Art is a facet of life that purely dedicates itself to human expression through sights, sounds, and feelings. The action of stripping that away is an attack against every single human artist to ever live.
Generative A.I. has hastily taken over the art medium with waves of artificially made content crashing against the rock walls of human media. From still art, paintings, sketches, comics, and other facets of art. To movies, shows, and videos. A.I. has begun shifting the plates of the world of media, art, and entertainment as we’ve known it for decades, causing an alarming quake for the industry.
A spread of social media accounts housing content that is made fully or partially with AI has been blowing up with millions of followers and views. These videos, typically called “slop,” are becoming commonplace on online platforms. The name “slop” was given because the majority of A.I.-generated content typically seen on social media or YouTube lacks a genuine plot or depth like human-made content has. Non-human content becoming a large part of the vacuum on social media is very concerning for human creators, malforming online platforms and decreasing the number of quality videos.
The A.I. content takes the limelight away from human creators due to the severe oversaturation of A.I. videos. According to an article by Aisha Down from The Guardian, new YouTube users are susceptible to 20% of their feed being taken up by non-human content. A.I. generated content is estimated to rake in $117 million annually, and out of the top 15,000 YouTube channels, 278 of them house purely A.I. generated content.
Considering the difficulty most people already have when trying to become successful online, the massive wave of non-human “creators” definitely poses an alarming issue for the already struggling human creators.
People taking on the mantle of self-proclaimed “A.I. artists,” or “prompt engineers,” is a popular path into media ever since generative A.I. has boomed. One could hardly agree with the term, since generating art through A.I. does not make you an artist, which is especially true considering that the very foundation of A.I.-generated art was built and trained on pre-existing, copyrighted human art.
Society under-values art, so much so that it makes an industry where long-term success is already exceedingly difficult for artists and creatives to obtain. It is glaringly obvious, considering the popularity and push of A.I. art amongst the masses and companies, that human artists are directly losing the value of their work. So, for a software to swoop in and take advantage of this already specified field is wrong towards’ struggling artists. And to put the final nail in the coffin, A.I. is being trained with stolen works from humans; conglomerating a vicious cycle.
Companies hop on board with A.I. art projects relating to advertising, but also movies. Pushing forward agendas that are in support of using lazy, generative art to bring forth a terrible future of media. Coca-Cola is most infamous for creating A.I. advertisements with smaller budgets that have received massive amounts of criticism online, especially from the likes of popular YouTube creator Penguinz.
The YouTube platform has been plagued with A.I. advertisements that you literally can’t escape from.
To imagine a world where human-made content is a dwindling commodity, instead of a common place, is nothing short of scary. It comes down to one basic sentiment, the act of knowledge, and being able to confirm that knowledge. When the art is made by a human, it’s credited with a name, sometimes monetized, copyrighted, and you can pinpoint exactly where the art originates from. You can examine who inspired the work, and the thoughts and feelings of the artist. These are things you objectively can not get from nonhuman art.
“Do you think there could be a real threat that real hardworking artists will have their jobs taken?” (Timones).
“One hundred percent. Since I went to art school and I’ve been in the field forever, I have friends who are artists. Frequently, someone will post something. Like, they’re trying to make a living, making their cartoon characters, or they do portraits where someone’s like, ‘oh, well, I don’t want to pay $120 to have you do this by hand.’ ‘Look what I just made on my phone.’ And it’s like, they have no idea. So it is really scary, and I don’t know what to tell that person.” Ms. Cepin, art teacher at Stroudsburg High School.
The newsletter, Design Week, in the United Kingdom (U.K.) states that one in four illustrators has lost their jobs to A.I. in an article by James Cartwright. This is incredibly alarming considering how relatively early A.I. is. This presents a potential large scale issue with the art industry, where the value of human artists is decreased by corporations. who elect to use lazy, generative A.I. as the alternative to humans.
We are no longer in an era where we know that everything we see that is written or drawn is real and made by a human. A mere six years ago, a person could tell you that every design, drawing, pattern, and cover was made by a human, but now in 2026, one would be hard pressed to believe that there aren’t A.I. generated designs in a store or product. This fully jeopardizes the integrity of art in multiple facets of society and product because an environment has been cultivated, where one could simply not be able to tell for sure that the art they see online or even in person has a human origin.
In some cases, it is very obvious that A.I. art was utilized. For example, Target has distributed numerous books with covers that have the telltale signs of generative, non-human art. A.I. is wasting no time implementing itself as commonplace, if, in just a short amount of time, the public is seeing a wave of non-human material.
Urgent problem with A.I. training with existing human art:
Copyright laws are set in place to protect creators from theft and plagiarism. And credit them with ownership of their content. This has been in place since 1790.
When someone creates something — it’s theirs, they own it in its entirety — because they crafted it using their imaginative mind that controlled their hands and wrote or drew something unique. Creation is something that every single person inherits from birth; what they choose to create, however, is up to the mind of the creator.
A.I. has none of these uniquely human qualities. It is literally impossible for it to make something with inspiration, thought-provoking, or even hold the same essence of a human spirit. There is inherently an emptiness in A.I. art.
Furthermore, artists who work hard to hone their craft are directly affected by generative art. A.I. poses a threat to an already challenging field for many people, essentially leaving millions of talented people in the dust.
“A.I. for artistic purposes is embedded in thievery, stealing spaces for hardworking people. And if A.I. continues to create its own images and artists are no longer producing art, because they aren’t getting anything for it, then this has the potential to bring forth a reckoning for the art industry. It’s no longer worth their time. What happens next?” (Cepin).
To put the cherry on top, A.I. takes art made by humans and trains itself with it. Not only does the issue of fully replacing artists exist, but they did it by weaponizing people’s art. This leads to a need for laws regarding generative art, because we shouldn’t let decades of creator protection have been for nothing due to A.I. There needs to be more done for artists and maintaining an environment where we have genuine, human-created, and mindfully made art/content. To lose this would be to lose years of beautiful literature, paintings, comics, graphics, movies, shows, and more. A.I. can’t taint the stream of art which humans have worked so hard to keep whole. We mustn’t lose sight of the importance of the medium; how it’s used to mold minds, enact change, invoke emotion, and inspire artists further.
“Art’s supposed to make you feel something, right? And then when you find out a computer made it, it’s like, what? And you know the computer doesn’t have emotions, so it takes away from it completely.” (Cepin).
We must act like museums and exhibits, which preserve and highlight years of history; history that A.I. threatens.
Furthermore, a new precedent has been set for A.I. “creators,” a term used as loosely as possible. On the second of March, a man by the name of Steven Thaler went to the Supreme Court after his A.I. The generated art piece was denied copyright, after which, the Supreme Court decided not to let him plead his case, determining that the first basic ground for copyright is a human artist. This means both literally and lawfully, A.I. art isn’t an official form since it isn’t directly created by a human, further confirming generative art as invalid. (Reuters).
A.I. has absolutely no place in museums and art exhibitions:
Museums are great buildings with a few key objectives: to preserve human history, highlight forms of art, and to educate. To perform these tasks, a museum must maintain some necessary elements: real human-made art, purposeful exhibitions, and genuine historical value. To understand our world, we must first determine which things are real and which are not, and it is a museum’s sole responsibility.
This simply can not be done if artificial intelligence exhibits exist within their walls. Because to have A.I-made content represented is to have nothing at all. It is all fake; it has no history, no real-world experiences, no genuine presence.
When we observe ancient artifacts, century-old sculptures, and million-dollar art by Picasso, we see they have real value, real presence, and real historical context. We know that humans had made these things in a time when we were not yet present.
Newer developments like Dataland, a museum/exhibit scheduled to open in Los Angeles, California, in 2026, are dedicated to housing A.I. art and “A.I. based on creativity.” This is under the leadership of Refik Anadol Studios. Already, the world is seeing a push for A.I. art and exhibits, which goes completely against the sole, vital purpose of museums. To have a place that exhibits art that is generated with artificial intelligence and has no human authorship is completely mad.
In George Orwell’s most prolific novel, 1984, he covers multiple bases of a dystopian society, one that is not entirely unlike our world. In the novel, it is the main character’s job to write for the newspaper, but instead of writing only the truth for the public, he must abandon his moral and journalistic integrity to please Big Brother. His job requires him to purposefully rewrite newsbreaks dramatically different from how they truly happened, creating a world where people are living with lies; nothing they know is actually real, and that is the same problem posed with A.I.
The world is already stricken with the disease that is, fake or, at the very least, censored news; so, to lay upon the world a tool that will only make that worse is to beat a dead horse.
When it comes to important, public news that has the potential to affect the lives of millions, transparency and truth are vital. And nothing made with A.I. is genuine.
A.I. in music:
Music is something that almost everyone enjoys, and with an incredible number of talented musicians, singers, and performers throughout the world and history, there is a wide variety of music to choose from. Multiple genres that can cater to anyone.
Music doesn’t have a truly traceable date of origin since, for centuries, humans and animals have been creating sounds that are representative of communication and emotion. From the majestic chirps of birds during the sunrise to the ribbits of frogs in a swamp. From the ethereal sounds of a choir in a church to the elegant violin playing a single in an orchestra. Sounds are music, notes are how we determine it, and vocals and instruments are how we shape sounds to create astonishing symphonies, rhymes, songs, ballads, chimes, etc.
Talented musicians and vocalists/singers are unique because they’ve mastered their craft in such a way that not everyone can perform. Some of the greatest singers like Freddy Mercury, Adele, Paul Anka, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, the list goes on, made a living and built their legacies through their own voice, the one that they were put on this earth with. A.I. stealing their likeness to generate “songs” is to completely degrade the honor of these singers.
The mainstream tools used to generate A.I. Music in 2026 are Mozart AI (a rather mocking name), Adobe, and Canva. These models are trained with thousands of existing sounds consisting of a wide array of vocals and instruments. They also train with existing human music that has been cultivated and preserved for a very long time.
Spotify is arguably the most notorious when it comes to housing A.I. music on the platform. It is one of the services that actively embraces generative music and fights against groups like the Universal Music Group (UMG); who argue against A.I. music. According to an article from Berklee by Talia Smith-Muller, in 2023, the UMG tried to prevent streaming services from using generated music, saying that training with human music is grounds for legal action.
U.S. copyright law on A.I. music states that it can not be copyrighted if it is entirely made with A.I. and has no original human authorship. This was established for music in 2023, yet Spotify still allows people to profit from non-human music, which leads to a bigger issue and more questions. Spotify allows the use of fully artificial music, granted, with more restrictions, but the principle is the same. People are using A.I. on Spotify, and they’re literally getting paid for the content that they didn’t create.
Technically, non-copyrighted material can still be monetized, but the issue lies more in the ethical domain. A.I. “artists” or “creators,” principally, should not be able to make any amount of profit, considering that the tools they use are openly stealing from existing, copyrighted material.
If it is illegal to steal and then sell that stolen item, then it should be illegal to profit from A.I.-made content in any shape.
It is purely about devaluing people by stealing their likeness, the one body in which they were uniquely created. That is what A.I. in music does, that is what A.I. gathering info on you does. It steals the souls of thousands of talented artists so that they can mutilate the beautiful music in which many artists spent their entire lives creating. could have it stolen by a machine for people who have no respect for music; arguably, the most popular and used mediums on the planet. But, so they can do something worthwhile with their talents, and make people feel something through the sounds and vibrations.
When or if, hopefully not, A.I. and the people running it end up stealing or owning the likeness or personality of millions of people, it will leave in its wake a path of destruction for everyone. A.I. doesn’t, and never should, own you; no one should own you. But that is exactly what happens when we allow them to have our likeness, to have our voices, and our tendencies. We can not give ourselves up.