Why We’ve Updated the Musical Futures AI Songwriting Coaches
Over the past year, many of you have been using our AI Songwriting Coaches with your students, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Teachers have told us these tools spark ideas, lower the barrier to getting started, and support student creativity in practical, musical ways.
Recently, we’ve made an important update. The coaches are no longer named after real, well-known artists. Instead, they’ve been redesigned as fictional songwriting coaches, each representing a particular musical style or approach.
We want to be transparent about why we’ve made this change, how it strengthens student safety, and what we’ve learnt as an organisation.
The Risk of Anthropomorphising AI
One of the biggest challenges with AI tools in education is anthropomorphism. This is the tendency to treat AI systems as if they are real people.
When a chatbot is framed as a real, famous artist, it can blur important boundaries for students. It can imply authority or authenticity that isn’t real. It can encourage emotional attachment or misplaced trust. It can confuse where ideas are coming from, whether that is the student, the tool, or the artist.
For young learners in particular, this matters. Students should never feel like they are talking to a real person, forming a relationship, or receiving personal guidance from an AI. That creates unnecessary risk and goes against best practice for student-facing technology.
By shifting to clearly fictional coaches, we make it explicit that these tools are creative supports, not people. The ideas generated are prompts, not prescriptions. Human teachers, peers, and musicians remain central.
This change reduces risk and increases clarity for students, teachers, and schools.
Student Safety Comes First
Student safety has always been non-negotiable at Musical Futures International.
All of our updated AI Songwriting Coaches:
- do not request or accept personal information
- are restricted to school-appropriate topics and language
- are framed as fictional creative guides, not real individuals
- encourage music-making, not personal disclosure
This aligns with the responsibilities schools and educators carry around child safety, privacy, and digital wellbeing.
The redesign strengthens the guardrails without reducing creative value.
What We’ve Learnt Through This Process
This update has also been an important learning moment for us as an organisation.
Like many educators, we are learning about AI in real time. Our early versions of the Songwriting Coaches were built with engagement and musical relevance in mind. This process reminded us that engagement alone is not enough. How tools are framed, named, and positioned matters just as much as what they do.
We’ve learnt that even well-intentioned design choices can introduce unintended risks, especially when tools are used by young people. We’ve also learnt the value of slowing down, listening to feedback, and being willing to change course when something can be improved.
Most importantly, this process reinforced our belief that responsible innovation means being open about what we are still figuring out.
What the New Coaches Are Designed to Do
With this redesign, we also sharpened the purpose of each coach.
Rather than centring tools around individuals, each coach now represents a way of making music. They support different entry points into songwriting while staying aligned with Musical Futures principles of informal learning, collaboration, and student agency.
- Atlas Rise focuses on uplifting, melodic EDM. It supports work with chords, melodies, builds, and drops, helping students understand how feel-good electronic tracks are structured.
- Loop Mason focuses on emotional, loop-based electronic music. It helps students start small, using loops, samples, voice notes, or everyday sounds, and build outward through layering and repetition.
- Luna Whisper focuses on quiet, emotional, minimalist pop. It supports lyric writing, soft vocals, and simple arrangements, encouraging students to say more with less.
- Neon Vega focuses on bold, groove-driven modern pop and group songwriting. It uses questions rather than answers to help groups make decisions together about groove, hooks, structure, and performance.
- Riff Taylor focuses on guitar-driven rock and band-based songwriting. It supports jamming, rehearsing, and refining ideas collaboratively, with an emphasis on riffs, dynamics, teamwork, and performance energy.
Across all five coaches, the role is the same. They prompt thinking. They encourage action. They never replace the teacher or write music for students.
Refocusing on Purpose
It’s important to be clear about what these tools are for, and what they are not.
They are not replacements for teachers.
They are not authorities on correct music-making.
They do not write songs for students.
They prompt thinking and experimentation. They offer alternative creative perspectives. They support informal, learner-led music-making. They help students get unstuck and keep moving.
In practice, they function as virtual teaching assistants, offering prompts and provocations that teachers can shape, challenge, or ignore.
Alignment with Our AI Strategy
These changes directly reflect our AI in Music Education Strategy.
Our position is clear. AI should expand creative possibilities, not replace human creativity. AI should support hands-on music-making, not shortcut it. Teachers remain the experts guiding learning in context.
Like drum machines, samplers, and DAWs before it, AI is another tool. Powerful, evolving, and requiring careful framing.
By redesigning the coaches, we reduce ethical and safety risks, improve transparency, and model responsible AI use for schools. Most importantly, we keep music made by humans at the centre.
What’s Stayed the Same
While the names and framing have changed, the core value hasn’t.
Students can still explore different songwriting approaches, learn how songs are structured, experiment with genre-specific ideas, and work collaboratively and creatively.
The coaches are now simply clearer about what they are. Tools to think with, not people to talk to.
Moving Forward
AI in education is moving quickly. Rather than chasing novelty, our priority is to lead responsibly, especially in creative subjects where identity, expression, and collaboration matter deeply.
We’ll continue refining these tools with teacher feedback, classroom testing, and a strong commitment to student wellbeing. Thank you for walking this path with us thoughtfully, critically, and creatively.