The use of AI is growing in many industries, particularly many creative industries, such as music, visual art, and writing. This is no surprise, since creatives have always been early adaptors of technological innovations to enhance their work process and artistic output (Caramiaux et al., 2019). In music, for instance, the NSynth tool, which has been trained offline on musical datasets via an underlying sound model, has been used in the mainstream music industry to generate new types of musical sounds. For visual art there are quite a few different GenAI platforms that are able to generate images, videos or other art pieces based on a description or other input. Think of Deep Dream and Artlist. Platforms like Squibler are AI story writers that can be used to write full-length books, screenplays, scripts, etc.
These uses of AI in creative industries raise many questions, especially about authenticity, ownership and the future of these industries. Critics of AI generated art argue that it lacks authenticity (Donelli, 2024). Art is supposed to be rooted in intent, emotion, and human skills. Art that is generated by AI may not capture the full depth of human creativity. Regarding ownership, it’s important to mention that no one can own the copyright to AI generated works (HLR, 2025). Therefore, it remains in the public domain (Copyright Alliance, 2023). There have been various waves of layoffs across creative industries because of the use of AI (Zhao, 2024). This may seem like a bleak outlook regarding the future of humans in creative industries, but we must remember that art is subjective and based on human tastes. Meaning that art will always depend on human experiences and emotions to be able to connect with other humans. No matter how evolved AI is, it does not understand humans like other humans do. Considering all of this, we would not have to worry about AI completely replacing humans in creative industries. However, considering the current uses of AI in these industries, we do have to be worried about a shift from humans actually making art to people simply making a prompt and showcasing output from AI based on this prompt as their own art.
References
Caramiaux, B., Lotte, F., Geurts, J., Amato, G., & Behrmann, M. (2019). AI in the media and creative industries (hal-02125504). New European Media. Retrieved September 17, 2025, from https://openresearch.amsterdam/nl/page/109044/ai-in-the-media-and-creative-industries
Copyright Alliance. (2023, August 29). Who owns the copyright to AI-Generated Works? | Copyright Alliance. https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/artificial-intelligence-copyright-ownership/#:~:text=Works%20Solely%20Generated%20by%20AI,is%20in%20the%20public%20domain.
Donelli, F. (2024, September 4). Generative AI and the creative industry: Finding balance between apologists and critics. Medium. Retrieved September 18, 2025, from https://medium.com/@fdonelli/generative-ai-and-the-creative-industry-finding-balance-between-apologists-and-critics-686f449862fc
HLR. (2025, April 10). Artificial intelligence and the creative double bind. Harvard Law Review. Retrieved September 18, 2025, from https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-138/artificial-intelligence-and-the-creative-double-bind/
Zhao, B. (2024, March 28). Replacement of human artists by AI systems in creative industries. UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). https://unctad.org/news/replacement-human-artists-ai-systems-creative-industries
