There is an AI angle that COULD work it’s just unfortunate that nobody is using AI in this way.
Instead of replacing creatives the way it does now, it could be used as a tool to inform creatives.
For example, not linking the product because they aren’t paying me to shill for them, but there is a brand of AI enhanced guitar amplifier. You use the prompt in the app to tell it what sound you’re looking for and it will do all the amp and pedal settings to make that happen.
“jazz guitar tone with a touch of reverb” or even specific bands and songs.
You STILL have to be able to play the guitar, it’s not going to do that for you, but it will save you hours of knob twiddling and pedal swapping to get the sound (or an approximation of the sound) you’re looking for.
Applying this to other creative fields, a novelist could use it to generate character names, or an artist could use it to come up with a color palette. I don’t think either of those would be objectionable because the creative still controls what happens after the fact.
It’s when the slop starts writing, painting, or playing for you that it becomes a problem and that’s where we are now.
It’s part of the creative process, but it’s also it’s own rabbit hole. 😉 I do like having 42 simulated amps and 56 simulated effects pedals on tap without spending 10s of thousands of dollars, but fiddling with them is it’s own deal aside from playing and is, apparently, never ending. LOL.
But OTOH, if I want to try my hand at a specific song, I can get there without having to research every last bit of tech that went into it.
You’re right though, locking in “my own sound” is still do-able. The manual selection is all still there.