Why I Refuse to Apologize for Using AI Music Tools
From fair use to creative freedom, a real-world response to the “no ethical use” debate.
For years, I earned my living through instructional design, eLearning content creation, and writing. I know what it’s like to build something from scratch, what it takes to shape an idea into something real, and what it is to revise and revise until the words finally behave.
Right now, the very skills I was trained to master (lesson planning, assessments, instructional design, content creation) are being packaged, scaled, and sold back to the world at a fraction of the cost. AI can now generate course outlines, quizzes, and training modules in seconds. That’s the work that used to pay my mortgage!
So, I’m not speaking from the sidelines here. I’m speaking as someone whose industry is being automated at a speed that makes the music industry’s disruption look slow, and who faces the exact same issue as the musicians angry about Suno. I’m also a parent, and I live in a world where rent exists, time is finite, and the romanticization of suffering doesn’t pay the bills.
Who’s Really “Unethical” Here?
A video I recently watched, “There Is No Ethical Use of Suno,” argues that using generative AI to create music is inherently wrong. That it’s theft. That it causes cognitive erosion. That the only thing keeping people from making “real” music is patience.
I disagree on every count, and here’s why.
AI Learns Like Humans Do, Just Faster
Claim: AI music is unethical because it’s trained on copyrighted material without consent.
Response: So are human musicians.
Creativity has never existed in a vacuum. Every musician, writer, or artist learns by absorbing what came before them. Every one of us is a collage of influence, exposure, imitation, and experimentation. That’s how culture works. Even in my own field of Adult Ed, every curriculum I design stands on the shoulders of theories and frameworks developed by others.
AI models don’t copy songs. They learn patterns just like you did when you learned to play blues by mimicking B.B. King riffs or wrote lyrics that echoed Bob Dylan. What AI does is learn those patterns at scale, then synthesize them into new outputs. It doesn’t rip files, it generalizes them.
Think about it: Where do you think the artists AI is “stealing” from got their ideas?
The idea that learning from existing material is suddenly immoral because a machine can do it faster is not a moral stance; it’s simply a reaction to the loss of control.
I understand the fear but calling it theft doesn’t make it true. If you believe that learning from influence is unethical, then every musician owes a royalty to everyone they’ve ever listened to. Pay up.
Suno Settled But That Doesn’t Make It Illegal
Just because Suno recently settled with the music industry doesn’t mean they were legally in the wrong. Companies settle for a thousand reasons, most of them strategic. Suno likely looked at the cost of years of litigation, brand damage, and investor hesitation, and decided to strike a deal behind closed doors. Importantly, settlement doesn’t set precedent. It doesn’t mean the tools are illegal.
Right now, tools like Suno rely on the legal doctrine of Fair Use, arguing that their models are transformative. They’re not copying existing songs to compete with them. They’re building entirely new technology that enables users to make original works, not remixes. What matters is the transformative nature of the tool, not whether AI produces music “too easily.”
Yes, You Can Own What You Create with AI
Another myth that keeps getting repeated: users of AI music tools like Suno have no rights to the music they create. That’s just factually incorrect.
If you’re a paid subscriber to Suno, their Terms of Service explicitly grant you commercial rights. You can release the songs, use them in your projects, even sell them. It’s not a legal gray area, it’s written into the contract.
Is It “Brain Rot” Or Just a New Way to Think?
One of the most frustrating claims in the video is that using AI tools creates “brain rot” and that they erode our neuroplasticity by removing the struggle from creativity.
The idea that AI users are mindlessly clicking a button is simply false. “Power users” of Suno write their own lyrics, iterate on prompts dozens of times, and splice together stems in DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), like Ableton. It’s hardly passive consumption. It’s iterative, hands-on, and intellectually demanding. It’s active direction in a new creative workflow. It’s different, not less. And to those who say, “It’s okay to make bad music while you learn”? Great. But guess what: it’s entirely possible to make bad music with Suno, too.
There is this pervasive idea in the video that if you aren’t bleeding over the process, you aren’t doing it right.
I have a graduate degree, a solid work history, and plenty of life experience. I know how to think critically. I also know that pain is not a credential. Starvation is not a rite of passage. I know because I’ve been poor. I’ve been exhausted. I’ve raised a kid while trying to keep a roof over our heads. I’ve worked jobs that drained every ounce of creative energy out of me and still been expected to produce something beautiful on my own time.
Currently, I’m spending a great deal of my mental energy trying to stay relevant in a job market that is actively shrinking. I’m not avoiding effort. I’m choosing where to spend it. The truth is, I still think deeply, I still edit, I still make decisions, I still bring taste, judgment, emotion, and intention to whatever work I do. If I can use a tool to handle the mechanics of music so I can express a feeling without spending four hours on a chord progression, I’m going to do that. I’d be foolish not to.
It has nothing to do with laziness. If I was lazy, I wouldn’t even bother! It’s simply about having enough energy left at the end of the day to make something that actually matters – to me! So, when I use a tool that helps me turn an idea into a song before the day swallows me whole, I don’t feel shame. I feel relief.
AI Isn’t Just Cheaper, It’s More Accessible
The most frustrating argument in the video is the claim that patience is the only thing stopping people from learning music the old way. The creator says free resources exist, so there’s no excuse. This perspective is blind to the reality of exhaustion. Accessibility isn’t just about money but also about mental bandwidth. When people say, “Just learn an instrument,” what they’re really saying is: Have more time, more money, more energy than most people actually have.
Telling a single parent working multiple jobs that they should “just use free tutorials” ignores the fact that time is the most expensive resource we have. For the disabled, the chronically ill, or the overworked, AI isn’t a shortcut but a lifeline. It’s the difference between being silent and being heard.
Besides, I took the same music classes we all had growing up in America. We all played the recorder in elementary school, and I went on to try out several instruments in middle school. I’ve taken music classes and even singing lessons in adulthood, but right now, I don’t have another decade to spend mastering the mechanics of a new instrument just to validate my right to create.
The Market Isn’t Being Destroyed, It’s Being Disrupted (Again)
Claim: AI-generated music floods the market, devalues art, and takes money away from “real” musicians.
Reality: So did every new music technology.
Remember these?
- Synthesizers
- Sampling
- Napster
All greeted with panic. All still here. So is music.
Suno allows a disabled creator to make a custom soundtrack for their podcast for $10/month. It allows a broke filmmaker to score their indie project without needing $10K for studio time. AI opens doors to new markets: hyper-personalized music, dynamic soundtracks for games, or adaptive audio in therapy or education. These are forms of music creation and consumption that didn’t exist before.
Gatekeepers hate when people get in without going through them, but democratizing production doesn’t kill art, it multiplies it.
The Real Enemy
I get the fear. Believe me, I get it. I look at my own degree in Adult Education, the one for which I still have unpaid student loan debt and wonder how it won’t be obsolete in six months. I understand why musicians feel like the ground is shifting because I am standing on that same shifting ground. The answer to that fear isn’t to shame people for using new tools, but maybe instead question why survival itself has become so precarious.
Is the person using Suno to finally create the song they’ve dreamed of really the enemy? I don’t think so. I think the enemy is a system that convinced us there were only a few seats at the table and that we should fight each other for them instead of questioning why the table is so damn small.
We should be asking better questions.
Seriously, when have record labels ever been on the side of artists?
Final Thought
I’m not here to say the tech is perfect. I’m not pretending there aren’t serious questions to be answered about ownership and compensation for musicians and for instructional designers like me, but I refuse to accept the idea that using available tools makes me unethical, lazy, or lesser. It just makes me practical.
I’m not stealing anyone’s music; I’m using a tool that allows me to express myself in the form of song because I LOVE songs! If the result is that I get to make more art and maybe even pay a bill or two along the way, then yes, I’ll happily do so.
I refuse to apologize for that.
A recent song creation, now with video. Check it out.
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