The rise of AI risks turning us into consumers instead of creators, writes Emma DeSouza.
Sabrina Carpenter fans have been scrutinising whether some recent merchandise was created using AI. Alamy Stock Photo
Using AI for art will hollow out what it means to be human
The rise of AI risks turning us into consumers instead of creators, writes Emma DeSouza.
7.01am, 14 Oct 2025
AS INDUSTRIES INTEGRATE artificial intelligence (AI) systems into our everyday lives, our use of it is rapidly increasing, whether we’re aware of it or not.
From our phones to commercial ads and customer service platforms, all of us are interacting with AI in some shape or form.
At their inception, the emergence of large-language models (LLMs) and generative AI that can produce audio and visual content were met with scepticism.
In its infancy, AI-generated music was juvenile, audibly synthetic – a poor imitation. AI-generated imagery was much the same; crude, and even to an untrained eye, could be easily identified as inauthentic – people depicted with warped irises and extra digits. LLMs were fine for quickly drafting passible, if boilerplate, emails – not for creating compelling stories.
But the more these systems have been fed a broader range of human content and the more resources that are spent bolstering the tech, the more refined their outputs have become.
What does that mean for human creativity?
From creation to consumption
For those discerning enough to still spot AI-generated content, there remain obvious markers – hyper-perfect studio lighting, dolly shots and lens quality in an unnatural context, trite lyrics comprised largely of commonly used tropes in a million-dollar-studio-quality vocal track with nursery-rhyme rhythm.
But for a growing number of people, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the difference between the artistic outputs of a human and a machine.
AI-generated content has flooded the creative industry. Since 2022 the AI-art market has expanded to an estimated value of $0.62 billion, with projections that it could be worth $2.51 billion by 2029. An estimated 35% of fine art auctions globally now include AI created works.
AI images are being generated at an approximate rate of 34 million per day – that’s almost 400 images a second.
In the span of 18 months, 15 billion AI generated images were created – a figure which took photographers 149 years to achieve. AI music tools enable anyone to create as many as ten songs a second with a single prompt on their computer or smartphone.
In an age of automation, speed and decreasing attention spans, AI art poses an existential threat not just to the livelihood of artists, but to what it means to be human. If we normalise the outsourcing of all our creative decision-making and artistic intentionality to machines, we ‘re no longer creating; we’re consumers.
Art and music are not just creative expressions but a time machine that charts human history.
Art has depicted the rise and fall of empires, the birth and death of nations and tribes. On a personal level a piece of art, a photo, a song can – in a split second – transport us to a moment in our own past.
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The power of art transcends logic, it is an emotional conduit for the human condition; suffering, grief, joy, the many facets of our existence.
We connect not only with a final product but with the story of its making, and the person behind it finding a sense of belonging and community in shared experiences. We have all felt loss in some form. A machine has felt nothing.
Artistic expression comes at a cost, whether it’s the trauma that inspires the work or the years of practice developing the form, the rejections and personal growth that often serve as catalysts when developing artistic prowess. Arts and culture are a deeply human experience that deserve to be valued and ultimately protected.
Celebrities weigh in
Against the weight of giant corporations and a monolithic AI industry, artists are trying to push back.
Elton John, Paul McCartney, Billie Eilish and a litany of other artists have signed open letters calling on governments to protect artists’ rights from AI while several copyright cases are moving through the court system.
The artists most vulnerable, however, will be those without the resources and profile to protect their content. Holding Absence, a Welsh rock band spent a decade building its fanbase only to be overtaken by Bleeding Verse, a two-month-old AI project on Spotify who cite the Holding Absence as a band their AI music has been trained on.
Given this reality, it is profoundly disappointing when artists with the power and capital to influence creative industries use AI-generated content.
Both Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift have faced harsh criticism amidst allegations that AI-generated content has been used to promote their latest albums. Last month, Carpenter released a series of limited stickers to promote ‘Man’s Best Friend’ which featured some tell-tale signs of AI including missing fingers – AI still struggles with hands.
Meanwhile Taylor Swift has been accused of using AI in her global scavenger hunt to promote ‘The Life of a Showgirl’. Fans were encouraged to search for orange doors that featured a QR code linking to promotional video clips. The short videos contained several AI markers including a squirrel missing a limb, irregular shadows, and blurred text in different fonts.
Taylor Swift's new album was released this month.Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Both promotions were in partnership with a billion-dollar company – TikTok for Carpenter and Google for Swift – opening the possibility that the artists did not have creative control or that they were unaware of the use of AI, but they should have been. In failing to ensure that the art representing them is created by a human, they risk supporting efforts to normalise the outsourcing of human content to a machine.
Whilst nether Carpenter nor Swift have addressed the allegations, the latter has removed the video clips from her YouTube channel.
If we fail to protect art from becoming nothing more than a machine-generated commodity, we risk the future of human creativity.
If the next generation can create a song in a single prompt there will be little reason or motivation to author something truly unique and personal to them; automating creative outputs will be the death of human expression.
Much has been said about the risk of AI to humanity. The real danger is less the idea of some AI overlord wiping out human existence and more the risk that the use of AI will hollow out what it means to be human. Art is a litmus test for our survival.