AI Augments Musical Creativity: But Does the Music Swing?

Abstract The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into music composition has sparked debates about its potential to augment human creativity. While AI introduces new techniques and data that can augment compositional possibilities, there is a notable lack of philosophical reflection on what these AI-augmented practices mean from an aesthetic standpoint. This article argues that without a clearly articulated aesthetic criticism, we risk reducing musical works generated with AI to technical achievements rather than considering their aesthetic value. Revisiting Adorno’s 1958 essay “Music and Technique,” I propose using his critique to disentangle the conflation of technical and aesthetic judgments that permeates current debates about AI in music. I argue that only by judging the resulting pieces from an aesthetic standpoint can we fairly assess the true relevance of AI for music and the arts. Furthermore, I suggest that the absence of such aesthetic reflection may signal a deeper crisis in our aesthetic categories, in which new works are judged primarily in economic and technological terms, or through anachronistic or relativistic lenses. This article calls for renewed aesthetic reflection to ensure that AI contributes to the aesthetic development of music, rather than becoming an end in itself.