I'm thinking that I might just start replying to comments with whichever page or pages from this works.
Did I miss any? (Thought of two more - they're in the comments).
I hope you enjoy the allusions in here. Of course, the type 10s will think a computer thought of it all.
This was a reply I made to a a thread in the aiwars sub. It pretty much encapsulates an idea that I wanted to post here, so, in lieu of typing something nearly identical a second time, here it is:
Why is AI art worth something?
Because like any form of expression It provides catharsis through the release ideas and emotions put into some medium.
It's probably the best if I describe a specific situation to you. (If you also have a story about AI providing something like this to you, I'd love to hear it in a reply).
I'm a writer and literary academic. Spending most of my time teaching, I don't get the time to devote to actually getting around to writing the novel(s) that I know I have in me. I keep it to short stories, and lord knows I haven't written one of those in a long time now. Writing has, for me, lost a lot of its joy. I'm good with prose; however, it requires a lot of energy to get anything down.
I also consider myself pretty handy with the odd poetic couplet, but extended musical lyrical ability has always eluded me. I can more than carry a tune vocally, but I don't have the time or inclination to learn a musical instrument or assemble a band.
This is where Suno comes in.
A month or two ago I had recently re-watched Arcane (strongly recommend if you haven't seen it), and the Lit nerd in me compared Jinx to other "created" monsters across the gamut of literature, TV, gaming, and music. Characters who just didn't deserve what happened to them. Didn't fall due to some hubris or inherent flaw -- just were done dirty by people and the world and the situation. Some parallels I considered were Pink from Pink Floyd's The Wall, Blaine the Mono from Stephen King's Dark Tower series and Frankenstein's Creature from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I thought about the nature of trauma and of the line between good and evil. For weeks I kicked around the parallel's between Jinx and The Creature - rejected, craving connection and acceptance, hurting people out of grief and rage, feared, deeply lonely - this seemed like a fun story to have exist. Writing it as a piece of prose would have been exceptionally cheesy, and poetry wasn't the right medium either. It had to be a song.
Problem is - I'm terrible at lyrics. I knew the song would be called "I Heard a Story" and would be a meta crossover situation where a somewhat lucid Jinx, still heavily fortified by her own survival technique of mythologising herself as a self-made monster, fundamentally wrong and broken, got hold of Frankenstein and read the story. I imagined her internal monologue. "Poor sap. Ha. Yep. That's what people do to ya. I'm not like that, though. Me, I'm the real thing." The various verses would be about her thinking about some other key way the "poor little monster" was screwed over by the big bad world before choruses would reassure herself that she's the true monster. By the third verse - the one that touches too close and too similar to her greatest need of all - there needed to be an implied "oh shit" moment where she realises that what she's feeling for The Creature isn't sympathy at all but is, horrifyingly, deep, visceral, empathy. "I've been banging on like a badass about the poor little monster, but I'm exactly the fucking same. Shit. SHIT. I can't stay here. I have to be anywhere but here!" - in the song the final chorus breaks, she starts to make spoken denials. The absurdity of her self myth is fractured and the truth can't be unseen. The song would end with a final attempt at denial followed by a defeated "I have to go think about some stuff" and a door slam.
I told all of this to ChatGPT. I gave it key phrases, wrote ALL of the "break" and prose-adjacent moments. Then I went into Suno. I asked for things like a kick drum to sound like a heartbeat to mimic the sense of the fundamental, unifying nature of life. I asked for heavy industrial synths to create a sinister edge and counteracted that with a music-box sound that I fiddled with in the prompt until it sounded heavier, almost like a metallophone - symbolic of hardened innocence.
Suno made the music from a voice and soundscape that I prompted.
ChatGPT wrote a good part of the lyrics based on my detailed instructions (far more detailed than what you see here). It also incorporated my own pre-written parts.
But the idea? The allusion? The parallels? The symbolism? That was all me.
And like all creation - it felt good to do. I felt like something that I wanted to express now existed.
Here it is if you care - https://suno.com/song/e7002f33-afcc-4831-9ba0-55ef021689a9
You don't have to like it. You don't have to care about the stories or the characters?
You can think that I'm a bit of a dag for wanting to create a crossover song between lit and a TV show.
But was there not a meaningful creative process here?
Can you deny it?
Does this deserve the characterisation of "Oh, you just wrote 'create a song about how Jinx is like Frankenstein's creature in a box and AI spat it out'"?
Are the MANY people creating fan art, drawn by hand based on the original art from the TV series being more creative? People who decry "ai slop" but who aren't exactly original themselves.
No matter how you feel, can you understand how satisfying this can be?
I can't even imagine how liberating this technology must be for people with no particular skills at all when it comes to artistic expression. At least I could always write. Now they have this and I celebrate that for them.
I really hate how toxic the AI debate has become.
For some it's like an ideological crusade that demands absolute moral purity.
As a lover of certain fandoms, I like to compliment physical artists - the people who have the actual manual skills to draw or paint characters and situations that I love.
I leave comments like "You're so clever. I wish I could draw like you".
What would be great is to not have to then worry about whether this person's appreciation would turn to horror and rage (as it sometimes does when I put myself out there like that) if they click on my profile and see that I like to mess around with GenAI.
I suspect that there are a lot of users of GenAI who consider outselves more "conceptualists" than "artists", or at the very least do not think of ourselves as on the same level as people who can actually create beauty with their very own hands. We just use the term "Ai Art" because.... what else do you do? The "Ai" modifier is enough to say it's not the same as manually created art.
To me it seems a great shame that someone who loves the same things that I do would like to stop me expressing myself in the best way that I am able, given the lack of talent in particular mediums.
I can (and do) write manually and hold two degrees related to this, and it matters not a jot to me if people use Ai to compose stories based on their ideas. I would probably even like to suggest ways to prompt AI into writing more effectively and how to get it to self-edit to remove AI tics. I wouldn't consider the AI writing to hold the same value as something that I had laboriously composed over months or years, but if it makes someone happy, what skin is it off my nose?
The only reason that I don't really consider myself a physical artist right now is the fact that I'm far too busy and tired to create stories right now, despite 228 pages worth of notes for a novel I will probably never write.
The key area we seem to disagree is the "stolen art for training" point. I'm sorry; I won't ever agree here. I don't see AI training as particularly different from physical artists being inspired by other creators, just as my early scribblings were heavily influenced by the turn of phrase of Douglas Adams. There's a discussion to be had about ways for AI companies to provide payment to rights holders if IP is used in training, but that would require people to sit down at the nuance table, which no one seems to want to do right now.
When I originally workshopped this voice I thought it was for one throwaway song, but I just love how versatile and fun it is giving the audio quality of the voice the precise diction and tone that turns it into a believable version of this character.
I'm really happy with how the build in the third chorus worked out here.
I consider myself fairly centrist in terms of political views -- I'm not an American, so in US terms this puts me firmly in the progressive camp since the US is to the right of other western, English speaking nations.
And yet most of the progressive spaces I inhabit are the most venomously anti-ai.
Why is this?
Isn't progressivism about embracing the new and the change?
You would think it would be crusty old conservatives digging their heels in and fighting the reality of the modern world.
Is everyone worried about the usefulness of their arts degree?
Sadly, we seem to be seeing an attempt to "cancel" AI that's unnervingly similar to other absolutist moral purity crusades. That tactic doesn't work anymore. It only leads to a stifling of reasonable debate and leads to backlash even worse than the thing you were worried about in the first place.
One of the things that sucks the most about the insane hatred of AI in much of the art community is how much it needlessly divides us.
So often I see artwork done, especially when it’s on a subject that I care about, by a real artist and I want to leave a supportive comment saying something like - You’re very talented. I wish I could draw like you. I love this”, but have AI on your profile and I feel like they’re as as likely as not going to lay into me if they click on my name.
I feel as though there’s this myth going around that we all think we’re just as manually talented as they are.
How good would it be if we could all be happy for the good elements of whatever we do, or if we don’t like any of it, just stfu about it?
I don't want to abuse the sharing here with everything I create, but this one really pleased me. Even it's a bit longer than I like, I was really happy with it came out. Again, Suno's ability to build mood and tone into both the music and voice via inferences from the lyrics amazes me.
The central conceit of this one is the idea of the character Jinx, fresh from two seasons of Arcane, addressing Riot Games, her creators with a bit of a "well, that was needlessly agonizing" yet simultaneously reflecting on the far more robust character she's become than the League Jinx who was basically all id-driven, shallow chaos who reset at the end of every battle and refusing to be defined in that way anymore. No going back, even if it would erase the pain. By the end of Arcane she's >!already considered oblivion and made the decision (with some help) to keep existing. Reverting to League Jinx would be the same undoing of personhood.!<
The "Don't you dare take that away" closer to the chorus was a particular key moment for me and I wasn't sure how well Suno would treat that late turn in sentiment in the chorus, but I think it worked well.
Hope if you're a fan of the show and the character that you enjoy. This is one of my favourites. It's a lot different to the chaos of some of the other ones.
To read on social media you would think that the world absolutely despises everything about AI.
In real life I see almost none of it. Even in more grounded social media spaces I see none of it.
My local butcher (a beloved local institution) uses Ai digital flyers to promote their "sausage of the week" every week, and not once have I seen someone complaining about this or calling for boycotts.
Meanwhile at work everyone is being encouraged to attend AI professional developments to see how we can use it to make our jobs easier. I delivered a short professional development myself late last year and it was very well received.
The very worst that I have encountered in the real world is younger colleagues making uncomfortable sounds about "water use". Despite this, they use it anyway.
The Anti-AI crusaders of 2026 are one of the most insular, out-of-touch bubbles that I have ever seen.
I wonder how long until they just come to terms with it.
On Youtube, one of the categories that warrants a report is "harassment and bullying".
As far as I'm concerned, a comment of "Ai Slop" is only intended to harass and bully with a side helping of the "hate and abuse" category.
I'm trying to imagine if I rolled into a physical artist's channel and wrote "This is awful shit" as a comment and how well that would fly.
Do you think I'm justified?
Getting tired of just taking it, frankly, especially when the content is clearly labelled as AI in the first place.
I just looked at the front of the sub and it's a wall of 0 voted posts of people's songs that they've shared.
I fully get that we're all mostly interested in the things we've made ourselves, but down voting based on taste or a sense of superiority seems against the spirit of the sub. So I have to assume that most of the down votes come from drive-by antis hoping to create the idea that "all AI music sucks and that even we don't like it if we didn't make it."
With this in mind, I'm going to try to listen to and support more of my fellow Suno users by listening to some music and giving them a vote if it seems like they care about what they've created and have made some sort of effort.
I'm seeing a lot of complaining about how AI "steals" real music to train itself. Why is AI not allowed to be influenced by existing art but real artists are?
Never mind that music has been sampling or borrowing from existing music for decades. Genres of music are clearly distinguishable by their influences.
You just have to look at the song "Louie Louie" and how many times either the whole song or the iconic bass riff has been used by other songs. Wild Thing? Hang on Sloopy, More Than A Feeling - The theme song from Futurama. It's been done thousands of times.
It's time they all just admitted that it's only bothering them because a computer has done it and has given access to people who otherwise were shut out of being able to create music and see their dreams realised. No one's "stealing" anything - they're just inspired by music.
When I make a song in Suno, I try to replicate sound and styles that I enjoy in my prompts and explicitly steer away from sounds and styles that I don't like. To me, this is magic.
I will never think that a song I produce in Suno is more skillful than something a physical musician has produced, but I reserve the right to like it better for my personal tastes.
Tried to imagine what Jinx would do after S2 of Arcane, supposedly "dead" and living in another country. She's too tightly wound to be idle for too long. Maybe this is a healthy outlet for her?
Just don't thank her too nicely.
Several of the people I work with are "artists", meaning that they paint things.
They show off their work in our office occasionally.
Everyone's very polite about it and make the appropriate "oohs" and "ahhs". I am too.
I can't draw or paint anywhere near as well as they do.
And yet, none of their art speaks to me in the slightest. You couldn't pay me to put it on my wall, and I'm not moved by it at all.
And yet it makes them happy, and I feel no need to be a dick about it.
For every one of them there are 50 million other artists out there working a lot harder.
But BOY are they outspoken about AI and how it only produces rubbish, "steals" from real artists. And OH GOD the water thing.
Pointing out AI now seems to have become the 2026 version of pointing out toupees in the 1970s. Everyone has to do it, like it's this secret shame that must be exposed, even when the AI user is very up front about it. No one's coming out of you because you're a casual dauber who went to an art class a few Fridays a year last year instead of spending five years at an art commune.
This one is a little bit softer and intimate than most of the Jinx songs that I have been creating.
I position this a couple of years post after some healing and some tentative steps towards forgiving herself to the point where she can look at herself with something akin to love rather than horror.
It was a fun challenge tweaking this voice down into something close to softness while retaining twitchy edge.
So many of the people I see angry about Ai's supposed lack of creativity and originality are creating the same stock fandom imagery over and over. (note - the usernames in here are fake)
Usually I use this voice for my fanfic songs surrounding this character, and the first few bars made me think -- oh hell no, this voice is wrong for this character. Thumbs down. Let's chalk this one down as a fai.... hangon.
I decided it was just too bloody charming an the feeling of cautious joy in very small things and small steps while remaining fundamentally true to who she is was quite bittersweet.
I liked this one a lot.
The song reminds me a little bit of a song by an Australian band called 'Frente!", "Accidentally Kelly Street" - if that song had a current of grief underneath it.
I can't imagine how joyless you'd have to be to not see the absolute magic of this technological advancement.
I enjoy looking at other people's creations, but let's face it, by far the most satisfying thing out of this whole hobby is seeing things that you've conceptualised coming to life when you simply didn't have the time, money, or the full gamut of technical skills to do it.
I've made songs through a combination of my own writing, my full conceptualisation and a bit of gap-filling in some with Chatgpt and - you know what? They make me happy. They make me smile, laugh, and sometimes even bring a tear to my eye.
I daresay that I'm not alone in feeling emotions about what I use AI to help me realise.
And isn't that what art is supposed to do? Promote feelings?
I can't even imagine being locked in that space where it makes you paranoid and angry or, worse yet, wanting to crap all over the joy of the people having fun with it.
It occurred to me that "The Donald Trump" makes a nice, neat anagram.
Shame about the AND and the J, but this feels like a good use.
For those of you not familiar with the modern board gaming hobby, Concordia is a well-loved modern classic which suffered from fairly mediocre production values.
Awaken Realms, known for making beautiful deluxe editions is currently in the process of crowdfunding their new special edition of this.
During the lead-up to this campaign someone got a bee in their bonnet over Awaken allegedly using some AI in some advertising material, and the game which has not even been released yet is currently being review bombed on BGG (Boardgamegeek)/ Of more than 700 ratings so far, nearly 400 are 1 out of 10 and having some sort of rant about Ai or how it's ugly or too expensive or another big boo hoo in this direction.
Then, if you go to Gamefound where the game is being crowdfunded, the game is currently sitting on 2.2 million Euros after 3 days with 19 days remaining in the campaign. It took 1 minute and 7 seconds to reach its funding goal lol.
If this doesn't demonstrate the gap between the AI lynch mobs' perceptions of broader sentiment then I'm not sure what does.
(not going to post the links here because I don't want to look like I'm plugging the game. I'm not affiliated with Awaken)
