Music and artificial intelligence… what a combination! You know, I’ve done countless talks and interviews on this topic over the past two or three years, and every time, I’ve changed my mind. Because with the speed at which everything is evolving, you barely have time to form an opinion before you have to rethink it! It’s like… well, like being at a restaurant and ordering a plate of pasta, and when the waiter arrives, he says, “Oh, sorry, we’ve changed the menu. Now we’ll bring you a pizza with lasagna inside.” And you say, “But excuse me, I wanted pasta!” And he replies, “But it’s the same, isn’t it? It just has cheese in it now.” And you’re left sitting there, confused, wondering if what you’re eating is really food or a lab experiment.
At first, I used to say, “No, artificial intelligence will never replace composers and musicians. Just listen to how basic the results are!” Then I reconsidered, thinking, “Well, yes, it’s good at imitating, but it lacks quality, it lacks originality.” And now? Now I’ve come to terms with it, but… there’s a catch. And maybe I’ve figured out what it is.
The issue is that artificial intelligence is like an artist who has studied too much—a bit like the guy who starts playing the piano only after reading the manual, but without ever truly feeling the music. Yet, when you “train” it well, as we say in the music world, well, holy smokes, it starts producing results that… damn, they’re even good! But there’s always that little detail, that pinch of “human” that’s missing. It’s like having a perfect orchestra but without the conductor who knows when to pause, when to improvise, when to add that touch of madness.
Do you know what Suno is? It’s a super fun app that lets you create a song in an instant. You tell it what kind of track you want, and voilà—it produces everything: instrumental, vocals, lyrics, arrangement, mastering, all with a result that, if it weren’t morally questionable, would be almost impressive. You can make a love ballad or a dance track without lifting a finger. Or maybe just one finger, to press “Create.” If you don’t know it, you should try it out, form your own opinion, and maybe even scare yourself a little. Sure, the result is good, but it’s not quite the same if you’re a true musician, with heart and passion for every note. But that’s not even what I want to talk about—it’s another statement that makes my skin crawl.
The CEO of Suno, Mikey Shulman, said, “Making music isn’t really enjoyable now. It takes a lot of time, a lot of practice, and you need to become very skilled with an instrument or production software,” Shulman explained. “And I think most people don’t enjoy most of the time they spend making music.” It sounds like the complaint of a frustrated and failed aspiring musician who, after trying to play guitar for five minutes, realizes that to become good, you need to study and that you aren’t born knowing how. But, ultimately, it’s the frustration of the new generations who watch short videos on social media of people doing phenomenal things, without understanding that behind those 15 seconds of performance are years of study, failures, sweat, and sacrifice.
Now, if I were to take this statement and adapt it to relationships, imagine someone saying, “Relationships have become too complicated. You no longer need to spend years getting to know someone, struggling to find the right balance. Now you can just say what you want, and the other person will give you exactly what you’re looking for, no problem.” That phrase, like the CEO’s, is not just a trivialization of what truly matters but a mockery of everything that makes relationships—and music—meaningful. There is always a need for effort, hard work, and sacrifices to create something of value.
After all, making music is no longer like it used to be, just as relationships aren’t what they once were. Once upon a time, love was simple: you met someone, probably in a local diner, talked about your favorite novels—Proust, if you wanted to be sophisticated, Hemingway, if you wanted to seem masculine—and before you knew it, you were married and arguing over who should sleep on the left side of the bed. Romantic efficiency! Now? Relationships are like producing a symphony with software you’ve never used before: time-consuming, emotionally costly, and often requiring technical support.
Think about it: Shulman says, “It takes a lot of practice, a lot of time, and you have to be really good.” Doesn’t that perfectly describe a modern relationship? It’s no longer about meeting someone who laughs at your jokes and tolerates your mother; it’s about compatibility algorithms, attachment styles, and, for heaven’s sake, emotional availability. The work required is immense. First of all, you have to know yourself. And that’s already a full-time job, and once you get there (spoiler: you never fully get there), you also have to “communicate.” Like an IT technician trying to troubleshoot a relationship that won’t start properly.
Oh, and let’s not forget another parallel: perfection. Shulman talks about needing to be “really good” with your instrument or software. Relationships now demand impeccability. You can’t have an off day. You can’t simply say, “I’m too tired to care about the drama of your third cousin’s wedding.” No! You must participate. You must be emotionally present, supportive, intellectually stimulating, and at least marginally attractive—every single day!
Maybe we’ve lost the spontaneous joy of making a mess. Love, like music, was never meant to be perfect. It was meant to be noisy, chaotic, sometimes off-key. So let’s stop producing relationships as if they were conceptual albums and go back to humming our feelings, even if we’re out of tune. Who knows? The mistakes might just be the best part.
And yet, we’re expected to believe that the future lies entirely in a click. No more sweat, no more mistakes, no more “let’s go back to this part” after weeks of rehearsals. Oh, how convenient. But it’s also a little creepy, isn’t it? It’s like being told that the only thing that matters is the surface, efficiency, performance. And all that remains is the sound, but not the music.
Yet the truth is that the beauty of music—and, more broadly, of art and life—is exactly that: the time you invest, the winding path, the constant pursuit of perfection that will never arrive. Making music, or creating, doesn’t mean being perfect—it means being involved in a process that is halfway between inspiration and failure. It’s not just work; it’s an experience, an act of living. Just like relationships—the real ones, the complicated ones—are never perfect. There’s always something unresolved, a melody that doesn’t sound the way you’d like, but it belongs to you, it speaks about you in a way no algorithm could ever imitate.
Music isn’t about perfection; it’s about passion and dedication. When you spend years mastering an instrument or writing a song, you’re not just trying to improve technically—you’re trying to understand yourself better, to explore yourself in a way you can’t achieve with an app. And that search, that failure, that constant improvement—that’s what makes music truly alive. Life is made of imperfect attempts, of wrong notes that turn into something unique, just like us.
So yes, Suno is fun. But maybe the real beauty of music—and life—is that we’ll never be perfect. And you know what? That’s perfectly okay.