AI Policy: Less Than Zero

Effective: 9 July 2026

Less Than Zero is a show about music, chosen and talked about by a person. This policy sets out where AI has been used in producing the show, where that stops now, and why.

1. An honest admission first

AI was used more than it should have been. Tile art, tracklist ordering, and social media planning and scripting all leaned on it — always with Chris reviewing and having final say, but leaned on it more than fits a show that's supposed to be one person's taste and one person's voice. This policy is that acknowledgement, and the correction.

2. The music and the voice are never AI

Every track played is real, human-made music. Every word said on air is Chris's, written and delivered by Chris. This line was never crossed, not once — no song was ever picked by AI, and nothing said on air was ever AI's to control. That's not what's being corrected here; it was always sacred, and stays that way.

3. No AI for creative generation, from now on

Effective immediately, AI is not used for:

• Tile art — episode art is no longer AI-generated.
• Tracklist ordering — the running order is Chris's call from the raw list, with no AI-proposed starting point.
• Social media planning and scripting — TikTok/Instagram scripts, sign-offs, and captions are planned and written by Chris, with no AI structuring or drafting.

If it's creative — the art, the order, the words used to sell the show — it's made by a person.

4. Where AI still helps

What's left is admin, not creative work:

• Research — background on artists and records is AI-assisted for speed, then fact-checked and edited by Chris before it reaches the show or is read on air.
• Production logistics — tagging, caption timing/alignment on already human-written scripts, post scheduling, and stream setup. Mechanical tasks that don't touch what's said, played, or shown.

5. Why the line moved

The show's whole appeal is one person's actual taste and actual voice, in every sense — not just what's said on air, but what it looks like and how it's ordered and pitched. Handing any of that to AI, even with a final check, was more compromise than the show should carry. Admin doesn't change what the show is. Creative work is the show.

6. The tradeoffs, stated plainly

AI carries real costs: the energy and water behind training and running these models, and the open question of what they were trained on and whether that work was fairly credited or paid for. Narrowing AI's role to admin doesn't erase those costs, but it does mean the show isn't spending them on the parts that are supposed to be human anyway.

7. What AI does well

The optimism here is real, just smaller in scope than before. Used for research and logistics, AI turns an hour of admin into ten minutes and takes on the repetitive backend work a one-person show would otherwise absorb. That's genuine value — it's just not creative value, and it never gets credited as such.

8. Changes

This policy is updated as the workflow changes. Check the effective date above.

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This policy itself was drafted with AI, worked through and edited together with Chris — which felt right, given what it's about.