Why I Use AI to Make Music: A Personal Reflection on Ethics, Access, and Artistry

Hi, I’m a poet. Just so we are clear. And just in case you do not know.

And I’ve always wanted my poems to become songs. Ever since I was 10.

I grew up poor. Not JUST in the “we couldn’t afford name brands” kind of way, but in the tap water with lemon packets from a gas station with a cheap discounted bologna and stale white bread sandwich dinner kind of way. I didn’t have access to music lessons or art programs or glossy birthday gifts wrapped in glittering foil. My childhood was a patchwork of broken systems and bruised beginnings… group homes, foster homes, unstable living conditions, and an early awareness that some dreams are only reachable if you’re born in the right ZIP code. I wasn’t.

Still, I dreamed.

I wrote songs before I even knew what songwriting really was. When I was ten, I filled spiral notebooks with poetry in glitter gel pen (that I found on the playground and kept in my pocket everyday til it ran out of ink) and sung melodies under my breath, alone, hoping no one would hear me and call it silly. I wrote with crayons, with dollar-store pens, with whatever tools I had. As I got older, it became Google docs on a cheap gifted hand-me-down laptop, and note apps on my first beat-up phone I got with no service from a friend when I was 18.

I didn’t have a fully working phone til I was 20.

I’ve always been writing. Always reaching. But never quite having what I needed to bring my work to life.

Music production requires tools. Expensive ones. Free recording on my phone barely works the way it could with certain equipment…. Most are expensive… Instruments, studio time, microphones, soundproof rooms, collaborators.

I don’t have those things. Not because I’m lazy. Not because I lack vision. But because surviving comes first when you’re low-income and chronically ill. When rent, food, and medical care compete with creativity, art usually loses.

I’ve had to choose groceries over certain equipment more times than I can count. But the words have never stopped coming. The melodies live inside me. And AI has finally given me a way to bring them into the world.

I avoided AI for a long time. I was skeptical, cautious, even angry. Like many others, I worried it would rob artists of recognition, opportunity, and dignity. I still carry some of those concerns. But I also believe we can hold multiple truths at once. I believe AI can be used in unethical, exploitative ways… and I believe, just as strongly, that it can be used ethically, responsibly, and beautifully.

We accepted the invention of cars, even though they changed the world and made horses nearly obsolete as daily transportation. But horses didn’t disappear… they became companions, symbols of beauty, strength, and connection to the land. The world changed, and we found ways to adapt without abandoning reverence for the past. That’s how I’ve come to see AI. It’s not a replacement. It’s a shift. And I’ve chosen to walk forward with awareness, with care, and with the soul of a writer who’s been here all along.

When I use AI, I’m not stealing someone else’s work or pressing a button and calling it mine. I’m taking my own lyrics… poems I’ve written in moments of heartbreak, hope, trauma, healing… and selecting melodies, genres, instruments, and vocal styles that feel like me. I guide it. I curate it. I listen and reshape until it feels aligned with what I envisioned. And the final product? That’s still my story. AI is just the bridge I had to build because no one ever handed me one.

This isn’t mindless automation. It’s an act of survival. Of reclamation. Of saying, I may not have wealth or access, but I have a voice. And now, I have a way to make that voice heard.

There’s a deep need for more conversations around how AI can be used ethically… not just fear-driven takes about how it’s ruining art.

Because it’s not. It’s making art possible for people like me who were never let through the gates in the first place. I’m not a record-label. I don’t have a producer in my pocket. But I have a lifetime of lived experience, thousands of lines I’ve written in silence, and now a tool that lets me take that inner world and make it audible.

Imagine telling someone who has no arms that using a prosthetic makes their painting less real. That’s what it feels like when people say using AI to make music makes me “less of an artist.” They don’t see that AI is the prosthetic, not the artist. I am the artist. AI is just the limb I never had until now.

Even now, I plan to take some of these demos… songs born through AI vocals and instrumentation… and re-record them in my own voice when I can afford to. I’ll hire musicians when I’m able to, and I’ll build more with collaborators when that becomes possible. But that doesn’t mean the songs I’m making now are any less valid. They are stepping stones. They are real. Just like the poems they were when they started out over the last 15 years.

I know people will disagree. I know there’s a lot of backlash. But I’ve had to learn… especially in recent years… that desperation can be a doorway to innovation. I’m desperate. I’m in need. I want to be heard. I want to give beauty to the world while I’m still here. And if AI helps me do that without hurting anyone else, then I will use it… responsibly, transparently, and always in alignment with the core of who I am.

I want the world to know that ethical AI use exists.

It exists in quiet places. In overlooked lives. In stories like mine.

It looks like this: a woman who grew up with nothing… no piano lessons after school, no warm kitchen to sing in, no one recording her voice with pride. A woman who still has very little now, scraping by, trying to afford food, health care, rent with her husband, and somehow… still… find a way to create beauty. A woman who spent years writing songs in the dark, alone, with no audience, no access, no encouragement, and no way to bring those songs to life. A woman who found something that finally opened a door… and chose to walk through it not with arrogance, but with trembling hope.

That’s ethical AI. That’s what it can look like.

I’m not here to replace anyone. I’m not here to steal or cheat. I’m not interested in shortcuts. I’ve lived my whole life taking the long, brutal way through things. I’m just trying to share what’s been trapped in my chest for too long. These songs were always there… scribbled in journals, whispered in the quiet, hummed through pain, clung to like lifelines when I had nothing else.

And now, for the first time, they have breath. They have music. They have sound. Not because I got a record deal or found a producer or won a contest. Not because I finally stumbled into privilege. Because I absolutely didn’t…. But because a tool showed up that could meet me where I am.

I’m not skipping the work.

God, if people only knew the work.

They didn’t see me writing poetry and lyrics while sleeping on couches, hoping the families I stayed with wouldn’t hear me crying. They didn’t see me filling notebooks in group homes or foster homes, trying to survive in a world that never felt safe, that never gave me enough of anything… except pain. They didn’t see the girl who stayed up all night writing and rewriting, just to keep herself from unraveling.

They didn’t see the woman I became, trying to make art while managing trauma, grief, chronic illness, exhaustion, and barely enough money to buy her own dinner while working and living with roommates who barely cared about her life and existence.

The poems and songs were my lifeboats. They always have been. But I could never afford the studio. I could never afford the boat.

Until now.

AI, for me, is not a gimmick. It’s not a trend I’m hopping on. It’s not a lazy man’s path to fame. It’s a survival mechanism. It’s an act of rebellion. It’s how I keep breathing in a world that often chokes out the voices of people like me before we even get a chance to speak.

For years, I carried shame about even considering AI. I worried what people would think. I worried they’d call me fake, or accuse me of cutting corners, or say I didn’t “earn” the right to make music. But one day in therapy, I said it out loud for the first time: “I think I need to use AI if I ever want to share my songs, I have for a couple poems I wrote but I fear I’ll be looked at as a fake, that what I wrote isn’t mine.” And my therapist just looked at me and said, “So what? Why not? You’re not hurting anyone. You’re finally helping yourself. It’s a tool for those in poverty. Especially the talented trapped in poverty.”

That moment changed everything.

Because I realized that I don’t need to be ashamed for using the only door that opened for me. I don’t need to be embarrassed that I found a way around a system that never had a place for me to begin with. I don’t need to explain to people who never had to make art on empty stomachs or write lyrics while disassociating from trauma.

I know who I am. I know what I’ve lived through. And I know what these songs mean.

What matters is that I am telling the truth. What matters is that I am using my own words, my own emotions, my own experiences, my own story… and finally, finally, giving it the kind of form that other people can actually hear.

AI didn’t write my pain.

AI didn’t survive my life.

AI didn’t hold my childhood, teen years, failed relationships, young adulthood or whole life in its hands and try to make sense of the bruises.

I did that.

And now I’m just using AI to give it a soundtrack.

Yes, I still have complicated feelings about it. I think it’s important that we all do. We need regulation, transparency, and ethics in place. We need safeguards. We need to protect human art and expression. But what we don’t need is to throw every tool into the fire just because it’s new and unfamiliar.

We especially don’t need to throw it away before we’ve even explored how it might liberate voices like mine… voices that have been silenced for decades not by AI, but by poverty, trauma, and generational neglect.

The world is so quick to demonize anything it doesn’t understand. But what if instead of fear, we led with curiosity? What if instead of gatekeeping art, we opened the gates wider? What if we taught people how to use AI responsibly, ethically, transparently… and then trusted them to do so?

We would hear so many new stories. We would hear so many more songs.

Because the truth is, AI isn’t taking over everyone’s careers and hobbies. It’s not pushing out “real” artists left and right. It’s not some monstrous thing crawling into studios and erasing people’s lives. What it is doing is giving people like me… people without money, without access, without connections… a first real shot at being heard.

And that deserves space.

Because what you hear in these songs? That’s not artificial. That’s me. Every lyric. Every metaphor. Every chorus born in a moment of desperation or joy or rage or longing. The AI is just the paintbrush. I still chose the colors. I still made the art. I still reached inside myself and pulled something out that mattered. Ultimately the whole masterpiece is mine. From my very human soul.

I’ve been writing since I was ten years old. Before I knew what publishing was. Before I knew what “music industry” meant. I wrote because I had to. I wrote because I couldn’t not write. And now, I finally have a way to pair those words with melody, rhythm, tone, and harmony. I can finally hear what I’ve always known these songs could become.

And it doesn’t stop here.

I plan to re-record these songs in my own voice when I can afford the equipment or studio time. I plan to hire musicians if I’m ever able to. I plan to sell some of these demos to artists who connect with them. I’m not stagnant. I’m not giving up the dream of collaboration or growth. I’m just building a foundation first… one that was never handed to me, so I had to make it myself.

And if AI helps me do that? Then I will keep using it. Not blindly. Not without thought. But with all the love and care I’ve always brought to everything I write.

This is not about trends or convenience. It’s about liberation. It’s about survival. It’s about finally feeling like I’m not locked out of the music world simply because I was born in the margins.

So yes, I use AI.

I use it with caution.

I use it with honesty.

I use it with the full awareness that it’s still a controversial and imperfect space.

But I also use it with hope.

Because for the first time in my life, I can actually hear what my heart has been trying to sing for years.

And I stand by it.

I stand by the girl who wrote poems in group homes and lullabies in the back of broken-down cars and neighborhoods.

I stand by the woman I’ve become… scrappy, resourceful, still soft where it counts.

I stand by the songs I’ve made, and the tools I’ve chosen, and the reasons I chose them.

And I hope, if anything, my story reminds someone else out there that they are allowed to create. Even if the path looks different. Even if the tools are unconventional. Even if some people don’t understand yet.

We don’t need permission to be artists.

We just need truth. And a way to share it.

AI is the first tool that’s let me do that in a way that feels real.

That feels possible.

That feels like me.

And I won’t apologize for using it.

Not anymore.