Splice: Its CEO Aims to Curb AI Where It Harms

Kakul Srivastava, the leader of Splice, asserts a non-negotiable place for humans, from musical creation to professional emails. She connects this stance to lessons learned from an industrial failure and a concrete idea of the utility of technologies. Her company claims to be working on AI products that keep the artist in control.

Lessons from Failure and Technology Serving Memory

Kakul Srivastava indicates that she was part of the founding team of Tiny Speck, which became Slack, and cites Glitch, their massively multiplayer open world, as one of the most beautiful projects she has worked on. She explains that Glitch failed for obvious reasons at the time: the game relied on Flash, which Adobe was no longer investing in, and it targeted PCs at a time when audiences were shifting to mobile gaming. She mentions two major trends that were ignored for too long and confesses to feeling like she let down the creativity of the teams involved.

Her relationship with technology also involves personal transmission. She seeks to recreate her mother’s cooking, who passed away before she learned most of the recipes, by relying on YouTube videos from strangers replicating dishes as their mothers made them. After many attempts, she claims to have successfully made a recipe last year, with a taste that took her back to when she was eight years old. For her, this is an example of the utility of technology: a man who shared his family recipe allowed her to reconnect with her mother’s cooking, without knowing it. She adds that she willingly spends on live jazz, which she describes as an experience in a space where decisions are made in real-time and cannot be repeated, even if it becomes "useless" the next day when she travels for work.

Limiting AI in Work Documents and Communications

For work, Kakul Srivastava prioritizes a well-written document followed by a real discussion. She reminds that Splice operates in a remote-first manner, without "hallways," and describes a working mode where one person formalizes their thoughts before a group exchange, from which, she believes, most good initiatives arise. In this context, she states her desire to curb the use of AI: she is wary of texts written by automated systems, as once it is unclear whether a person is behind the words, the nature of the conversation changes for the worse, with no way back. She believes this observation also applies to music.

At Splice, AI Products Announced as Human-Centered

Kakul Srivastava asserts that Splice is working to develop AI products that keep humans at the heart of the creative process. She recalls overseeing the platform's first forays into generative AI and maintains a critical attitude toward "push a button, get a song" approaches, which she was already denouncing last year. This model is presented as having made companies like Suno controversial, and she emphasizes that her skepticism has not diminished.

Background, Acquisitions, and Cultural Inspirations

Kakul Srivastava leads Splice, a sample platform used for one-shots and melodic loops, elements of which have been used in popular hits like "Money" by Lisa and "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter. She previously held leadership positions at Flickr, Yahoo, GitHub, and Adobe, and claims a background at the intersection of Silicon Valley and creators. At Splice, she has expanded the platform's reach by acquiring Spitfire Audio.

Regarding inspirations, she cites Instagram as her favorite online space, where her feed is populated with unexpected musicians: from "gothic western," a street dance organizer in Russia, a dulzain player covering hits, to an Indian chai-wala who raps. She claims she could watch these scenes indefinitely. She also recalls Antakshari, a singing game where each person continues from the last letter, played during trips or weddings, and appreciates that it relies on memory and the audacity to sing, even poorly, in front of family. In contrast, she finds a mug warmer disappointing, as she says it heats the mug but not the coffee, even though it works. What she is most proud of among her achievements are her children, and she considers the development of their own opinions as both mundane and extraordinary. To summarize her biopic, she would choose the following phrase: a heist movie where no one is robbed and everyone gets paid.