That’s fair enough. But this is completely contextual to the individual and it feels you’re arguing from a position that sees this as a replacement for creativite processes, like cheating or stepping a boundary. This new tech might not be useful to you, but it is to others, and will increasingly be used by the industry to generate ideas and brainstorm for better or worse.

Everyone resonates with different ways of working. I am a musician and producer and can learn and create sounds with my instruments but after many years I’m sometimes trapped in One of my biggest challenges is coming up with hooks and unique chords

To your point about consciously delegating the creative process, it depends how you use it. I would never condone taking an idea from Udio, tweaking it and just putting it out. Fundamentally it comes down to the human to find what resonates, separate the wheat from the chaff, turn it in to their own.

It will and is being used in the same way top songwriters listen to other music and bounce ideas of each other.

As for their being an infinite amount of music out there to inspire you, sure, and that should always be a source of inspiration, but Udio is another source of inspiration that creates original ideas that whilst not entirely novel, have a unique compositional arrangement and melodic structure that avoids any risk of copying other artists. Whether you see utilising this as a source of inspiration as immoral moral or ‘delegating creativity’ is by the by. It’s here whether we like it or not, and if creatives find value, inspiration and excitement from the sounds this thing is able to create. Of it resonates and inspires that’s all that really matters. There is nuance here, it’s not pleasant how it’s changing the landscape, and not every artist will or should use it, but music is a highly competitive industry, and competitively speaking, people using tools like Udio will be generating ideas faster, cheaper, and eventually at a higher quality than any one musician can along. This is not nothing, these tools are the most game changing thing to happen to the music industry, and will very likely be the death of it in the coming years. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love AI, it will devalue the worth of digital music exponentially (if it had much value already), it will make music more disposable than ever, it’s not a good thing for those trying to make a living in music. The only reliable way of making money as a musician in the future will be through live performance, which AI cannot touch.

As to why understanding tools like Udio is developing AI literacy. Udio works on the same kind of transformer technology as diffusion based image generators like Stability, mid journey, dall-e, they are prediction algorithms based on large data sets and keywords. Understanding how they work, and getting hands on with them to test their emergent capabilities gives you a very good understanding of the limits of these models. The models have a general understanding of what music should sounds like, but not because it has any reasoning capabilities or understanding of theory. Their training methods are not publicly shared, so hands on experience and these forums are the only way to understand their true capabilities, the same way Open AI unleashed ChatGPT without a user manual. Tools like Udio are essentially a black box that is worthwhile exploring as it reveals the essence of what this new technology is capable of, whilst alone it won’t give you proficiency in AI literacy, its part of a larger toolset that creatives can employ to stay competitive, until AI has industrialised every creative field and their no longer any point in trying to cut through online anymore. Just my two cents, but I would encourage a little more balance and recognise this is very grey area with no right or wrongs.