AI, Music, and the Freedom to Create Without Asking Permission
AI, Music, and the Freedom to Create Without Asking Permission By Gerson Ramos
Music has always been one of the deepest forms of human expression. Before it became an industry, a market, a platform, a contract, a record label, or an algorithm, it was impulse, pain, celebration, revolt, prayer, memory, and identity.
That is why, when I see part of the current debate about artificial intelligence in music being reduced to a shallow war between “real musicians” and “AI creators,” I realize that we are facing a discussion far smaller than the phenomenon itself demands.
The most important question is not: “Is this real music?”
The most important question is: who has the right to create, experiment, produce, distribute, and reach an audience?
Music has always walked side by side with technology. The electric guitar was once a novelty. The synthesizer was once treated as a threat. The sampler was accused of destroying music. Recording software changed studios. Plugins, virtual instruments, sound libraries, digital editors, and distribution platforms completely transformed the way musicians, producers, and artists work.
Now artificial intelligence has arrived.
And, as happens with every major technological change, fear, prejudice, and attempts at control begin to emerge.
But AI did not come from outside humanity. It is a human creation. It was imagined, researched, programmed, trained, and improved by people. Criticizing the existence of a tool created by human intelligence itself, simply because it changes the way production happens, is a contradiction difficult to sustain.
The problem is not the tool. The problem is how some people react to what is new.
Some see opportunity. Some see threat. Some want to learn. And some want to forbid.
I deeply respect musicians, composers, producers, audio technicians, sound engineers, and everyone involved in the music production chain. I played drums, had a band when I was younger, played with my brother, who was a bass player, took guitar lessons several times, and have lived closely with many talented musicians. I know the value of those who spend years developing technique, ear, sensitivity, and artistic presence.
But I also learned something: playing an instrument does not automatically make someone creative. And not playing an instrument does not prevent someone from having artistic vision.
Creating is not only executing.
Creating is also imagining, directing, choosing, organizing, editing, feeling, producing, narrating, and giving form to something that previously existed only inside someone.
There are technically brilliant musicians who cannot create something memorable. There are producers who turn a simple idea into a powerful work. There are audio editors who save a recording. There are directors who do not act, but who guide great actors. There are football coaches who were never stars, but understand the game deeply. There are bakers who make bread so good that people line up around the block.
Talent does not have only one form.
For me, artificial intelligence is a tool. A new instrument. Just like a guitar, a synthesizer, editing software, a camera, a production suite, or a digital studio.
The tool does not create by itself. It responds to the mind, the intention, the repertoire, the sensitivity, and the vision of the person using it.
In my case, AI tools allowed me to artistically reach what I could not execute alone through traditional instruments. I do not present myself as a guitarist, singer, conductor, or virtuoso instrumentalist. I see myself as a digital music producer, creative director, and builder of conceptual universes.
I create music, lyrics, images, videos, atmospheres, narratives, and visual identities based on what I feel, observe, and think about the world. I do it alone, within the time I have, using the tools available to me. And I do it first for myself. If other people like it, I am happy and proud. But the origin of the creation remains internal.
I create what I hear in my own universe. What I feel inside and outside myself. What I see in the world. What bothers me. What moves me.
Empty criticism does not interest me. If I do not like a song, I simply do not listen to it. If I do not like a video, I do not watch it. If a style does not appeal to me, I move on. I do not need to destroy someone else’s work to validate my own taste.
It is like two friends: one likes beer, the other prefers whisky. That does not prevent conversation, coexistence, respect, or exchange of ideas. The problem begins when someone turns personal preference into a moral tribunal.
Music Has Been Digital for a Long Time
There is another point that must be said clearly: modern music has been deeply digital for decades.
Musicians, producers, arrangers, mixing technicians, mastering engineers, and independent creators use platforms, plugins, virtual libraries, synthesizers, editors, correction tools, samplers, sequencers, sound banks, digital instruments, and production software every day.
Much of what is now treated as a “threat” has already been part of contemporary music production for a long time. The difference is that AI accelerated, expanded, and democratized possibilities that previously required more structure, more money, more people, or more technical mastery.
An open-minded musician can use AI to test arrangements, explore harmonies, search for timbres, generate ideas, simulate atmospheres, hear alternative paths, and then take all of that back to their guitar, bass, drums, piano, voice, or studio.
A producer can use AI as a creative laboratory. A composer can unlock a melody. A lyricist can test variations. An editor can save time. An independent artist can build a sonic and visual identity without depending on a structure they never had.
This does not diminish the talented musician. On the contrary: in the hands of someone good, any new tool can expand the result.
The problem is not AI. The problem is the closed mind that looks at a new tool and sees only a threat, without realizing that it can also become an extension of one’s own talent.
The question is not whether AI will replace musicians. The question is whether artists, musicians, producers, and creators will have the humility and intelligence to understand that technology can also expand their work.
Shallow use of a tool produces trash. But that existed long before AI.
With or without AI, bad music will continue to exist. Just as bad music has always existed, made by humans, with real instruments, in expensive studios, and with large structures behind it. An instrument does not guarantee soul. Software does not guarantee vision. A budget does not guarantee originality.
Creativity remains human.
The difference is that now more people can try to express it.
Creative Freedom Is Not the Absence of Value
Defending creative freedom does not mean defending that everything should be free, without authorship, without compensation, without licensing, and without respect for the work of those who create.
The artist needs freedom, but also value. The artist needs to be able to experiment, publish, and circulate, but also to negotiate, be paid, and sustain their own production.
The problem is not the existence of a market.
The problem is when the market becomes closed, concentrated, abusive, and hostile to the independent creator.
This distinction is essential. One thing is to criticize old structures, monopolies, bad contracts, concentration of power, dependence on intermediaries, and models that leave the creator at the end of the line. Another very different thing is to destroy the very idea of artist compensation.
The musician needs to make a living. The composer needs to be paid. The producer needs to be compensated. The technician needs to be valued. The creator needs to have control over their work.
"That is why the mature debate is not “AI versus musicians."
The mature debate is: who controls creation, distribution, compensation, and visibility in the music market?
For decades, large structures tried to define who could record, who could be played on radio, who could be distributed, who could appear, who would be signed, who would have exposure, and who would remain invisible.
With the internet, part of that control was shaken.
With streaming, another model was consolidated.
With AI, a new dispute has begun.
The dominant market likes to present every change as a threat. But often, the threat is not against art. It is against control.
Before AI, There Was Already a Search for Autonomy
My view on music, technology, and creative autonomy did not begin now, with artificial intelligence.
I do not write this from the enthusiasm of someone who has just discovered a new tool. I come from more than three decades working with technology, digital business, processes, software licensing, auditing, intellectual property, and the development of projects for creative markets.
I also bring a lifetime of proximity to music: I played drums, had a band, studied guitar, lived among musicians, and followed debates about copyright, digital distribution, the internet, compensation, and the independent market.
Still in the early stages of music’s digital transformation, I participated in debates about the internet, cultural distribution, copyright, independent music, and new models of relationship between artists and the public.
At that time, the discussion revolved around downloads, sharing, digital platforms, compensation, licensing, the survival of artists outside traditional structures, and new forms of direct connection between creator and audience.
For years, I studied the productive chain of music, audiovisual work, digital arts, and online education. I followed the independent market, wrote, tested ideas, developed platform models, designed processes, business flows, interfaces, distribution systems, licensing, direct sales, compensation, promotion, knowledge sharing, and relationships between creators and the public.
It was not just a vague idea.
I structured how platforms would work, the departments, the operational stages, the revenue models, the distribution channels, the audiences involved, and the logic of relationship between those who create, those who consume, those who license, those who buy, and those who distribute.
I also worked for many years in technology, contracts, software licensing, auditing, law applied to intellectual property, and market process analysis. This taught me to look beyond the artistic surface and understand how contracts, licenses, platforms, intermediaries, revenue models, productive chains, and control structures operate.
That is why, when I speak about AI music, I am not looking only at the tool.
I am looking at the entire ecosystem. I am looking at who creates. Who distributes. Who licenses. Who monetizes. Who controls access. Who defines the rules. And who remains at the end of the line receiving less than they should.
The musician often knows their instrument, their language, and their artistic sensitivity deeply, but does not always know the economic, legal, and technological machinery operating around their own work.
And it was precisely on that lack of information that many intermediaries built power for decades.
I do not say this to attack musicians. On the contrary. I say it because I respect the work of those who create, and I believe the artist needs to better understand their own market so they do not become merely raw material for structures that profit more than they do.
Artificial intelligence, in this context, is just another stage in an old dispute: the dispute for autonomy.
Before, it was digital music distribution ideas, portals, platforms, business models, digital environments, independent networks, direct licensing, and spaces for sharing knowledge.
Today, it is also artificial intelligence, generative music, image, video, editing, creative automation, and digital production.
Technology changes.
The question remains the same: who has the right to create, publish, distribute, sell, experiment, and exist artistically without asking permission from the owners of the market?
The Fear of Losing Control
Much of the resistance to AI-made music does not come from a serious analysis of art, technology, or authorship. It comes from prejudice, insecurity, and control.
Of course there are legitimate discussions. Authorship, compensation, misuse of works, contracts, model training, transparency, and creators’ rights are real issues and deserve serious debate.
But this debate cannot be used as an excuse to reduce all AI-assisted creation to fraud, laziness, or lack of talent.
There is a difference between discussing fair rules and trying to prevent new forms of creation from existing.
When a technology, a platform, or an idea threatens intermediaries, vanities, small circles of control, or closed structures, the attacks begin.
Sometimes they come as moralistic criticism. Sometimes as technical contempt. Sometimes as attempts at ridicule. Sometimes as an abstract defense of the “purity of art.”
But often, deep down, it is not about protecting art. It is about preserving the monopoly of validation.
Who decides what legitimate creation is? Who decides who can be called an artist? Who decides which tool is acceptable? Who decides which creative path deserves respect?
These questions matter.
Because every time a cultural, economic, or technological elite concentrates too much power of validation, the independent creator pays the price.
AI is uncomfortable because it allows more people to experiment. It allows more people to produce. It allows more people to test ideas. It allows someone without a label, without a studio, without a band, without a budget, and without a team to give form to a vision.
That does not guarantee quality.
But it guarantees possibility.
And possibility is exactly what closed markets tend to fear.
The Future Should Not Be a War
Artificial intelligence does not need to be the enemy of musicians. It can be a tool for musicians, producers, composers, lyricists, editors, visual creators, and independent artists to expand their capacity for creation and production.
The future should not be “AI versus musicians.”
It should be: how can musicians, producers, composers, and independent creators use new tools to create more, explore more, depend less on closed structures, and better preserve the value of their own work?
Art has never stood still.
The camera did not kill painting. Cinema did not kill theater. The synthesizer did not kill music. The computer did not kill the studio. The internet did not kill creation. AI will not kill art.
It will force everyone to rethink processes, authorship, value, markets, distribution, and creativity.
That is frightening.
But it also opens a path.
The future of art does not belong to those who want to freeze the world in the format they already know. It belongs to those who have the courage to think differently, learn new tools, respect different talents, and understand that human creation has always walked alongside technology.
The tool changes.
Human vision remains at the center.
And perhaps this is what bothers people the most: AI does not eliminate creativity. It reveals who truly has something to say.
Gerson Ramos is a content creator, digital designer, video editor, cultural producer, and technology consultant with more than three decades of experience in IT, digital business, software licensing, auditing, intellectual property, and the development of projects for creative markets.