Composer Michael Yezerski is testing AI music generators and isn’t fully sold. The Oscar-winning scorer of The Last Thing and Dangerous Animals shared his hands-on experience with AI-produced music in a guest column for Deadline.
Yezerski doesn’t feel personally threatened—until he learned a picture editor uses AI to create music daily for commercials. That got him digging deeper.
AI music generators can spit out instrumentals fast. Electronic genres like EDM and dance pop impressed him. Cinematic and classical scores? Not so much. The AI churns plenty of derivative dance, pop, rock, metal, and punk tracks but they don’t yet carry genuine human energy or harmonic depth. 
He sees AI as a tool for idea jumping, especially when stuck. But current interfaces limit true creative control. And the outputs still feel oddly off.
Copyright remains a major headache. Industry groups like the Society of Composers & Lyricists warn musicians about handover risks when AI trains on their songs. Washington is cracking down on AI companies pushing “fair use” labels for all content after a moratorium on AI regulation was scrapped.
Yezerski questions if AI can innovate beyond imitation:
“Can an AI spend seven months with a director honing, searching, defining and redefining a sound for their narrative masterwork (not to mention providing emotional support during that time!)? Can an AI engage interesting and unusual performers to bring the music to life like Hans Zimmer does? Can an AI take all of our contemporary cultural knowledge and turn it into song lyrics that delight and surprise us like Lin-Manuel Miranda does?”
He argues music is deeply human—full of mistakes, accidents, and cultural nuance. AI may replicate sounds on a massive scale but it lacks that human spark.
Yezerski’s view: AI music is here to stay, but it’s not ready to replace the real thing.
Images:
Michael Yezerski — Chris Prestidge
‘Dangerous Animals’ — IFC/Shudder
