Every Creative Revolution Has A Shadow.

Why AI isn’t the end of creativity—it’s just the next tool
By Michael-Patrick Moroney

“Like most inventions that improve human life, the printing press met with skepticism and resistance.”
- Sarah Bakewell

When the printing press democratized information, it flooded the world with both Shakespeare and sensationalist pamphlets. In the 15th century, Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that "printing had fallen into the hands of unlettered men, who corrupted almost everything." Photography, too, was met with fear. As early as 1901, critics warned that it might "entirely supersede the art of painting."

The same tension returned with synthesizers, with samplers, with the rise of MTV. Critics called it the end of musicianship. But from those circuits and chips came Trans-Europe Express, OK Computer, and the birth of electronic storytelling on a global scale.

The Flood Isn’t the Failure

More recently, DAWs and MIDI opened up music production to anyone with a laptop. Flat, derivative tracks saturated SoundCloud, but they also made room for a 13-year-old Billie Eilish recording vocals under a blanket and Kendrick Lamar building layered sound worlds like To Pimp a Butterfly.

“We don't like studios. I hate not seeing daylight... I hate being far away and singing alone in a room.”
- Billie Eilish

That bedroom workflow gave Billie and her brother Finneas not just control, but intimacy. The sound wasn’t cheap - it was close.

And now, as we enter the AI era, we’re watching this pattern repeat. Content is being generated faster than ever, and much of it feels soulless. But that’s not a flaw of the tools. It’s the predictable cost of access.

The flood isn’t the failure. It’s the threshold.

Every Artist Starts by Copying

One of the louder critiques of AI is that it learns by ingesting and remixing existing work - without permission. That’s a valid concern. But let’s also be honest: that’s how humans learn, too.

“One of Picasso’s notable characteristics was his need to transform existing works of art, to compose variations on a theme, such as “Cranach the Younger’s Portrait of a Woman” which became his first linocut in colour.” - Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler

Musicians learn by playing other people’s songs. Painters emulate their heroes. Filmmakers storyboard scenes they’ve memorized. Mimicry isn’t a shortcut, it’s the groundwork. What matters isn’t whether you start with influence. It’s what you do with it.

And increasingly, the tools available - from AI to loop stations to home rigs - allow individuals to do what once required a full team.

Singular Voices, Amplified by Tech

Electronic musician Holly Herndon created a choral ensemble out of AI-generated versions of her own voice.

“My voice is my instrument—but it’s also my dataset.”
- Holly Herndon

She’s not replacing people. She’s expanding what one person can express.

Visual artist Nick Gentry repurposes obsolete media - floppy disks, VHS tape- into human portraits. His work is a kind of reverse engineering: tech artifacts reimagined into something intimate.

In film, David Lynch praised digital video for being “lightweight, modern, and beautiful.” Sean Baker shot Tangerine on an iPhone and, within a decade, was winning top honors for Anora, a film that proved you don’t need a gatekeeper to make something worthy of a stage.

Machines as Co-Creators

Then there’s Refik Anadol, who trains AI on huge datasets - cityscapes, museum collections, weather systems - and turns them into immersive, evolving installations.

“There’s a desire. There’s a prompt; there’s a request; there is an input. I think this is pure collaboration—imagination with a machine.”
- Refik Anadol

Siebren Versteeg programs generative systems that paint abstract works digitally, then brings them into the physical world.

“The digital pursuit of the paint stroke becomes an impossible quest to encode the infinite.”
- Siebren Versteeg

These aren’t gimmicks. They’re invitations. The machine isn’t replacing the artist; it’s becoming part of the medium.

But What About the Risks?

Of course, there’s a darker current beneath all this. We’re not just talking about beat-making tools or design apps. We’re talking about models that can learn at scale, reshape industries, and erode trust.

There are real dangers: misinformation, surveillance, labor collapse, bias, power concentration. The cat is out of the bag. We can’t put it back in.

But maybe - just maybe - art is how we talk to the machine?

Not to tame it, but to understand it. To explore it. To reflect back what we see and ask: is this us?

Art is how we’ve always negotiated change. It’s where we metabolize complexity. And maybe now, it’s where we figure out how to be human, with the machine in the room.

Final Thought

AI will not make the work good or bad. It will just make it possible.

And what we do with that possibility, that’s still the human part.

Michael-Patrick Moroney is a creative consultant, producer, and technologist who has spent over two decades helping artists, designers, brands, and storytellers navigate shifts in technology - from the dot-com days to the rise of AI. He runs Contact High Music and continues to release work across media, build tools, and collaborate across disciplines.