Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava thinks AI emails are killing conversations

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As head of Splice, Kakul has tried to carefully thread the line on AI music tools. She also hates her cup warmer.

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Kakul Srivastava is the CEO of Splice, the sample platform countless producers rely on for one-shots and melodic loops. Samples pulled from the service have found their way into massive hits like Lisa’s “Money” and “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter. (The original samples are here and here, for the curious.)

Before that, Kakul held executive roles at Flickr, Yahoo, GitHub, and Adobe. Throughout her career, Kakul has found herself at the intersection of Silicon Valley and creatives. That’s been especially true at Splice, where she’s not just expanded the platform’s footprint by acquiring Spitfire Audio, but also overseen its forays into the world of generative AI.

Last year, she was very outspoken on an episode of Decoder about avoiding the sort of “push-button, get-song” AI that has made companies like Suno so controversial. And based on her answers to our questionnaire, it doesn’t seem like her skepticism has waned. When it comes to Splice, the company has made a point of trying to offer AI products that still keep the human at the center of the creative process.

And when it comes to communicating with colleagues, Kakul sees the same need to keep AI at bay.

Splice is remote-first, so we don’t have a hallway. What we have instead is somebody sitting down and actually thinking something through, and then a bunch of people arguing with it.