Yes, We Use AI. Here's Exactly Where — and Where We Never Will

Every few weeks someone discovers that a studio whose ads star a sentient soufflé might involve artificial intelligence, and reacts like they've uncovered a scandal. So let me save everyone the detective work and publish the whole thing: here is exactly where AI operates in my business, and exactly where it never will.

I'm not going to be defensive about this, because I don't think there's anything to defend. But I do think you deserve precision — because "they use AI" can mean two completely different things, and the difference is the whole conversation.

The one-sentence version

The robots do my admin so I can do your record.

Freshly Baked Studios is one person. Me. There's no front desk, no marketing department, no A&R team, no assistant scheduling calls. There's a producer with 20 years of records, and a stack of software doing everything that isn't producing — so that when you book time, you get a human being whose whole day was spent on music instead of spreadsheets.

Where AI works here

The ads. Yes — the pie films are AI-generated video. The soufflé in a support group, the pastry intervention: made with AI tools, on purpose, because a one-person studio doesn't have a film crew and because I think a mastering joke starring baked goods is funnier than another slow pan across a mixing console. Nobody was meant to mistake them for documentary footage. The pies are not real. I'm sorry you had to find out this way.

The analyzer. Our free song analysis tool is openly, proudly an AI product. It measures 63 things about a track — frequency balance, dynamics, loudness, emotional character — and compares it against a couple hundred thousand commercially released songs to show you where your mix sits versus records that are actually converting listeners. It's AI as measurement. It analyzes music. It does not make any.

The follow-ups, the scheduling, the reports. Booking confirmations, reminders, follow-up sequences, my ad dashboards, the analytics — automated, the same way your dentist's office is automated, just with better taste in music.

The research behind these blog posts. Drafted with AI assistance, anchored in my real rates, my real opinions, and my real sessions, and published under my name because I stand behind every word. The war stories are mine. The prices are the ones I actually charge. The takes — including the spicy ones — are mine.

Where AI never goes

Here's the line, and it doesn't move:

No AI touches your record. Every mix is done by me, by hand, fader by fader, in my studio on Rogers Ave in Brooklyn. Every master: my ears, my chain, my decisions. No AI mastering — I've written at length about why I think one-click mastering gives you the average of every record ever made when what you need is the right decision for yours. No generative audio in client work. No AI "assistance" on creative decisions. Nothing.

No robot on your calls. When we talk about your track, that's me. When you sit in the room during a mix — which clients do, and which I recommend, because it's the best part — that's as un-automated as work gets in 2026.

If that line ever moves, you'll read about it here first. It won't.

Why I'm comfortable saying all this out loud

Because we've run this exact argument before, many times, and craft won every round. The drum machine was "not real drumming." Sampling was "theft." Auto-Tune was "cheating." The DAW was "not a real studio." Every producer working today — including the ones angriest about AI — builds records with synthesizers, quantization, and pitch correction that were all somebody's authenticity scandal once. The tools were never the music. The decisions were always the music.

What I'd actually be embarrassed by isn't using AI — it's the opposite: spending my limited hours doing manually what software does better, and having less of myself left for the part that actually needs a human. My clients don't pay me to hand-write follow-up emails. They pay me for what happens when the faders move.

The honest test

If you're evaluating any studio in 2026 — mine included — don't ask whether they use AI. Everyone does, whether they admit it or not. Ask this instead: "What, specifically, does a human do to my record, and can I watch?"

My answer: everything, and yes. The studio's at 332 Rogers Ave. Book a call, bring your track, and watch a mix happen the old way — one decision at a time, by a person, who used a robot to schedule the appointment.

Want to know what your project would cost first? The rate calculator will quote you in about 90 seconds. It's software. The mix it prices is not.