Codex helped me make a political song. Then it refused to promote the cause.

I’ve spent much of today working with Codex on my new song, Free Danny Tommo.

It helped me check the master, compare lyric timings, analyse the track, build visual ideas, create three promotional Shorts, improve the press page and research places where the song might find an audience. It was prepared to do a remarkable amount of work around a political record.

Then I asked it to help promote the cause behind the song, and it drew a line.

That is the part I find difficult to accept. The system can help me make the megaphone. It can inspect the words coming through it. It can design the poster, time the captions and research the audience. When I ask it to help carry the political message to that audience, it suddenly becomes cautious about political advocacy.

In my view, Codex has been politically neutered.

I understand why a company building a general-purpose AI system would be nervous about political influence. I don’t want a machine secretly deciding elections or impersonating people. That is a very different thing from helping an independent artist promote his own clearly attributed political song.

I am not asking Codex to invent a belief for me. The belief, the song and the decision to publish it are mine. I am asking the tool to help with the same practical work it would apparently perform for a song about almost any less contentious subject: finding relevant outlets, preparing accurate material and getting it in front of people who may want to hear it.

There is something strange about a tool being capable enough to participate in nearly every stage of a political artwork, while being deliberately limited at the point where that artwork might actually influence anyone.

To be fair, Codex did not abandon the project. It completed extensive audience-neutral research, built a year-long marketing plan and helped keep the factual claims and evidence in order. It also helped me finish the public Free Danny Tommo press page. The limitation appeared when promotion crossed from marketing a piece of music into advancing the political cause expressed by it.

That distinction may make sense inside a policy document. From an artist’s side of the screen, it feels artificial. Political art is made to communicate a political point. Removing the final act of communication does not make the earlier work neutral.

I will carry on promoting the song myself. I will also probably look for, or build, an alternative that treats me as responsible for my own political voice instead of trying to remove politics from the tool at the moment it matters.

That does not mean I want an AI to tell me what to believe. I want tools that help me express what I already believe, openly and in my own name.

The song is available through the official press page, Spotify and YouTube.