“He did it with AI“

Or: How a sentence becomes the perfect alibi for ignorance

“He did it with AI.”

Four words I've been hearing everywhere lately, like a reassuring mantra for those who have no idea what really goes into a creative process using artificial intelligence. Four words that reduce hours of work, technical expertise, artistic choices, and creative sweat to a simple click. Like saying "I saw someone playing the guitar" to describe a Paco de Lucía concert.
Yesterday I released a music video. Yes, I used AI. But do you know what's really behind it?

The trial (the real one)
Let's start from the beginning, not from the final result you see scrolling across your screen as you absentmindedly scratch.

0 – The inspiration for an acoustic piece. That's not generated by any AI: it comes from within, from an emotion, a moment, a vision.
1-4. The musical part: Acoustic guitar, professional microphone, sound card, Logic Pro with a chain of effects and equalizers refined over years of trial and error, failure, and obsessive listening. AI has nothing to do with this: it's pure craftsmanship.

5 – Google Flash Image: to generate the starting image. Seven attempts, not one. Seven increasingly specific and detailed prompts, designed to achieve a result close to what I had in mind.

6 – PicsArt: to make the background neutral.

7 – Upscale Media: to increase the resolution without “blurring” the image as happens with poor quality tools.

8 – Photoshop: for fine corrections. The ones that make the difference between "beautiful" and "professional.".

9 – Apple Notes: Here I wrote the script. Not "a man walks in the desert playing the guitar." No. An average of 250-300 words per prompt, detailing every tiny detail, atmosphere, lighting, movement, emotion. Five times. In English! Because it's the language of AI: the translation process could ruin the result.

10 – Perplexity with Sonnet 4.5: to transform those scripts into structured JSON files that video generation tools could interpret correctly.

11 – VEO 2 Fast: to generate videos of individual scenes. With multiple attempts, modifying the prompts until I got the results I wanted, not the ones the algorithm decided for me.

12 – Flow by Google Labs: to assemble scenes into a single coherent movie and get an overall view.

13 – CapCut: to process the video, split it again and add effects.

14 – Final Cut: to adjust the speed of clips, insert and perfectly synchronize audio, and export the final result.
Total tools used: 14 (of which only 3 are AI generative)
So yes: it's easy to say "he did it with AI.".

But the truth is that artificial intelligence is just one tool in the process. Not the process itself.
The process is vision. Expertise. Choice. Control.
AI doesn't create. It amplifies (or distorts) what you feed it.
And this difference… well, I'll talk about this difference in the next post. Because there's an MIT study that will give you the shivers.
Spoiler alert: Those who use AI as a shortcut are literally destroying their own brains.
Stay tuned.

PS — The video I'm talking about is above. Watch it knowing what's behind it. And then tell me if it's still "just AI.".