Splice CEO on AI Music, the Future of Splice, Leadership, and Create -- the Conversation Every Musician Needs to Hear About Where Music Technology Is Heading
Kakul Srivastava has led some of the most influential technology companies in the creative space -- Flickr, Adobe, and now Splice, the platform that has become essential infrastructure for a generation of music producers. She thinks about the relationship between technology and creativity with a clarity and seriousness that most conversations about AI in music completely lack, and she is willing to be direct about both the promise and the genuine risks of what is coming.
In this conversation with Elmo, Kakul breaks down what Splice's AI product Create actually does and why it was built the way it was, what the future of Splice looks like, and what she believes musicians most need to understand about the AI moment in order to navigate it on their own terms. She brings the perspective of someone who has spent her career at the intersection of technology and creative tools -- and who genuinely cares about getting this right for the people who make music.
"AI isn't going to replace musicians. But musicians who understand AI will replace musicians who don't. That's the real conversation."
What Splice's AI product Create actually is and why it was built the way it was: the specific design decisions, what it is and isn't trying to do, and how Kakul thinks about the relationship between AI assistance and human creativity in a way that takes both seriously rather than treating one as a threat to the other.
Where Splice is going: Kakul's honest account of the company's direction, what she sees as the most important problems for Splice to solve for musicians in the next several years, and how the platform is thinking about its role in an ecosystem that is changing faster than any previous moment in the history of music production technology.
Her direct, informed perspective on what AI actually means for the music industry -- the real threats, the real opportunities, and the specific things she believes musicians and labels are getting wrong about how to think about and respond to the shift that is already underway.
What Kakul has learned about leadership across her career at Flickr, Adobe, and Splice: the specific challenges of leading companies that sit at the intersection of technology and creativity, what those environments demand from a CEO, and the particular thing she has come to believe about building teams around products that creative people actually love.
Her broader philosophy about what makes a great creative tool: the design principles she brings to thinking about how technology should interact with creative practice, what the best creative tools have in common, and why she believes the companies that get this wrong consistently underestimate the intelligence and intentionality of the people they are building for.
The specific things Kakul believes musicians most need to understand about the current AI moment in order to make good decisions about their careers and their relationship with technology -- not the hype, not the panic, but the grounded, practical perspective of someone who is building at the frontier and thinking seriously about the consequences.
Kakul's direct take on AI and music creation: one of the clearest, most honest articulations you will hear from someone actually building in this space -- what AI can and can't do, why the fear narrative misses the point, and what she actually believes the impact on working musicians will look like over the next five years.
The inside story on Splice Create: why they built it, what they decided not to build and why, and the specific ethical and creative questions the Splice team wrestled with in developing an AI product for a community that is deeply invested in the idea that what they make comes from them.
On the music industry's response to AI: Kakul is candid about what she thinks labels, publishers, and musicians are getting right and wrong about how to engage with AI -- and why she believes the window to shape how this technology develops is shorter than most people in the industry realize.
What she learned from Flickr and Adobe about building creative tools at scale: the specific lessons from those experiences that she carried into Splice, and what she believes every technology company building for creative professionals consistently misunderstands about the people they are trying to serve.
Her leadership philosophy: what it means to lead a company whose product is at the center of a genuinely contested cultural and technological moment -- the pressures, the decisions, and the particular kind of clarity she has had to develop about what Splice stands for and who it is ultimately building for.
The practical advice for musicians: specific, actionable, and honest -- what Kakul would tell a working producer or musician about how to think about AI tools right now, what to experiment with, what to be cautious about, and how to stay on the right side of a technological shift that is going to affect everyone in music whether they engage with it or not.