A Very AI-mas

I’d like to consider myself a creative person. I enjoy creative media such as art and music. Unfortunately, Artificial Intelligence is a cancer that has ruined the modern creative landscape beyond repair.

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or the myriad of other feed-based apps, they’ve all been flooded with soulless AI slop. It’s not even just online, either – there’s what I would call a pandemic of AI used in the real world to replace true work and creativity.

It ranges from something as simple and harmless as an AI design on a shirt to something as egregious as nationally televised commercials from Fortune-500 companies that primarily, or in some cases entirely, use AI in their promotional materials. It’s really disheartening to see real artists with real talent being disposed of because they require a paycheck.

I feel that it’s part of a greater culture that would rather cut out for a soulless product instead of hiring real people, all in the name of protecting their bottom line. It really is depressing as hell.

The problem is prevalent with online content creators as well. Every day, I see posts that are seemingly human-made, yet after a closer look, there are weird artifacts that prove that it’s AI. Even the most seemingly basic graphic design is being offloaded to AI image generators. It seems like most beginner graphic designers are unable to create basic designs, either because they’re too stupid to do it, or they genuinely haven’t learned because they offload everything to AI.

AI art isn’t what pisses me off the most, though. What really grinds my gears is the use of AI music. As many know, I am a musical person. I love creating my own music, and I love listening to music created by other people. There’s almost always real passion for the music that I can hear in the songs, which is great. My problem arises when people use AI to generate “music.”

You can call me a pretentious prick for this, but I do not consider AI “music” to be real music at all. It is a stain on the idea of music and its history. So many people have worked so hard and pushed so many boundaries to create the modern idea of music today, and it is being completely dismantled by AI, and it disgusts me.

It’s not just isolated incidents. There are multiple countries where completely AI-generated “music” has been topping the charts week after week. That is just absolutely insane. It makes me wonder if, soon, everything will be AI-generated? What happens after real artists give up? Is this where creativity dies? Is this what happens when a society is complacent with laziness?

Daeton Winebrenner is a Salina sophomore studying Media Communication and Production. Email him at thehutchinsoncollegian@gmail.com.

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