The battle between Artificial Intelligence and original creativity has only grown in recent years. With AI gaining more and more power, and increasingly being used for content creation and production, many creatives are fearful as to what the future may hold for them and their industry.
In a never-before-seen show of solidarity, many of the U.K.’s major newspapers replaced their traditional front covers with the ‘Make It Fair’ campaign against AI in journalism, as well as over 1000 artists, including Sam Fender and Kate Bush releasing a silent album to protest planned changes in copyright law, which would allow generative AI access to creatives’ work free of charge.
So what risks does AI actually pose to the creatives that we all enjoy? The most prominent concern comes from the suggestion that AI could eventually replace human creativity, flooding the market with unoriginal, dispassionate content that can be generated in a flash. This would allow AI companies and users to repeatedly create masses of content at a rate which would outmatch any original creator, and lead to them being squeezed out of an already competitive market.
This is a concern shared by many, and was recently the subject of Select Committee enquiries in Parliament, with cross-party MPs agreeing that the threats AI could pose, particularly without sufficient regulation, are an issue facing the industries now, not later. AI also risks undermining the quality of the industry overall – even if creatives are still able to carve out a section for their work, will people be less inclined to listen, having to wade through an AI-generated wasteland?
Whilst I do not believe that AI would ever fully replace our artists, musicians, filmmakers, thespians and other creatives, the risk that it imposes is severe – why would a company choose to invest in a human who needs to be paid, and needs time to develop their work, when a computer can do so for free, instantly? We are all familiar with the low-quality, inaccurate repetitiveness that defines AI, but if this faceless entity repeatedly takes up a larger chunk of an already competitive market, how will original creatives ever hope to keep up?
There are many potentials of AI, and many problems we face that it may help to solve. But the unseen solidarity of those in the culture and media industries is a stark warning – if they’re concerned, we should all be paying attention.
Edited by: Jasmine Pegg
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