As technology has advanced over time, artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to create more and more things. Music, art, videos and other kinds of media are being generated through technology rather than with human hands, and Keene State students who are involved in the media arts shared their opinions on this.
WKNH General Manager and senior SPDI (Sustainable Product Design and Innovation) major William April said, “A lot of people on the executive board hate AI music.” He also added that AI music is “very unoriginal.”
“I just wish more people realized that this is a bad thing for music as a whole, not just for music artists right now, but for the future of music artists. It could really ruin creativity,” said April. “What makes music real is people making music and actually putting the heart and soul into it.”
He added, “Music really unites people, especially at concerts.”
April said there is a huge difference between real music and AI music because you can tell by the cover art and the way the song sounds if it is AI or not.
As for WKNH itself, April said that the organization does not include any AI music in what it plays, and strictly uses professional music. He said that using AI to make funny music can be amusing sometimes, but on a professional level it is “just not a good idea.”
Tagora Mortensen, who is the station manager at WKNH and a psychology major with a studio art minor, said, “It [AI art] feels so soulless and disingenuine.”
“It just feels like you’re taking the respect away from you and just throwing it away [when you use AI to create art],” said Mortensen.
He added that even when people think it is not a big deal to use AI for the little things, “it adds up over and over again and creates a chain reaction of bad things.”
Mortensen said that AI art is not real art “because it is not made by a human and a human did not put work into it. You’re not actually putting your soul into it.”
He said people should care about the excessive use of AI by humans because “AI is a detriment to the environment and the people around us.”
“Also, I feel as though it’s taking away aspects of critical thinking,” he added.
Mortensen described a story they heard about a man who went to the post office to get an envelope. The man’s wife asked him why he didn’t just go to the store and buy them in bulk, and he responded by saying that he would miss seeing all different kinds of people on the way. Mortensen said this relates to AI because when people use it, they miss the journey and are just focused on the destination.
“A destination without a journey doesn’t mean anything because the journey is an equally important part,” Mortensen said.
He also said that using AI for art makes it less engaging for people. He said, “It is destroying the human spirit of art because, the thing is, we have art and music because an innate quality of humans is to express their feelings through tangible means like that.”
He used an example of taking a picture of a painting versus the actual painting. The real painting was “created by a human hand and done meticulously over the course of years sometimes,” but the picture of it, even though it looks the same, “doesn’t have anything behind it.”
Keene State Media Productions (KSMP) President Heather Gibb said she does not like to see AI art, and doesn’t consider it real because “it isn’t being created by people.”
“It takes away opportunities from people who would be willing to do it,” Gibb said. “People won’t have as much opportunity to be creative.”
“Art has always been an expression, and if AI is making the art, then people don’t have as much of an outlet to do that,” she added.
Gibb also mentioned that it could negatively impact job security because “if you can generate an image with AI, you might not hire someone to do the same job so you can save on time.”
“I think most people in media production can share the sentiment of not really enjoying AI art, because they like the actual act of creating art,” Gibb said.
Gibb also said that AI art could affect media in society because it could change what people expect of art, and AI art might become “a standard practice.”
Alex Perry can be contacted at
alex.perry@keene.edu
