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Kakul Srivastava is the CEO of Splice, a sample platform used by producers for loops and one-shots found in hits like Lisa’s "Money" and Sabrina Carpenter’s "Espresso." Before joining Splice, she held executive roles at Flickr, Yahoo, GitHub, and Adobe. At Splice, she has overseen expansions including the acquisition of Spitfire Audio and forays into generative AI. Last year, on an episode of Decoder, she spoke out against "push-button, get-song" AI tools similar to those used by Suno. She remains skeptical of such technology and believes Splice should keep humans at the center of the creative process.

Srivastava argues that AI-written documents change the nature of conversations because it becomes unclear if a person is behind the words, making discussions worse and irreversible. She applies this same logic to music. While she acknowledges Instagram is not the fashionable answer, her feed shows people creating music in unexpected ways, such as gothic western styles or an Indian chai-wala rapping. She also enjoys Antakshari, an Indian game where players sing songs based on the last letter of the previous line, noting that it relies on memory and singing rather than musical skill.

She contrasts these human experiences with AI tools like a cup warmer, which she notes works exactly as designed but does not warm the coffee itself. Srivastava reflects on her time at Tiny Speck, the company that became Slack, where they built a game called Glitch. The project failed because it was built on Flash, which Adobe stopped investing in, and it was a PC experience while the world moved to mobile gaming. She believes she let down the talented people who created something beautiful due to failing to account for these tectonic trends.

When asked what technology is for, Srivastava shares stories of watching strangers reconstruct her mother’s recipes from YouTube videos, which tasted like being eight years old with her mom. She values live jazz because it involves real-time decision-making that cannot be undone. She also mentions a heist movie where nothing gets stolen but everybody gets paid, illustrating the human element she cherishes over automated alternatives.