Curtesy of The Velvet Sundown
Artificial intelligence (AI) has gone beyond just controlling robots; it has found its way into our world of art and music. AI programs are now able to create artwork in seconds and make “bands” that release songs on Spotify. I don’t just find AI generated music and art unethical, I also think they are extremely detrimental to students’ creativity.
Music and art are more than just numbers and code, they have feelings, pain, and expressions AI is not able to convey. Student musician, Ann Zhou (12) says, “It[AI generated music] was just very generic, right? There wasn’t really anything that I could remember besides it sounded like that.” AI music doesn’t represent emotions or stand out the way real music from musicians do, generating sounds that replicate the sound of an instrument but are not real instrument sounds.
The usage of AI in creating songs and art can be harmful to students who work hard to achieve the awards and recognition AI can obtain in just a day. While there are struggling artists and musicians trying to make it, there is a chance they have to compete against AI artworks. It’s ridiculous. Due to the rising popularity of AI, what will become of the future? AI could easily begin to replace musicians and artists in their field and even eventually take over other creative jobs. The popular Spotify band, The Velvet Sundown, makes rock music, which has reached over one million streams on Spotify in just weeks. The group denied AI accusations until backed into a corner, creating an official statement that the music and group was completely created by AI. This raised concerns over Spotify allowing the release of AI generated music on their app as people held concerns over the fairness to human artists.
Mills High School art teacher Matt Christenson believes AI generated art is not real art due to the lack of human elements.“That is trash. I think that is just dehumanizing by definition, because it’s replacing humans and the human art form…it makes less artists, less real in the world,” Christenson said.
Numerous scientists and entrepreneurs believe that AI has been expected for future generations because that is how humanity is meant to evolve. I disagree with this. The idea of the future involving robots walking around, AI art being on display in museums, or AI generated music on the Billboard Top 100 in the future is not a future I want to be a part of. If AI continues to grow and is normalized in classrooms and even in workplaces, human roles will continue to shrink.
Is AI ethical? In my opinion, AI should not be a part of our society where there are many hard workers trying to gain recognition for their work when AI has the ability to generate work for so much more recognition than it deserves. Giving art to machines removes all forms of what makes it human. AI cannot replace the authenticity of arts and music that humans are able to create. AI can create sounds. Humans create music.