Thanks for following up. I am glad your friends still made their own song. I think AI as a conceptual tool is a more constructive application of the technology than AI as a direct generator of art.

Personally, I make things and am an artist as well. I don't think AI can directly replace what I do or what others in my field do with any satisfaction, but it can devalue the market in which I produce substantially and increase entropy and imitations to the point where signal from noise becomes harder to discern.