Persuasive Essay:AI & Music
With the rise of artificial intelligence, the music world is being challenged; through the use of machine-generated AI, it is redefining the innovative process of music composition, performance, and distribution. It is altering the creative landscape by assisting music production, creating song loops, and being a tool—but ultimately blurring the lines of originality and AI creation, in addition to removing the emotional element. I will be addressing how AI-created music raises questions about artistic originality, human creativity, and the ethical implications of artificial technology while also highlighting the benefits of the tool.
AI as a Tool — But Limited
In the artificial technology world, computer generation has advantages in its contributions to our society. When it comes to how AI affects the music realm, it can be used as a helpful tool, though it is limited in its emotional capacity. Billboard, a well-known and credible music source, tackles how computer generation has already been behind the scenes for a lot of music production, from as little as beat-making to entire AI-generated compositions. Considering Billboard is a popular magazine, this company provides a guideline to the public on how to think about AI in music.
In “5 Ways AI Has Already Changed the Music Industry,” Billboard journalists Elias Leight and Kristin Robinson highlight the revolutionary production of AI in music. They say that computer generation serves as a tool to make the creation of music easier and more affordable, giving people a lot more access to explore different sounds through the quickness of AI. This technology can help musicians get stems, which is a mixing of certain tracks or even breaking them up. The efficiency of creating music through computer generation is also called the deluge. It is frightening record companies because music is getting produced outside of the major label and is earning money.
Another way AI can be used as a tool is through personalized soundtracks: “to take human-made music and shuffle its individual elements (called ‘stems’) around to arrange newfound compositions that best underscore a user’s needs and actions,” which generates something that is/was already created.1 Lastly, AI can be used as a tool through pitch records. Pitch records is when musicians experiment “with AI voice synthesis technology to help them place their compositions with top-tier artists,”2 so artificial technology can be used to test what a singer might sound like if they wanted to change their voice essentially.
An example of this is Paul McCartney from the Beatles, who decided to create a whole new Beatles song using AI. “The singer is using AI to clean up an old recording made by the bandmates while they were still living using a process known as ‘stem separation.’”3 Since he was a part of the band, he would bring more honour to the song compared to fan-made recreation.
In Time magazine, Andrew Chow highlights that AI helps musicians by creating starting points for melodies, lyrics, and harmonies. With ChatGPT, anyone can type a prompt and it will do it instantly. Chow states, “Some boosters argue that these advancements will further the democratization of music, allowing anyone with an idea to create music from their bedroom.”4 While some assume AI can create a song with minimal human input, that assumption is misleading. Musicians can download musical loops to use in their own songs. This program would be helpful if someone did not know how to play an instrument. “The goal is not to use AI to create the perfect, monetizable static song—but to use it to challenge our conceptions of what music could be.”5 However, starting points are helpful, but they are not finished emotional works.
AI technology is advancing quickly. In a journal article written by Jan Mycka and Jacek Mańdziuk called “Artificial Intelligence in Music: Recent Trends and Challenges,” they mention how AI is already capable of imitating complex musical systems which can save musicians a lot of time in the creative process. The article highlights that there is a lot of human emotion within the creation of music. “Music generation specifically relates to creativity—a very human ability. For this reason, the problem has attracted a lot of attention since the onset of AI application to music.”6 Composing a piece involves harmonization, chord progression, etc., which only “reflects a particular emotion,” which is personal.7 That said, computer generation can be used as a tool to copy people’s algorithms, generate sounds, and follow patterns from sheet music to create new music. However, it can not mimic human emotion and, therefore, is a limited tool.8
1 Elias Leight and Kristin Robinson, “5 Ways AI Has Already Changed the Music Industry,” Billboard, August 4, 2023, https://www.billboard.com/lists/ways-ai-has-changed-music-industry-artificial-intelligence/revolutionizing-production/.4
2 Leight and Robinson, “5 Ways AI Has Already Changed the Music Industry.”
3 Leight and Robinson, “5 Ways AI Has Already Changed the Music Industry.”
4 Andrew Chow, “How AI Is Transforming Music,” TIME, December 4, 2023, https://time.com/6340294/ai-transform-music-2023/.
5 Chow, “How AI Is Transforming Music,”5.
6 Jan Mycka and Jacek Mańdziuk,“Artificial Intelligence in Music: Recent Trends and Challenges,” Neural Computing and Applications 37, no. 2 (November 16, 2024): 805, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-024-10555-x.
7 Mycka and Mańdziuk, “Artificial Intelligence in Music: Recent Trends and Challenges,” 806.
8 Mycka and Mańdziuk, “Artificial Intelligence in Music: Recent Trends and Challenges,” 806-809.
Emotional Authenticity
In the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Daniel Shank and his fellow scholars evaluate how people react to machine-generated music, explaining that people have strong emotional responses to music, therefore automatically feel skeptical about AI-generated music as they can feel the emotional absence. “Listeners may have preexisting expectations about what type and quality of music an AI could create, and high-quality AI-generated music challenges their preexisting schemas.”9 There is this stereotype that AI does not have emotion, which is accurate because AI is neutral, or is it? People want music they can relate to; if a song is created without heart, it lacks that emotional connection.
Shank and partners conducted a study where they interviewed various people and had them listen to music created separately by humans and AI. There were multiple different case studies, but ultimately the same outcome. “Musical excerpts with a high proportion of AI ratings were liked less than excerpts with a high proportion of human ratings...This analysis was also significant, indicating that participants were more confident when they rated pieces as human, rather than AI-composed.”10 Again, proving that people need human connection—once they realize it is not there, the interest is gone.
Creativity is in everything, and it involves more than assembling new ideas—it expresses human emotion, intention, and meaning. In the article “How Does Narrow AI Impact Human Creativity,” the authors focus on the link between authentic creativity and emotional resonance. They state that “to create” is “to mean that something was brought into existence without any reference to the novelty or utility of the thing.”11 And AI can bring something into existence; however, computer generation cannot bring it in without reference to a novelty thing because it can only create something that has existed prior. C Roads states in his article “Artificial Intelligence and Music,” that “a main emphasis in AI today is on systems that are driven by encoded knowledge. Clearly this kind of system can only be taken as far as the (formal) knowledge base available.”12 That said, automation uses preexisting knowledge, so AI is not neutral. Humans have a bias, and if computer generation can only take something that has been created, there is already a bias. If you think about a certain chord progression that was created by someone, it was specific to what they consider beautiful. AI takes that and what other people created, mashes them together, and there is a new musical loop. In one way or another, it was created by a human.
Shank and the other authors explain that the human brain experiences divergent thinking in a way that is beyond the capacity of AI. That said, “there are clear opportunities for where AI and humans can collaborate in the process of creativity…AI can help speed up the creative process currently, or traditionally, only undertaken by humans, allowing humans to invest more time in more complex tasks.”13 Computer generation can assist in the creative process but does lack the full creative scope, unlike the human brain.
Human creativity changes the world, and author Andy Crouch talks about how we are culture makers. Crouch does not specifically mention AI in his book Culture Making, but highlights the beauty of human creations. He states that “we are made to change the world.”14 Not only that, but we are called to make meaning in this world and the true meaning of humanity is to make meaning.15 However, AI can not generate emotional depth. Crouch states that technology can be an instrument in the hands of the creative, but never the composer itself. Moreover, throughout Crouch’s book, he is constantly saying we make culture, we do not replace it, and that can be helpful when looking at the evolution of machine generation—it can help make culture but it can not replace the creative process of the heart.
9 Daniel B. Shank et al., “AI Composer Bias: Listeners like Music Less When They Think It Was Composed by an AI,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 29, no. 3 (September 2023): 677, https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000447.supp.
10 Shank et al., “AI Composer Bias: Listeners like Music Less When They Think It Was Composed by an AI,” 679.6
11 Rebecca Marrone, David Cropley, and Kelsey Medeiros, “How Does Narrow AI Impact Human Creativity?,” Creativity Research Journal, July 15, 2024, 2, https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2024.2378264.
12 C. Roads, “Artificial Intelligence and Music,” Computer Music Journal 4, no. 2 (1980): 21, https://doi.org/10.2307/3680079.
13 Marrone, Cropley, and Medeiros, “How Does Narrow AI Impact Human Creativity?,” 9.7
14 Andy Crouch, Culture Making (InterVarsity Press, 2023), 200.
15 “Episode 14 -‘Being Techwise and Culture Making’ with Andy Crouch - Where Ya From? Podcast,” Where Ya From? Podcast, 2021, https://whereyafrom.org/episode/episode-14-being-techwise-and-culture-making-with-andy-crouch/?utm_source=chatgpt.com.
Authorship, Originality, and Emotional Ownership
AI complicates the questions of who owns music, but also who owns the meaning behind it. There can be a lot of complexity around the authorship, especially considering that a machine-generated song does not have a human emotional origin. So who owns the rights to AI music? Adam Berkowitz answers this question in his article “‘Gimme Some Truth’: AI Music and Implications for Copyright and Cataloging.” Though this is specific to America, Berkowitz states, “The United States Copyright Office does not recognize non-human authorship, which has led scholars to suggest that AI music would belong to the public domain; however, it should be noted that no federal public policies explicitly say so.”16 Music is considered to be copyrightable only if there is a human author.
Berkowitz makes an interesting, truthful point: “‘Human beings are directly or indirectly the motive force behind all such actions taken by all agents,’ and by ‘such actions,’ it refers to the capability of producing expressive works. Additionally, it says that automatons are ‘technological agents… viewed as tools used and set up by an actual agent,’—that is, a human being.”17 Even if AI generates a song, credit and intention still come from a human because they made the system, trained it, and chose how to use it.
One creator challenged the use of emotional ownership when he “Ghostwriter,” created a song using the voice of Drake and The Weeknd. This sparked controversy as people had mixed feelings about whether that was right or not. Ghostwriter had harmless intentions, he tells Billboard—he liked the musicians, was in the music industry and wanted to mess around. Because he produced the song, he has the emotional ownership of the song. Ghostwriter and his manager see the use of AI as a great chance to grow the music industry. His manager says, “All it took was for the industry to define an equitable arrangement for all stakeholders in order for people to see the value in that new form of creativity. I think we agreed that we had an opportunity to show people the value in AI and music here.”18 They see AI as a tool to assist musician in articulating their story.
But how is this legal to use a famous musician's voice and release it on a platform? His manager again says, “I think in the near future, we’re going to have infrastructure that allows artists to not only license their voice, but do so with permissions. Like, say I’m artist X. I want to license my voice out, but I want to take 50% of the revenue that’s generated.”19 Using AI to create a song from a different artist is completely legal, the artist has the choice to even collaborate with a team and someone like Ghostwriter to “honour” their name properly. Many years ago on social media, promoting other people's music on the internet was prohibited, and people would get banned for copyright laws—now it is encouraged. “It’s also a marketing driver.”20 In addition, Ghostwriter explains how on Spotify or Apple Music for example, songs can be labeled clearly as AI and separate from the artist, so that other producers using AI can get just as recognized for their creation. Lastly, Ghostwriters' manager says that these are fan-generated songs that are trying to honour musicians. “Some might feel this creates competition or steals attention away from an artist’s own music, but I would disagree.”21 It is just another way for people to use their creativity.
16 Adam Eric Berkowitz,“‘Gimme Some Truth’: AI Music and Implications for Copyright and Cataloging.,” Information Technology & Libraries 43, no. 3 (September 2024): 3, https://research-ebsco-com.redeemer.idm.oclc.org/c/v2ymrk/viewer/pdf/64jxqabisv.8
17 Berkowitz, “‘Gimme Some Truth’: AI Music and Implications for Copyright and Cataloging.,” 7.
18 Kristin Robinson, “Ghostwriter, the Mastermind behind the Viral Drake AI Song, Speaks for the First Time,” Billboard, October 11, 2023, https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/ghostwriter-heart-on-my-sleeve-drake-ai-grammy-exclusive-interview-1235434099/.9
19 Robinson, “Ghostwriter, the Mastermind behind the Viral Drake AI Song, Speaks for the First Time.”
20 Robinson, “Ghostwriter, the Mastermind behind the Viral Drake AI Song, Speaks for the First Time.”
21 Robinson, “Ghostwriter, the Mastermind behind the Viral Drake AI Song, Speaks for the First Time.”
Conclusion
In this paper, I showed how AI continues to influence the music industry, bringing possibilities but also challenges. While AI has proven useful in areas like music production, vocal synthesis, and audio restoration, it cannot replicate the emotional depth that gives music its true power. Music is not simply a product—it is an expression of human emotion, shaped by lived experience, memory, love, and loss. This emotional authenticity remains at the heart of music and is something a machine cannot generate.
Andy Crouch emphasizes that “The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”22 His words highlight the truth that cultural artifacts gain meaning when they are made by people for people, and we need to continue creating. While AI can produce sound and structure, it cannot produce soul. It lacks the intention, vulnerability, and emotional connection that define authentic artistic expression.
Looking ahead, the role of AI in music should be focused on its support rather than a complete substitution. It can serve as a valuable tool for creators, but the creativity and emotional depth must continue to originate from human experience. AI may be able to mimic a voice, but it cannot replicate a heart.
22 Crouch, Culture Making, 67.10
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Originally submitted:
Eden Corner
ENG-302: Expository Writing II
Dr. Jantina Ellens
April 12, 2025
Redeemer University
