Nobuo Uematsu
Video Game Composer
The legendary composer of the Final Fantasy series, widely regarded as one of the greatest video game musicians of all time, who says he has never used generative AI and never will — because the hardship of creating something yourself is what makes it rewarding.
In his words
I’ve never used AI and probably never will. I think it still feels more rewarding to go through the hardships of creating something myself.
Biography
Nobuo Uematsu (born 1959) is a Japanese composer best known for scoring the Final Fantasy series, a role he held from the franchise’s 1987 debut through many of its most beloved entries. Largely self-taught, he wrote enduring themes such as “One-Winged Angel” and “Aerith’s Theme,” and has been called the “Beethoven of video game music,” performing his work worldwide with orchestras.
The value of hardship
In an October 2025 interview, Uematsu stated plainly that he has never used generative AI and probably never will. His reasoning was not primarily legal or economic but personal and philosophical: the struggle of making something by hand is, to him, the very thing that makes the finished work rewarding. Removing that friction, he suggested, removes the meaning.
Coming from one of the medium’s foundational artists, the statement carries weight as a generational marker — a composer who helped establish game music as a serious art form declining to hand any of it to a machine. His view rhymes with that of younger peers like Joris de Man, who likewise locate the worth of music in the human effort behind it rather than the speed of its production.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/nobuo-uematsu