Lana Love
singer, songwriter, classically trained pianist, performer, actor, and artist advocate whose career spans music, television, theatre, and education
"I’m a dreamer, so I will always tell a young artist to do it. But I would also tell them to understand their rights, protect their work, learn the business, and never confuse convenience with craftsmanship."
Lana Love
Let's start with you Lana.
Tell me a little about yourself and your relationship with music. What do you do, and what does making music mean to you personally?
I’m Lana Love. I’m a singer, songwriter, classically trained pianist, performer, actor, and voice coach. I grew up as a total Phantom of the Opera and musical-theatre girly. I started professionally as a Disney princess and have since performed in more than 40 countries, competed on Team Legend on The Voice, and built a career across music, television, theatre, and education.
Music is the best therapy I have ever known, and it is genuinely one of the reasons I am alive. It has given me a place to put experiences that I couldn’t always explain in ordinary language. Making music is how I process being human.
When did AI first become something you actually started thinking about in relation to music?
AI became real to me when I was asked to speak about it and realized that I needed to understand the technology before forming a public opinion. I started experimenting with tools like Suno so I could see what they were capable of firsthand.
The larger turning point was watching AI-generated artists and songs begin attracting serious industry attention and financial investment. That was when I realized this wasn’t a novelty that would simply disappear. When major rights holders began exploring ways to license catalogs and train AI systems, it became clear that the entire structure of the music business was about to change.
Do you currently use AI tools in your own work?
Predominantly, I do not use AI in the creation of my music. I have experimented with Suno to understand it and to explore an idea, but I don’t use AI-generated music as a replacement for musicians, producers, or my own creative process.
Live elements are extremely important to me. Whenever I can afford to, I want real musicians, real strings, real instruments, and human choices inside my records.
I’m much more comfortable using AI for administration, organization, brainstorming, and marketing. I am very happy to let it help me write an email or organize information. Those applications can give artists valuable time back. But I don’t use it to replace my voice, performances, or the human heart of the work.
Where do you personally draw the line?
I draw the line at identity, consent, and ownership.
My song “LOST BOYZ” featuring Ghostface Killah has already been replicated through AI and posted online. That is deeply troubling because someone is using my voice, my recording, and something I created without my permission.
I am comfortable allowing AI to assist with administrative tasks. I am not comfortable allowing it to take my voice, likeness, songs, or recordings and generate something that appears to come from me.
AI is a tool, not a creator. I strongly and firmly believe that.
What does “making music” actually mean to you in the age of generative AI?
In its purest form, making music means picking up an instrument and singing. It means making choices. There is no default setting on making music.
Every lyric, chord, breath, silence, mistake, and change in dynamics represents a decision. Those choices come from a life that has been lived.
If someone enters a prompt and receives a finished composition, vocal, instrumental arrangement, and production, I don’t consider that the same act as making music by hand. It may produce content, and the person may have creative intentions behind the prompt, but the process and authorship are fundamentally different.
What excites you about AI — and what worries you?
The possibilities excite me. AI could help independent artists with administration, accessibility, organization, marketing, research, and tasks they cannot afford to hire a full team to handle. Used responsibly, it could remove barriers and give artists more time to create.
What worries me is the complete lack of adequate regulation. Legislation moves slowly, while AI moves incredibly fast. We let the cat out of the bag before establishing meaningful rules around consent, copyright, privacy, identity, and compensation.
The music world also lacks one unified labor body capable of calling an industry-wide strike on behalf of every songwriter, artist, producer, and musician. We can protest, advocate, or stop releasing music, but creators do not currently possess the same collective power as the companies developing and deploying this technology.
We are spending too much time describing the problem and not enough time building enforceable solutions.
What do you think AI will do to the music business itself?
I think it will transform the industry in a way comparable to Napster and the transition into streaming. I don’t think anyone can predict exactly how it will unfold, but nearly every part of the business will be affected: artists, labels, songwriters, producers, session musicians, studios, and streaming platforms.
AI could lower certain costs and make tools more accessible to independent artists. At the same time, it could flood platforms with inexpensive content, reduce paid opportunities for musicians, and make it even harder for human creators to be discovered and compensated.
If AI music is not going away, perhaps it needs to be clearly separated and labeled. Why couldn’t there be one platform or section for AI-generated music and another for verified human-made music? At minimum, audiences deserve transparency and the ability to choose what they are supporting.
Where do you stand on copyright, consent, and AI training?
I believe every creator needs the three C’s to feel safe enough to make art:
Credit
Compensation
Consent
We need an opt-in system. Artists should have the choice to participate. AI companies should not automatically have access to our recordings, compositions, voices, likenesses, or creative identities simply because our work exists online.
I am an amalgamation of every piece of art and content I have ever experienced. The difference is that I paid for those experiences. I bought records, purchased tickets, studied with teachers, paid musicians, and spent years practicing my craft. Human inspiration does not give someone permission to ingest an artist’s entire catalog and build a commercial product from it without consent or compensation.
There is a longer version of the familiar quote that is often attributed to Oscar Wilde: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” That captures much of how I feel about AI. Imitation without consent is not simply flattering when someone else profits from it.
Government systems also currently depend heavily on people honestly disclosing whether AI was used in a work. Regulation cannot rely entirely on voluntary honesty. We need transparent standards, enforceable disclosure requirements, and real consequences for violating them.
Imagine someone is 16 years old today and dreams of becoming a musician.
I would absolutely tell them to learn an instrument, write songs, practice, and pursue the dream.
AI has not changed that advice. You still need to learn the craft. I believe deeply in the hours in the dark: the private hours spent practicing when nobody is applauding or paying attention. That is how you build mastery and discover your own voice.
I’m a dreamer, so I will always tell a young artist to do it. But I would also tell them to understand their rights, protect their work, learn the business, and never confuse convenience with craftsmanship.
Fast-forward five years.
What do you think the music world will look like?
I think audiences may care even more about whether music was made by humans. As AI content becomes more common, genuine human authorship will become more valuable.
We may not always be able to identify AI technically, but I believe people will continue responding differently to work built from lived experience. Music affects us emotionally and physically. It can regulate us, dysregulate us, comfort us, activate memories, and connect us to other people.
Even when we cannot immediately explain why something moves us, we feel the difference between a performance carrying human experience and something assembled to imitate its surface.
Finally: The Human Frequency.
What is the one thing about human-made music that you believe AI can never replace?
The soul.
AI can replicate patterns, sounds, structures, voices, and styles. It can imitate the evidence of emotion. But it has never fallen in love, lost someone, survived something, stood onstage terrified, or needed a song to stay alive.
Last time I checked, AI cannot duplicate your soul. The world isn’t waiting for more of the same. It is waiting for something alive and true.
Lana Love is a singer, songwriter, classically trained pianist, performer, actor, and artist advocate whose career spans music, television, theatre, and education. After beginning her professional career as a Disney princess, she performed in more than 40 countries and later gained national attention as a member of Team Legend on Season 22 of NBC’s The Voice. Her screen work includes HBO’s The Rehearsal and NBC’s Law & Order, where she performed her original song “TOWER.” Lana also serves the creative community through her work with the U.S. Intellectual Property Alliance, the Copyright Alliance, and the Recording Academy.
Current Projects
My latest single, “SCAR TISSUE,” recently reached number one on both Amazon Music’s Pop Chart and All-Genre Chart and has received more than one million views on Instagram.
I also recently released my SORRY I’M HUMAN. EP and appeared on NBC’s Law & Order, performing my original song “TOWER.”
Social links
Website: https://lanalove.music/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lanalovemusic/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2TyAiZXsKXOCv6ZvOoF8MZ
YouTube: https://youtu.be/ldrcbiMMZg8
SORRY I’M HUMAN. EP: https://sparta.ffm.to/sorryimhuman
Kommentare