Following the release of ‘Forever Bionic’, TAGG caught up with BobbyAI to explore the evolving relationship between human creativity and technology. From using AI as a creative instrument to rethinking authorship, originality and the future of music, BobbyAI discusses how technology can expand artistic possibilities without replacing the human emotion at the heart of the work.
“Forever Bionic” uses the relationship between humanity and technology as a metaphor for growth and resilience. What does becoming “bionic” mean to you personally, beyond the technology itself?
“Becoming bionic,” to me, means overcoming limitations that previous generations may not have had the tools, access, or accessibility to overcome; creatively, personally, intellectually, and beyond. It’s about being able to significantly accomplish, explore, and express things that might once have been out of reach.
So for me, “bionic” isn’t really about becoming less human or replacing something human with technology. It’s about expansion… expanding what we’re capable of, what we have access to, and ultimately what we can become. It’s expansive on every level.
You make a point of saying that AI is a tool within your creative process rather than the creative force behind it. Where do you draw the line between using AI as an instrument and allowing it to influence the identity of a song?
It’s definitely been a process that I’ve learned to hone without losing artistic integrity. For example, I currently write all of my own lyrics, but I can’t sing at all… that’s where AI becomes really interesting to me, because it can perform those vocals, and do it incredibly well.
But the identity of the song starts before that. Depending on the subject matter or context, I design the sound around the core concept and around how I feel when I’m writing and reading the lyrics back. That sets the emotional tone, the production direction, and what I want the track to ultimately become.
So for me, the line is whether AI is helping me realize the vision, or beginning to define the vision for me. I’m completely open to it introducing unexpected ideas, but ultimately it’s my job to keep directing, refining, regenerating, editing, and shaping the track until it sounds the way I envisioned it.
There’s often a fear that AI could make music feel less human. What do you think actually makes a piece of music feel human, and can technology enhance that rather than diminish it?
Feeling human is ultimately about making a human feel something. It’s whatever a person resonates with emotionally when they hear a piece of music. That doesn’t suddenly disappear because electronics or technology are involved…we’ve already seen that over the past several decades.
Electronic music, MIDI, synthesizers, sampling, Auto-Tune and countless other technologies have all been criticized at different points for supposedly making music less “human,” yet they’ve also helped create some of the most emotionally powerful and culturally significant music in our culture.
So yes, I absolutely think technology can enhance humanity in music rather than diminish it. The technology may change how the emotion is expressed, but the emotional connection between the work and the listener is still fundamentally a human-to-human one.
When you’re working with AI-generated vocals and electronic sound design, are there moments when the technology surprises you and takes a song somewhere you wouldn’t have reached on your own?
Absolutely. I think one of the most compelling things about creating with AI is that it can introduce possibilities you may not have consciously thought to ask for. It might interpret a vocal, rhythm, texture, melody, or emotional direction in an unexpected way, and sometimes that unexpected result immediately reveals something worth exploring.
For me, the important part is what happens next. I don’t think the surprise itself is the creative process… the creative process is recognizing what resonates, understanding why it resonates, and then intentionally developing it. You can take that unexpected fragment or direction and start reshaping it, pushing it further, combining it with other ideas, rejecting parts of it, and building an entirely new language around what you discovered.
That’s where AI becomes especially interesting as an artistic instrument. It can expand the field of possibilities, but the artist is still making the decisions about what has meaning, what fits the concept, and what ultimately becomes part of the finished work.
And I don’t think there has to be one fixed way of doing that. Every song can begin differently and require a completely different process. As the technology evolves, I think the creative methodologies around it will keep evolving too.
Do you think we’re going to have to rethink what “authorship” and “originality” mean as AI becomes a more common part of the creative process?
I don’t think it — I know it. But I also think we’ve been redefining authorship and originality for generations as new technologies enter creative fields.
A painter and a photographer can stand on the same beach and capture the same sunset in completely different ways. One paints it, one uses a camera, but both can still have authorship because the point of view, framing, intention and creative decisions are theirs.
Music has gone through the same evolution with synthesizers, sampling, MIDI, Auto-Tune, digital production and increasingly collaborative songwriting. None of those things eliminated authorship, they changed how authorship could be expressed.
AI is forcing us to revisit that distinction again: the difference between execution and authorship. As technology becomes capable of executing more, authorship may increasingly be about the human intention, direction, taste, selection and point of view behind the finished work.
You’re developing a broader multimedia vision that extends beyond music into visuals, live performance, film and television. How do you imagine those different mediums connecting within the world of BobbyAI?
Very easily. It’s all connected, and creatively it always has been. I don’t really see music, visuals, film, television, or live performance as separate lanes within BobbyAI…they’re all different ways of expressing the same world, ideas, emotions, and aesthetic.
Sometimes a song can inspire a visual concept, a film idea can influence the way I approach music, or a live performance can become another extension of the same creative universe. For me, the mediums may change, but my point of view is the constant.
“Forever Bionic” ultimately has a very optimistic view of the future. What gives you confidence that technology and human creativity can develop alongside each other rather than one replacing the other?
I can only speak for myself, but my confidence comes from the fact that I’ve already lived through that evolution. As a millennial, I grew up both before and after the internet became central to everyday life, which gives me a really interesting vantage point on how technology changes the way we create and communicate.
I’ve always been a creative person, and over the years I’ve watched the tools available to me expand dramatically. For me, those tools haven’t replaced my creativity, but they’ve expanded the ways I’m able to express it.
So I don’t see technology and human creativity as opposing forces. In my own experience, technology has consistently given creativity more places to go.
If you could look five or ten years into the future, what would you love to see artists and AI creating together that simply isn’t possible today?
That’s a good question, because we’re already at a point where so much feels possible that it’s hard to predict what will truly feel impossible today but normal in ten years.
