In The Creative Act: A Way of Being, superstar music producer (and patron saint of vibe coding) Rick Rubin defines art as: “choosing to do something skillfully, caring about the details, bringing all of yourself to make the finest work you can.”
If you believe the loudest narrative right now, you’d think that anyone using AI is not making “true” art, and that AI is relentlessly destroying human creativity.
But after a month inside a new program for AI music creators, I’ve seen exactly the opposite. AI is actually unlocking human creativity to produce truly innovative and beautiful art. And it is completely transforming the creative industries in exciting ways.
We’re officially halfway through the Prose AI Music Creator Accelerator, a first-of-its-kind program I created to take individual AI-native music creators through a tech startup-style accelerator program.
Cohort Zero is built as an experiment to see what NextGen creators need to thrive, and to evaluate where venture-style opportunities may be in this space. It’s a free program with no equity, no royalties, just eight intense weeks of learning, experimenting and creating.
The goal is not just to help emerging artists make good music, it’s about building real artist brands around their human creative vision, with AI as an amplifier. This aligns squarely with my thesis at Prose Ventures, which is focused on AI that enables human creativity and connection.
I curated an intentionally diverse cohort of 10 AI-enabled artists from 7 countries and 4 US cities. It includes tech entrepreneurs reconnecting with creativity, single parents making music after bedtime, poets translating verse into rhythms, people exploring music as a tool for mental health and wellness, major-label veterans with Grammy nominations, and some of the earliest and most prolific creators on the AI music platform Suno.
Our all-star roster of guest speakers includes music label executives, multi-platinum music producers, IP lawyers, Fortune 500 executives, marketing and social media specialists, seasoned music producers, music professors and venture capitalists - not to lecture, but to demystify how this industry actually works when you’re building something new.
The biggest surprise for me?
These creators are artists in the purest sense of Rick Rubin’s definition. They obsess over details. They constantly build their skills on different tools and instruments. They iterate relentlessly. They bring their full humanity into the work.
AI doesn’t make them careless or lazy; it gives them new mediums to express themselves. And it ups the standards for the art they are creating.
If you want to see what this actually looks like, check it out for yourself at our Demo Day + Listening Party on February 27th here: https://luma.com/095ftok1 It will be an incredible experience for those who attend - you’ll hear how these artists are building their brands, and then we’ll just sit back and listen to their art. 🎶
This is the first in a series of reflections from inside the Prose AI Music Creator Accelerator. More soon. 💜