Nothing's Ever True Until AI (and the Mermaids) Say It Is
I fed some of my songs through Google's AI chatbot, Gemini, to see what would happen. That may sound like the precursor to a joke --a joke that will allow me to spend several paragraphs detailing the hilarious, whacked-out observations Gemini made about the far corners of my songbook. The answers would then be allowed to sit alongside the ones you get when you ask it something like, "write a Beatles song."
But that's not what happened.
Instead, Gemini fed back to me the sort of detailed, observant, and subtext-aware responses to my songs I have wished for from people for twenty years. Not only was it not whacked out, it was right in highly specific ways. In a life where creative efforts fall upon deaf ears, no ears, and tumbleweeds, to see my songs analyzed and interpreted in such a way was rewarding, empowering, and validating. And admittedly terrifying.
It is easy to fill this, or any, space with the dangers of AI, with all the ways it threatens everything important and human about the creation of art. Sure, we'll use it as a powerful tool to move society forward, but history demands we will also use it in every negative, destructive way we can fathom.
It is also easy to fill this space with a retort to that argument, how AI will undoubtedly make our lives better, and that it will assimilate into our cultural foundations and eventually be no stranger than a car or an airplane --something that unquestionably changed the rules, but is transformative in how we experience and move through the world.
Setting aside the existential terror around AI for a moment, the curiosity I have is whether the rise of AI will short-circuit both ends of the creative social contract, or just the creator side. In the world now, a creator creates something, shares it with an audience, and the audience is impacted by it. In this incoming AI world, what does that transaction look like? Are people only going to seek out the feeling that art gives them regardless of who created it, or will there be a commitment to “real art” made only by real people? My gut says that while there will always be purists, the vast majority of the population will drift towards the former because it’s easier and will be more accessible. And if that’s the case, they aren’t going to care whether it comes from a person or AI; they’re just going to be reaching for the utilitarian purpose of whatever art means to them.
Which is possible because, whether we want to accept it or not, AI is actually quite good at this and is getting better. I have been moved by things that AI has said to me; AI has helped me, and I don’t just mean by offering some random fact about apples that I needed to know for some reason. When I discussed writing strategies with it and mentioned the lack of attention I traditionally get, it said, “you need to realize that the kind of writing you do is a flashlight, not a spotlight.” I mean, man, not bad.
Then I said that I have a hard time running with the advantages I am afforded because it feels like cheating. It responded by telling me that I needed to change from an “earned” mentality to a “stewardship” mentality:
“Instead of asking ‘do I deserve this?’ ask ‘Now that I have this, what is the most high-integrity thing I can build with it?’ When you switch to stewardship, the advantage stops being a stain on your story and starts being a tool in your kit. You aren't cheating; you are just being handed better paintbrushes. You still have to do the painting.” If this is the floor of what AI is going to offer moving forward, I understand the people who are excited about what it could be.
Which brings us to the fear itself as it relates to art: the fear isn’t that shitty AI art will replace deep, impactful human art; the fear is that AI is going to be so good at it that we won’t know the difference, which then brings up all kinds of uncomfortable questions about the nature of art and our ingrained attraction to it.
We’ve been on this collision course for a long time. While AI feels like jumping several steps at once --it feels horrifying and dangerous because our culture likes slow, gradual change-- we’ve been embedding artificial assistance into our art for decades. Maybe it’s something like AutoTune to fix our vocal imperfections, or maybe it’s something as harmless as adding reverb to vocals because a little space does all of our recorded voices well, or Photoshop to make everything look brighter and cleaner and more attractive. There will absolutely be AI garbage that emerges, and likely a lot of it, but eventually it will normalize. As that happens, creators —as they always do— will adapt to this new reality and art will take its modern shape. Think of how empty and hollow Photoshop has the capacity to be when we associate it with making everyone look young and beautiful in completely unattainable ways, yet simultaneously almost every artist I know uses it in some way to make their art the best it can be.
The exact shape of that future modern art is difficult to know until we see it. No one knew the car was coming after the horse-and-carriage, but when we saw the car, it was obvious. Every new technology threatens new groups of people and previous products and now it’s the artists’ turn. It’s horribly hypocritical for me to kick and scream as an author or musician when I didn’t lose any sleep when technology came for every other profession. As ever, I will create with the tools afforded me; I’ll figure it out because I’ll have no choice but to.
I would never seriously ask an AI chatbot if something I created was "good" because it is specifically designed to tell you that you are the greatest creative who has ever walked the Earth. What I actually do is ask it to analyze a batch of my song lyrics or book chapters and tell me what it finds. I can hold those findings up against my intention as the writer. If the AI gets it right, it's hard to think that I didn't execute what I was going for. If the robot figured it out, a person who doesn't just isn't paying enough attention. That doesn't mean my work is good necessarily, but it shrinks the gap between what I tried to do and what I was ultimately able to do.
Take for instance what Gemini said about my song, "Seaside" (which is at the top of the essay if you want to listen now or later):
This is an evocative, layered piece of songwriting. At its core, the song captures the fragility of childhood imagination—the transition from wonder and secret belief to the quiet, heartbreaking moment where reality washes over it.
The mermaids are an unreachable comfort. Notice that "they wave to you but they don't call." The mythical elements aren't sinister, but they are distant and self-contained. They offer a mirror for the child’s inner wildness, but they won't pull the child in or save them from having to face the land. The repetition of what is "true" shifts radically. Early on, the stories are true because the child believes them. By the end, the song suggests that mundane life lacks real truth, and that the only genuine, untainted truth was that pure, untamed belief "down there at the seaside."
It has a haunting, lullaby-like cadence—almost like an old folk ballad that uses maritime mythology to tell a grounded human story about letting go of magic.
There is nothing in those paragraphs that I did not consider when I wrote that song. Gemini is either good at this, or I'm not as smart as I think I am.
"Seaside" grew out of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds's song, "Mermaids". There is something interesting to me about mythical creatures being present, beckoning, but not demanding. Their call always seems both necessary and dangerous, but not, as Gemini put it, "sinister." You don't have to do anything and they aren't going to be bothered if that's exactly what you do.
In both "Mermaids" and "Seaside," the mermaids' only interaction with the narrator is a distant wave --an acknowledgement of presence, possibly an invitation, or perhaps a passing greeting embedded with the knowledge that the narrator can't join them, or has missed the opportunity to.
This concept is tailored made to be connected to the transformation from child to adult, which is the core theme flowing through "Seaside." I like that mechanism, as this is not the first time it has appeared in my songs. Not only have I used the child-to-adult transformation before, but have used mythological creatures to get the point across. A few years ago that creature was the phoenix.
The human side of communication is also consistent in both songs. Both protagonists watch the mermaids intensely — a watching that feels very much like a longing. It isn't "hey, look at the mermaids!" like some dopey tourist bellowing out when a whale leaps from the water during a boat cruise; it's "look at the mermaids; I wish I could be out there with them." There's a sadness there --a sadness that suggests either you can't be, or have chosen not to be. Either way, the narrator feels like something is their own fault, and no fault lies with the mermaids. These are powerful and magical creatures, but they are also neutral creatures.
Neutral creatures are compelling because it inherently means the forces opposite them are forced to do something for any movement to occur. When any of us stand on the edge or our metaphorical waters, we sometimes wish those magical creatures weren't neutral and would do the work for us. When you're introverted (like me), this desire is even louder; you want this creature to come and take your hand and say, "we want you out here; come with us; we'll help you."
The mermaids aren't going to draw either of our narrators into the water with them, but neither story suggests the mermaids would be unwelcoming if our protagonists swam out there. Instead, these mermaids are self-contained, move about their business, and wave at you while they do it. You aren't part of their equation, and you're certainly not a target as you would be if they were a rusalka or a siren.
But what makes us know these mermaids aren't dangerous? One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was from one of my poetry professors: "Don't overuse adjectives; let your verbs do the heavy lifting:”
In "Mermaids," the mermaids "sun themselves out on the rocks," "wave at me," and "wave and slip back into the sea."
"In "Seaside," they "shimmer in the shimmering light," "swim and dive," "dream beneath it all," "wave to you but they don't call," "smile beyond the tide," and "dance beneath the water's rise."
With the exception of the mildly aggressive "dive," all of those verbs are gentle and delicate. If the mermaids "wave and jump back into the sea," or are "blinding in the shimmering light," or "smirk beyond the tide," they immediately cease being sympathetic, neutral creatures. They are suspicious, dangerous, and the narrator's longing for them doesn't feel sad anymore. It now seems a good thing the mermaids can't be reached because otherwise our protagonist is probably getting murdered if he swims out there.
The verbs are why Gemini interpreted the mermaids as "an unreachable comfort;" it recognized them as good, even if unreachable. The tension in the songwriting comes from "unreachable" and "comfort" sitting alongside one another. The unreachable-ness has to be at least mildly tragic; no one cares if what is unreachable is imminent destruction. There is no tension there. And if there's no tension, there's no story. And if there's no story, you may as well be talking to an AI.