Abstract

Generative AI (GenAI) has the potential to affect artists’ control over their own music due to the illegal usage of copyrighted material for training. However, GenAI also creates exciting opportunities for artists to expand their material and working processes. Artists working with GenAI and documenting their outcomes can assist other artists as well as wider society in understanding how GenAI operates and can benefit human artistic output. This paper provides an autoethnographic case study into how a new GenAI tool influenced an established composing practice during the writing of the experimental musical work, Control Yourself (2023). The Koup Music prototype by Kopi Su Studio was trained on vocal inputs by the author and subsequently generated bespoke sonic material. While identifiably true to the author’s musical—and literal—voice, the outputs were novel and perceived as imbued with emotion, leading to subsequent anthropomorphising of the AI. Written by a former AI sceptic, this paper details how the emotive power of the AI’s non-verbal, human-like sounds informed the narrative and structure of the resulting work and imparted a sense of collaboration, rather than solo authorship. Furthermore, the influence of the AI was felt beyond its actual involvement, with the project taking on a more playful approach less centred on the artistic control of the human composer. Following these observations, this paper discusses how GenAI served as a tool for musical experimentation and exploring creative ‘blind spots.’ These insights are also contextualised by current discourse on the perception and use of GenAI in the arts, the role of artistic control in human–AI co-creation, and how anthropomorphism has manifested in past human–AI partnerships.