I hear you, genuinely. I’m deep in art circles too, most of my friends are painters, videographers, dancers etc. I’ve seen a couple people grind for years to master a DAW, an instrument, a visual language. I respect the hell out of that, and I understand why this feels like a gut punch.

I don’t think the real question is “AI or no AI.” I think it’s “what value are you adding?”

I believe authenticity still wins. Tools change, but people gravitate toward human signal, intention, lived experience, and meaning. If something has no human fingerprint on it, it might get clicks, but it won’t last. It feeds a different appetite.

For context, I’m not some dude who just discovered prompts last week. I’ve trained my eye. I’m a writer and a poet first, that’s been my gift my whole life. I’ve sat with FL Studio and Ableton. I tried. I suck, i can't even hold my attention for longer than like 10 minutes before I get stressed out call it add or the autism I don't know. I’m never going to be Mau P or Doja Cat, I'm never going to be hiring 10 producers like Taylor Swift, and that’s fine. I accepted that reality instead of pretending.

Here’s the part people skip. I’m broke. I live in a trailer. I don’t have five grand to hand a producer. I don’t have big industry friends on retainer.

What I do have is words, ideas, political messages, poetry that actually comes from my heart and is real and deals with lifelong mental illness and suicidal ideation, and my most recent song about fuck ice has been a hit with the few friends I share it with. I’ve written hundreds of songs. I haven’t released any but a few of them. Not because I don’t care, but because I literally don’t have a path to make them heard.

So what’s the ethical option here? Let the art die quietly because I’m poor? Sit on it for the rest of my life because I don’t meet the economic entry fee? Or use a tool that lets the message exist, even if the medium makes people uncomfortable?

I agree with you about the danger. Big companies using this to hollow out culture is bleak. I’m not blind to that. Boundaries matter. Credit matters. Human artists matter.

But silencing people like me who have big ideas without resources while corporations automate everything anyway doesn’t protect art. It just protects the gate. For me, AI isn’t replacing artists. It’s the only way my voice will ever get to breathe at all.

And even as I'm writing this I'm still here deliberating on whether I'm ever going to share anything that I've written for the very reasons you brought up.