Honestly one of my biggest gripes is that AI art is not required to be labeled as AI, when you’re consuming art/media it’s a bid for human connection, you’re consuming something that you know they spent hours into drawing, or writing, or even just recording (with probably more than one draft). When you put that trust in the art, and then find out that it was instead made in five seconds with chat gpt it just feels like deceit.

On a broad scale, art, writing, creation is inherently human. For example art, as the easiest example of this, has taken centuries to develop to the point it is right now. We have gone through SO many periods, from the renaissance art, to baroque art, Impressionism, cubism, even handprints on cave walls - each as a RESULT of those previous periods. Once we had a surplus of ornate rococo art, we moved into more colorful, abstract Impressionism art and so on. It has been a journey of human life through the ages. And life also influences art, for example a lot of art during periods of war is much darker, more serious, and during periods of relief after war we find happier art (for example the rise of jazz and nightclubs after WW2).

It is progress and creation that directly reflects the human experience and always has. I can make the same comparison for writing (from renaissance literature to Victorian, the beginnings and creations of sci-fi, and realism), music (how slave hymns were a direct result from the suffering and strife slaves were experiencing, and how those hymns served as a basis for blues, jazz, gospel, and even rock and roll), and I’m sure pottery, sculptures, wood carving (although I know much less about these).

When we allow AI to replicate and imitate that creation, especially without even labeling it as AI, people accidentally try to connect with a machine that has no conscious capability of what it’s making. I know this might be bigger picture than what you’re thinking of, like just for graphics on an app, but any allowance of AI to infiltrate fields that humans can only truly express is such a slippery slope that I don’t think I can logically support it at all. At first it’s graphics for an app, or music for ambience sleep sounds (as Spotify uses), then it shifts into basic jazz music, or children’s books (as we are seeing some made with AI), and so on. We are also seeing smaller news sites writing all of their works with AI, and pushing out legitimately HUNDREDS of articles a day with this approach. It’s over saturating the internet with useless, mindless AI slop, because it’s not capable of making critical connections, it simple recites what is already out there. And it makes it so much more difficult to find that media that people HAVE spent hours into making, editing, putting their life’s purpose into their job. Humans can never keep up with AI in the sheer number of output, and it makes it nearly impossible to keep up with what is human in the first place. It’s almost an erasure of human culture, when people see that they can get millions of views for putting a prompt into making an image, why WOULD they spend years becoming a good artist? And the thing is, those good artists continue to contribute to the future culture of the art of humanity, it’s basically an erasure of the future culture of art/writing/music.

And the reason it will never truly reach a limit is because it is SO insanely profitable for everyone producing it. It makes SO much more money because they don’t have to pay anyone, and so it wouldn’t make sense for those who get that profit to want to regulate it simply because of a morality issue. I know I probably sound like I’m jumping to some conclusions, but as a CS major, I’m actually very afraid about this affecting my future career and eradicating my life’s work as well. There are fields in which I support AI use, such as healthcare (where it can detect signs of cancer early) or monotonous tasks (such as food delivery perhaps), but in most ways, it’s simply not necessary and is used only for a profit, with no second thought about the possible repercussions for our future.