Right now, the conversation about AI is stuck in a loop: Artists versus AI, rights versus innovation, protection versus invention. You can either respect copyright or embrace progress. It’s a false binary that forces a choice between supporting creators or embracing new technology, as if respecting copyright and pursuing progress are mutually exclusive.

The history of the music industry is a story of a series of technological disruptions. Every shift — broadcast radio, analog recording, the synthesizer, sampling and digital audio workstations — is initially met with skepticism and resistance by people worried their creativity and stature will be undermined. Then the next wave of true artistic innovation happens, unlocking new ways of making music and new possibilities for a new generation of music makers.

Today’s conversation about AI belongs to the first wave. However, once we establish the right foundations, including clear provenance, licensed training data and real economic participation for creators, we unlock a far more interesting question: What happens when technology enables people to be more creative than they’ve ever been? Answering this question will advance our thinking, just as embracing previous technological disruptions led to musical revolutions.

Long before the debate about AI, in the back rooms of M.I.T., I was part of an art technology hacker space, a place where artists, engineers and academics collided in unpredictable ways. It was not unusual to find ballet dancers collaborating with mathematicians, experimental musicians using arc welders to build instruments, and painters working with roboticists. The resulting technology didn’t always work well, and the art wasn’t particularly beautiful, but that wasn’t the point. It was about exploring what could be built at the intersection of art and technology – and the results were strange, exploratory and sometimes even uncomfortable.

We’re already seeing early signals of a shift. Just as the invention of the camera once prompted painters toward abstraction, musicians are pushing music’s boundaries. There’s a French Canadian band named Angine de Poitrine that starts to show this creative expansion. The mysterious, costumed duo defies easy categorization: imagine a dual guitar-bass with microtonal fretboards looping complex riffs against a backdrop of ever-shifting, unpredictable time signatures.

Angine de Poitrine has taken the internet by storm in recent months. On social media and YouTube, artists and commentators are not just celebrating this new art — they are elaborating on the creativity with their own homage videos. Why? I think the main reason is that people see Angine de Poitrine as a creation that AI could never concoct. Faced with generative AI platforms that can create a “new” (but eerily familiar) song with a simple text prompt, people are becoming averse to the homogenous middle. That puts a premium on human creativity. People want something that AI alone cannot dream up.

At the other end of the spectrum, vinyl had its biggest year in two decades in 2025 with almost $1 billion in sales. Gen Z creators at Splice are trading cassette tapes, harkening back to simpler, less digital times and intentionally embracing the comforting hiss that is native to tape playback. The company Teenage Engineering is building musical hardware that recalls Casio calculators and boomboxes. People are craving texture, imperfections and corporeal joy.

There’s a lesson in these examples: the future of music won’t be defined by polished replicas of the past but by things that embrace its imperfections and redefine these edges anew for this next era of creativity.

So how do we get to the next step?

Creators need the ability to realize their potential on their own terms. They need to have economic ownership and creative control. The tech industry cannot claim to help creators with tools that simultaneously undermine their intellectual property. Boundaries of human authorship need to be made clearer, allowing artists paths to monetize their creativity for the future. To create great music, training — the process of feeding vast datasets into an algorithm so it can recognize patterns and generate new outputs — need not be exploitive.

Many business leaders agree that AI must respect creators first and foremost. Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, with which Splice is collaborating on a roadmap for the development of commercial AI tools, has spoken of the need for guardrails and respect for creative works. There are numerous ethical AI companies: Music.AI, ElevenLabs, Lemonaide and Klay Vision, among others, that respect creators’ rights and build their technologies with artists at their center.

If the first wave was defined by what AI took from the artist, the second wave will be marked by what it gives back: time, powerful new capabilities and expansive creative expression. More than anything, though, getting to the next wave offers creators permission to experiment and even to fail. AI tools provide creators with an opportunity to make music that doesn’t make sense, that’s occasionally ugly, or makes us uncomfortable, all places that homogenous music AI cannot touch.

If we can move beyond the “art vs. machine” tropes that define today’s conversations, we will launch a new chapter of creativity using tools that will lower the barriers to entry and raise the ceiling for what is possible.

Kakul Srivastava is the CEO of music creation platform, Splice. Since joining Splice in 2021, she has led major innovations, including AI-powered creation tools, new mobile experiences, and the company’s 2025 acquisition of Spitfire Audio, expanding Splice into virtual instruments. An award-winning entrepreneur, Kakul was most recently named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2025 for shaping how technology empowers, rather than replaces, human creativity. 

Previously, Kakul held executive roles at Yahoo, Flickr, Adobe, and GitHub, helping to build iconic products like Photoshop and Yahoo! Mail, and is known for her product leadership, empathy, and commitment to helping creative communities thrive. A graduate of MIT and UC Berkeley Haas, Kakul lives in the San Francisco area with her family.

Selena Gomez made sure she was in the house for her old Disney Channel friend Demi Lovato on Monday night (April 14) when the “Cool For the Summer” singer kicked off her It’s Not That Deep tour at the Kia Center in Orlando. In an Instagram Stories post from the night, Gomez posted a series of glam pics of Lovato, including one in which Demi was getting her lips touched up with a caption heaping praise on her friend’s impressive vocals.

“I am in tears,” Gomez, 33, wrote. “@ddlovato — this was hands down one of the best shows. Oh and the VOCALS? Psh *blown away.” The reel included a sweet picture of the two women backstage, hugging and smiling for the camera with a heart emoji posted between them. Gomez also posted a short video in which she’s rocking a black “It’s Not That Deep” sweatshirt and dancing along to the show from a suite.

The two singers have a long history together, dating back to their early days on Barney & Friends in 2002. And while their friendship has had its ups and downs over the years, they appear to be back in the groove together. And they’re not alone. At Lovato’s first headlining tour in three years, not only did she perform the live debut of her upcoming (April 17) single, “Low Rise Jeans,” but she also hosted a surprise guest appearance by another Disney Channel pal, Camp Rock co-star Joe Jonas, who popped out for versions of “This Is Me” and “On the Line.”

Lovato reposted Gomez’s praise-filled post on her own Story, including the snap of them together with the caption, “[welled-eyes emoji] thank you so much for coming !!! loved seeing you [white heart emoji].” She also reshared the footage of Gomez dancing and included a TikTok clip of her mouthing the famous Kim Kardashian “okay guys we’re back, did you miss us, cuz we missed you?” meme alongside Jonas. She added a snippet of her sensual live debut of “Low Rise Jeans,” in which a dancer could not keep his hands off her body.

Gomez wasn’t the only one who gushed about the show. Lovato also reposted a comment from her husband, musician Jordan “Jutes Lutes, who wrote, “no words for what I felt tonight watching you put on the best show I’ve ever seen. you are one of the ALL TIME greats. I will forever be in awe of you and I will never EVER shut up about it I love us so much @ddlovato.”

Lovato’s 23-date tour in support of her ninth album of the same name will next hit the Capital One Arena in Washington D.C. on Thursday (April 16) and keep the singer on the road through a planned May 25 show at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.

Liam Gallagher responded to the news that Oasis are part of the 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class in the most Liam Gallagher way possible. The congenitally acerbic singer who in 2024 called the HOF a “load of bollocks” after his band’s first nomination, took a more amiable angle on making the cut on Tuesday morning (April 14) in a tweet giving thanks for those who ushered the Brit pop superstars into the Rock Hall.

“I wanna thank all the people who voted for us it’s a real honour ever since I was a little kid and singing in the shower I’d dream about 1 day being in the RnR hall of fame it’s true what they say anything is possible if you have a dream,” Gallagher wrote in a tweet that appeared to have parts of his tongue firmly in cheek.

But when a fan asked “what happened to not wanting to be in it hmmmmmm,” Gallagher proved that he and older brother bandmate guitarist/songwriter Noel Gallagher were raised right. “Well I was speaking to my mummy last night when the news broke and she thinks I may have been a little hasty with my perception of the organization she’s told me to stop being a dick and go to the awards and behave and you never know you might enjoy it,” he wrote, after earlier joking, “reverse psychology vibes in the area Oasis RnR hall of farmers I mean famers.”

Asked what he will say in his speech, Gallagher said, “Well I’ll obv bring a box of chocolates and flowers and apologize to the organizers for my ignorance.” The rocker also confirmed that he would definitely be on hand to accept the honor. “Too f–king rite I am,” he said, adding that both siblings will be there — “we’re goth going we’re sooooooo proud and humble” — when asked if he plans to attend the Nov. 14 ceremony in Los Angeles that will air on ABC and Disney+ in December.

After being nominated but not making the cut in 2024 and 2025, Gallagher was not as charitable about the Rock Hall, writing in 2024, “F–k the Rock n Roll hall of fame its full of BUMBACLARTS.”

Coming off their triumphant 2025 reunion tour, Oasis will be inducted alongside Phil Collins, Billy Idol, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Sade, Luther Vandross and Wu-Tang Clan.

See Gallagher’s tweet below.

Jack White has a question for the millions of evangelical Christians who voted for Donald Trump: “How can any Catholic support him after he attacks the character of their Pope multiple times?” The query came after a truly bizarre 24 hours in which President Trump first posted (and then later deleted) an AI-created image of himself as Jesus Christ in flowing white and red robes putting his glowing hands on a man on his deathbed while surrounded by nurses and floating soldiers in front of an American flag.

Joining a loud chorus of critics who decried the image as blasphemy, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer posted a lengthy message on Instagram in which he took Trump’s religious base to task for continuing to unquestioningly support the president.

“Hey evangelical Christians? Remember that anti-Christ you been squawking about all these years and how he’d present himself as Christlike and bring about the end of days with a final war in the Middle East involving Jerusalem?,” White wrote alongside a re-post of the image. “Well…check out your boy now! Listen, if the felonies, epstein files, rapes, bombing of schoolchildren, gestapo ICE agents attacking his own citizens, threatening to invade Greenland, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran all didn’t convince you that you fell for this deranged grifter, maybe this lil’ post will?”

According to the Public Religion Research Institute, White evangelical Protestants supported Trump by an 81-17 margin over Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, along with Hispanic Protestants (63-35) and White Catholics (60-37).

What White — a former altar boy who grew up in a strict Catholic house in Detroit and once considered attending seminary — wanted to know was how any Christians can continue to back Trump after the president’s latest affront to the religion, especially after Trump doubled-down by attacking Pope Leo XIV again.

“How could any Catholic support him after he attacks the character of their Pope multiple times?,” White asked. “How did so many millions of people fall for this conman? He’s already got worst President in the history of America on lock, but I’m gonna go ahead and take the honor of pronouncing trump ‘Worst American of All Time.’”

White was referring to a long missive Trump posted on his social media site, which first suggested that Leo was elected Pope because “they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump,” and that “if I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” He then assailed Leo for being “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy,” while accusing Leo, who he dubbed a “loser,” of “catering to the radical Left.”

The unprecedented attack on a sitting Pope by a U.S. president comes less than two weeks after Trump posted an expletive-filled rant on Easter Sunday morning threatening Iran, writing, “Open the F–kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, ore you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH,” before offending Muslims by adding a seemingly sarcastic “Praise be to Allah.”

The Pope, the first American elected to lead the world’s more than 1.4 billion Catholics, responded to Trump’s criticism on Monday (April 13), telling reporters that he has “no fear of the Trump administration, nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.” Asked on Monday if he feels he should apologize to the Pope, Trump said “no … because Pope Leo said things that are wrong. He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran,” in reference to the war Trump started against Iran more than a month ago that has sent economic jitters across the globe and sparked fears of a wider Middle East conflict.

In a rare move, the White House took the Trump as Jesus post down, but the president didn’t apologize and, in fact, claimed that he was the one who posted the image, which he thought depicted him as “a doctor that had to do with the Red Cross.”

White, a frequent critic of Trump, wasn’t buying any of it, ending his post with a lament about the Catholics who continue to support the president. “P.S.: after some backlash (looks like SOME christians actually take their own religion seriously) trump is now saying that this AI image depicts him as a doctor for the Red Cross!,” White wrote. “He lies, then lies about the lie, then doubles down on that lie with another lie and they Just. Keep. Falling. For. It.”