is more important than ever.
At the same time, I think there's something genuinely exciting about AI's ability to lower the barriers to creativity. Throughout history, new technologies have expanded who gets to create. Cameras made photography accessible to millions of people.
For the first time, someone with no musical training can write lyrics, experiment with different genres, and create an original song. You don't have to believe AI will produce the next great musical album (it likely won’t) to appreciate what these tools make possible. More people can experiment, tell stories, and express themselves in ways that simply weren't possible before.
This week, we're going to give it a try.
Before we start: if you are getting this email forwarded to you and are not yet part of the lab - you can join the tiny AI lab here.
The Challenge:
This week, we're going to experiment with AI music generation.
Even if you've never written a song or never thought of yourself as musical, spend an hour creating in a medium you may never have explored before.
Start with an idea: a story, a memory, a place, or just a feeling you want to capture. Use an LLM to help develop the concept and the lyrics, then use a tool like Mureka AI or Make Best Music to bring it to life with music. Note: you can also ask your LLM for a tool suggestion.
The prompt to get you started
Drop this into your AI of choice to get started:
I want to create an original song using AI. Before we get started, ask me 5–7 questions to understand the story I want to tell, the emotions I want the song to capture, and the style of music I'm looking for.
Once you have enough context, recommend the best AI music generation tool for my project and explain why. Then help me write the lyrics and create a detailed prompt that I can use to generate the song.
Too easy?
Treat AI like you're working with a recording studio.
Experiment with different genres, tempos, instrumentation, vocal styles, and emotional tones. Ask it to make the chorus more uplifting, the vocals more intimate, or the overall sound feel nostalgic, cinematic, or energetic.
Try the same lyrics as an indie folk song, a ballad, or an upbeat pop anthem and see how dramatically the feeling changes.
One of the most valuable AI skills is learning how to give creative direction. The more clearly you can communicate the feeling you're trying to create, the closer the result will be to your vision.
Listen to my song and help me improve it through iteration rather than rewriting it from scratch.
Suggest five different creative directions I could explore by changing the genre, instrumentation, tempo, vocal style, emotional tone, or song structure. For each direction, explain how those changes would affect the way the song feels and provide an updated prompt I can use to generate a new version.
Finally, recommend which version you think best captures the story I'm trying to tell and explain why.
Why this matters?
We often talk about AI in terms of productivity, but I think its impact on creativity is just as important.
For many people, the biggest barrier to creating hasn't been a lack of ideas. It's been a lack of talent. In my opinion AI won't replace the musicians, writers, filmmakers, and artists who spend years mastering their craft. Their work remains uniquely human and deserves to be valued and protected.
What AI can do is invite more people into the creative process. It gives us another medium for expressing our ideas, telling our stories, and exploring our creativity.I believe the future isn't one where AI replaces human art. It's one where more people have the opportunity to create and where human creativity becomes even more meaningful because of it.
That’s it for this week.
Hit reply and tell me what you thought of the challenge this week.
I read every response, and your experience helps me shape these challenges. If you get stuck or have questions, reach me at [email protected]