Regular correspondents will be aware that I have been managing a music related project in a combination of PM, A&R and Producer roles recently. We find ourselves in need of artwork, and so much of the discussion around AI that has been prevalent this week (my local MP, a gig promoter and a music forum have popped up on my feed only this week, and there is this today - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2026/may/28/ai-art-is-boring-soulless-theft-visual-artist). Contributors to LinkedIn are routinely asked if they want to finesse their work (in the interests of full disclosure, I have not*.)
As a survivor of the Eighties indie wars, I remember that gig posters – or the most effective ones at least - involved a good deal of (literal) cut and paste, trips to WH Smith to buy Letraset, and copious use of the County Library photocopier. By then, Jamie Reed’s signature cut up newsprint was already passe. By the time I needed a cover for a cassette however, I outsourced that to someone who knew what they were doing and – crucially – had access to one of these new-fangled desktop computers that were being introduced, which made word processing and art design much more of a streamlined operation than had previously been possible. At around this time, crucially, the Musician’s Union were suggesting that synthesizers and drum machines should be banned as they were putting actual musicians out of work**.
Detractors decried the output of these machines as soulless, lacking in creativity, and homogenous, generic machine generated slop. Anyone could do it. Analogously, these are the very terms being applied online to the wave of local gig posters, caricatures and bands like (fairly IMHO) The Waterboys for one. The familiar trope of four band members all looking at somewhere slightly different on the horizon while trying to remember if they left the gas on while one of them stares steely-eyed down the barrel of the camera has been replaced by a plethora of Indiana Jones-adjacent stylised images of Collosi bestriding imaginary stages. It’s better than Comic Sans, I suppose.
I think that where we are now is at the Depeche Mode Speak and Spell phase of AI ‘art’ and design. Sure, it has been democratised, but whereas anyone can type “make these lyrics into a CD single cover” the new skill is going to be crafting the prompts you use to get the image you need without all of that messy recourse to airbrushes, batique and three expensive years at art school. Before too long, we will be at the Songs of Faith and Devotion phase, with those with the aptitude and skill producing fusion work, and those on the village hall committee having refined their technique to the point where their poster doesn’t look just like everybody else’s, overcoming the limitations of their imagination as we conquered Microsoft Paint before them.
Yes, there will be a shift in how we (or they) do things, but David Hockney paints on an iPad, and the Neat Records back catalogue was designed by humans, so let us not jump right to judgement yet. For the record*** I am not using AI for the cover design – it is going to be based on a photograph which I took on my phone. And used some filters on. And some of the music has had auto tune applied to it, which corrects the pitch of the note using a computer. And digital reverb, which electronically recreates the effect of (say) Simon and Garfunkel’s engineer hanging a microphone in a lift shaft and then banging a drum at the bottom of it****. Where does it start? Where will it end?
*” Clearly,” you’re probably thinking. 🤔
**As is so often the case, Barry Manilow was the pebble that set off the avalanche.
***Hah!
****As per ‘The Boxer’, from Bridge Over Troubled Water.
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