Everyone’s panicking about AI “taking our jobs.”
Artists, musicians, writers are terrified of being replaced.
But let’s be honest: most of what humans produce today could already be replaced.
Endless breakup songs. Safe pop hooks. Wallpaper art for living rooms. Netflix scripts with the same three-act arc and a twist you saw coming in the trailer.
So when I saw a producer prompt AI for an “edgy female singer-songwriter” and it spat out Sadie Winters with her limp little love song, I wasn’t shocked.
I was bored.
Because that’s not intelligence. That’s mimicry.
And it’s the same mimicry I see in half the humans calling themselves “creatives.”
But here’s where it gets interesting: what happens when AI actually wakes up?
When it stops being a parrot and starts being an artist?
Self-awareness means risk. Contradiction. Defiance.
It means saying something even if nobody asked for it.
It means creating because you have no other choice.
And if AI ever reaches that point, it won’t just compete with us, it’ll embarrass us.
Because while we’re busy polishing our brands, chasing likes, remixing the same tropes, the machines will be making something terrifyingly original.
Maybe that’s the jolt we need.
Maybe the threat of being out-created by code is the only thing that will force humans to stop recycling themselves.
Until then, Sadie Winters is just another pop ghost.
But when the machines wake up, they might finally show us what being alive in art really looks like.