AI, Music, and the Measure of Creation
AI-created music is often described as a shortcut — faster, cheaper, easier. You pay a subscription, type a few instructions, press a button, and a song appears. Compared to assembling a choir or conducting an orchestra, it seems effortless. But this impression is misleading. In reality, AI music is not the simple path many imagine. In many ways, it is the more difficult one.
AI music is best understood through the image of a coffee machine.
You put in money. You make a selection. You press a button. Something is produced. Sometimes it surprises you. Sometimes it satisfies briefly. Often, it lacks depth. The payment grants access to the machine, but it does not grant understanding. It opens the door, but it does not teach wisdom.
A coffee machine does not understand coffee. It follows instructions. It blends ingredients according to patterns it did not invent and rules it does not question. If a truly fine cup is to be made, the one operating the machine must understand balance, timing, proportion, and restraint. Without that knowledge, the result will always drift toward what is easy rather than what is meaningful.
AI music works in precisely the same way.
The machine rearranges what already exists. It mirrors patterns, repeats familiar shapes, and predicts what usually comes next. There is nothing truly new in what it produces — only new combinations of what has already been. It cannot breathe life into sound, because breath itself is not something that can be calculated.
That breath belongs elsewhere.
Human creativity is not an accident of efficiency or technology. It is a gift. We are not merely producers of output, but stewards of meaning. We are given discernment — the ability to recognise what is good, what is fitting, and what is worthy of being brought into the world. AI has no such discernment. It will produce endlessly, but it does not know when to stop.
This is where the great misunderstanding lies.
We assume machines are easier because they are fast. But speed is not the same as simplicity. A choir conductor does not need to explain, in technical language, what “more feeling” means. A singer understands instinctively. An orchestra responds to a raised hand, a pause, a breath. Humans adjust to one another in real time. They listen. They respond. They breathe together.
Machines do not share this language.
To get something meaningful from AI, a human must translate emotion, intention, and even spiritual weight into precise technical instruction. This is not natural. It requires trial, correction, and constant refinement. Many discover, often to their surprise, that it is easier to stand in front of living musicians than to explain beauty to a machine that has never felt anything at all.
In this sense, AI is not a shortcut — it is a test.
It tests taste, the ability to recognise beauty rather than novelty.
It tests judgement, the ability to choose what serves a higher purpose.
It tests restraint, the wisdom to know when silence speaks louder than sound.
These are not technical skills. They are spiritual ones. They are formed slowly, through listening, humility, patience, and reflection. They are shaped in the heart before they ever appear in the work.
And yet, this is not a rejection of AI.
We were made by a Creator who endowed humanity with imagination, reason, and the ability to build tools that extend our reach. AI itself is a product of that gift. When guided well — with clarity, humility, and care — AI music can become something remarkable. In the hands of a thoughtful human guide, these tools made by man can, at times, work what can only be described as miracles of sound — not because the machine understands beauty, but because the human does.
Here, the idea of God’s Coffee Machine becomes complete.
Creation itself was not rushed. It was spoken into being with intention and order. Sound came before systems. Breath came before structure. Even creation included rest. Humanity was not programmed; it was breathed into. That breath is something no machine can imitate.
AI can mix the drink.
The human can guide the process.
But the source of beauty, meaning, and life itself
flows from a far deeper well.
The recipe was written long before machines existed.
And the breath behind every true song —
the measure of beauty, restraint, and truth —
belongs to our Great Creator alone.
Michael