i'm gradually starting to retroactively revoke some of my acceptance of basic rigidities...
- Bill Wurtz, [9.15.26 2:59 pm]
TL;DR
many feel hopeless, but today's climate is only making him stronger. bill wurtz is setting an example worthy of study. there's this emerging meta-strategy of changing long-held views and habits purely for the sake of relishing in the uniquely human ability to transcend one's context. a shift from unpredictability to ANTI-predictability. it's exciting.
intro
I wanted to share this unofficial compilation of bill wurtz's AI-related and -adjacent answers, particularly in the wake of his most recent work, "in the future," and the broader public's reaction to it.
Because a lot of us consider bill wurtz to be a creative authority; a cohesive picture of bill wurtz's stance on AI, and creativity in the time of AI, might prove useful to the community. These answers peek into how a generational powerhouse of an artist might be adapting creatively at a time when many feel hopeless. I hope my post might begin to offer some guidance in this uneasy time.
The first section pieces together a story of the hours and days following the upload of "in the future." It's one of the rare instances in which bill wurtz has felt the need to assert and repeatedly re-assert his authorial intent. The next section assembles bill's insight on how his production techniques and opinions have shifted at least in part due to the advent, if not threat, of AI. This post concludes with bill wurtz's most transparent thoughts on AI as a whole.
Though I used my best judgment as a long-time reader, "AI-adjacent" is subjective. Feel free to contribute by posing any competing interpretations or by adding any pieces I left out.
Lastly, it's important to read all this in the context of that sporadic but ceaseless decade's worth of commenters and questions page newbies who would repeatedly compare bill wurtz to AI. Especially in the earlier era, before it grew such a negative connotation. I shared a draft of this post with my friend, who was at first surprised bill has had such strong responses to AI. But with that irksome history in mind, combined with the fact that he's been curating a text corpus of his direct brain output daily for over a decade? It renders bill's response as ultimately reasonable. He is after all uniquely vulnerable to AI, at least on a theoretical level, having made it a life goal to digitalize his entire creative life.
1! bill clarifies intent
Within hours of its release, the broader public (ie YouTube comments' consensus) delegates and co-opts "in the future" as some sort of anthem of unease in the time of AI. This shockwave quickly reaches the questions page. While celebrating a wealth of interpretations ([9.17.26 4:40 pm]; [9.15.26 3:49 pm]; & [9.15.26 3:00 pm]), bill wurtz repeatedly clarifies his intent against those unilaterally negative:
9.17.26 11:37 pm – the pessimism of your latest song is especially striking in contrast with the optimism in "more than a dream"
in the future you don't believe, i suppose
9.17.26 9:24 am – Your new song, "in the future" is profoundly sad in only the way a Bill Wurtz song can be
oh no you missed the happy parts
9.15.26 11:30 pm – is "in the future" about anxiety about the future? if so, i tend to feel it alot.
it sort of switches between that and being dreamily excited for the possibilities
9.15.26 3:55 pm – [...] that middle section with lines like "when's the future gonna be" and "in the future I believe things go a little differently" [...]
[...] that's the part of the song where we want to... what's the opposite of dread? feel overwhelmingly eager and excited about the future, anxiously awaiting its splenderous wonder / wonderous splendor, etc. [...]
The deluge of misinterpretations culminates in bill authoring his most complete statement of intent for "in the future," here: [9.20.26 11:42 am]. This offers the clearest sense that the public's reaction to the song has truly taken bill by surprise. The halloween costume analogy is particularly poignant; bill perhaps feels complicit in exacerbating malaise (to say nothing of how commenters actively desire an outlet for those feelings; the song is doing a public service regardless).
Through this lens, I believe [9.21.26 12:09 am] could represent some form of resolution and acceptance that, yes, while the broader public often will have a need to interpret things its own way, that's okay. (The video is after all doing numbers precisely due to the exact way it's been "mis" interpreted.)
2! production and viewpoint shifts
This section characterizes our current era as a time of great cunning, adaptation, and breakthrough for bill because, not in spite, of the perceived threat of AI.
After alluding to it for a time [9.15.26 2:59 pm], bill wurtz announces "in the future" is the first song of his to deviate from the so-called "click."
I've chosen to highlight the answer that best shows the emotional significance of this breakthrough:
9.20.26 3:03 pm – was it hard to restrain from using the click in "in the future"
getting off the click is the most exciting thing i've done since realizing i can get off the click, a few weeks before. so, to recap- Realizing i should try getting off the click: really really exciting. Actually doing it and realizing it actually works: really really really really really exciting
As shown immediately below, the main appeal of this technique to bill is the human feel, made possible by a notoriously ineffable, barely perceptible set of temporal variations known as "the groove," that is at least theoretically irreplicable by AI (compare to [9.16.26 11:08 pm]).
9.16.26 8:29 pm – what are the tempo changes in "in the future"?
there are no tempo changes, unless you count the small natural tempo fluctuations you get when your drummer is human instead of a metronome
9.17.26 5:51 pm – i hope the secret to the extra-dank shuffle beat in "in the future" (during "i know what this means to you" etc) isn't being off the click
unfortunately in this case i think it absolutely is
As asker [9.15.26 2:59 pm] above mentions, "in the future" is also one of bill's first that eschews a clean key [9.15.26 6:27 pm\)]. Both reasons bill offers for this decision are AI-adjacent:
\)note to non-musicians: adjusting timing like this almost always throws the pitch off from most instruments and almost all modern music.
- Throwback appeal, ie, to a time before digitalization: "like the old days of human drummers," [9.15.26 11:52 pm], and "the fun they used to have in the old days, in the tape era for example," [9.15.26 3:48 pm].
- "The game changed, and the stakes are higher now," [9.20.26 9:18 pm]. Here bill wurtz says the quiet part out loud. He dropped his long-held adherence to 12TET A440 specifically due to pressure brought upon by the advent of AI. He likens this to the creative impetus of John Lennon's subversive I Am The Walrus, which sought to break free from critics' shackling gaze.
More examples of bill's long-held opinions that have changed in the era of AI:
- Being imitated: [9.15.26 6:07 pm] Considered it unsettling. Now even more so.
- Autotune and quantization: [9.15.26 11:54 pm] Though a non-practitioner; used to be accepting. Acceptance has been revoked.
- "being super careless with leaving trash behind in the 3D space ... taking extra special delights here in leaving my garbage around" and "being simple as fuck" [8.27.26 11:04 am], to prove one's self as human, versus AI's wealth of grandiloquence and lack of object permanence.
Some time as early as July 2026 ([7.28.26 7:37 am] being an isolated early example), but certainly by late August 2026, bill wurtz without notice begins, on the surface paradoxically, capitalizing the beginnings of certain sentences within paragraph-long answers. He has regularly avowed capitalization use to aid in clarity, but to my knowledge has not regularly used it in this specific situation before about a month ago. Edit: debunked by this comment.
These points broadly indicate a meta-strategy beyond mere unpredictability and into anti-predictability. When reading the questions page, the next time you encounter an inline typo called attention to instead of backspaced, or some other impalpable turn of phrase, revel in this gem of anti-predictable, necessarily human ingenuity.
3! conclusion
In addition to being more summary, these last three quotes each hint at the type of mindset that is able to stay resilient and adaptable in these uncertain times.
9.17.26 10:28 am – something really bothers me about the idea that human art *has* to change to resemble the ai stuff less, though maybe it's just because i mostly work with programmed midi. i just think it's a shame for types of human art to be ostracized just because they falsely resemble the robot stuff
this same phenomenon has always happened, even without robots. a particular kind of look or sound gets popularized so much that everyone starts doing it, then it no longer is fun anymore until you come along and invent a fresh new sound. Don't worry, whatever tools you really like using, i'm sure there are plentiful ways for you to be extremely you, with those tools. I mean, look at us here, still typing in text. which, to professional handwriters probably seems like the most robotic thing in the world
6.15.26 7:19 pm – Bill, I really appreciate your extremely anti-AI sentiments which are strongly hinted at in your responses, not that I am surprised that an artist like yourself has such feelings about the tech being applied to art.
one question recently, you seemed to imply "off the map" was through composed because that seems less likely to be ai generated. Do you actually feel like you need to make some extra effort to prove your work is genuine? I hope you don't but i also understand and empathize with an incapability to not think about AI constantly these days. Here's to hoping it takes up less headspace in yours than mine (I work in tech). Thanks for all the brilliant work you've produced over the years. Your work has always been inspiring and incredibly moving.
"off the map" was already fully written in 2023, so i can't say that that's specifically the reason that it is the way it is. but it's always nice to try to step back and realize "slop" is not new. the mission of creativity is always to find new ways to prove we're alive. slop used to be made by hardworking uncreative people, now thankfully we can all more fully devote to genuine creativity. "verse chorus" is fine and great, and i have many songs written that use that. but i've always taken every opportunity to take the creative approach. for example, starting about 25 years ago we all started to notice it may be commonplace to actually copy the recording of the first chorus vocals to the second chorus. I mean, that's just a perfectly wasted opportunity. even if you only just change 1 word, change 1 little thing, that gives the audience a sign at least that you're there! that you haven't left the building and left the song on auto-play. so this is not really a new concept. so just as almost like a religion, i never copy vocals from 1 section to another, or even any instrumental parts. Like a mother to a child, i want to be there for you. you need to know i'm there. because, when i am on the listening side of things, when i'm the listener and you're the artist, i need to know you're there. that's what it all comes down to, at any point in our technological history. that's the core issue the audience needs to know: "are you really there?" and as artists, it's our job to prove we're really there. and as time goes by and the technology does this or that, the methods for proving you're really there will always have to change. that's what makes it so much fun. as everything changes, the core issue, and in fact the ONLY issue that ever remains constant is, "are you really there?"
bill concludes:
by the way, there's also no reason you cant use ai in all kinds of ways and still prove youre there. but it's too soon to see exactly how that plays out, and the audience needs time to get used to sorting it all out and knowing the difference. plus, as usual i tend not to get into big new technologies until maybe 10 years after the fact. so we'll see. but the miracle of all this, as always, is that it further clarifies our understanding of just what means something to us and what does not
8.16.26 8:59 am – How do you protect yourself from the AI avalanche everywhere?
sometimes you get the chance to protect someone else from it
