Emerson Pieper, contributor

AI will be the death of humanity. What makes humans human is our emotion, our compassion and empathy. Humans used to be so creative, making discoveries, fully appreciating the world around us. What happened to that, you ask? People tried to make life “easier,” and instead stepped over the line into the destruction of everything we know about ourselves, about who we are.

Sure, humans wanted to create something that could help people and make things easier, but instead they’ve lost their goal. People became money hungry and lazy, not realizing the beauty of real human creation anymore. They’ve ridiculed artists, finding their work useless and a “waste of time,” all while they used to praise the creation of art and embraced and paid to have real artists make portraits painted of them.

Now, we’ve reached the point where they’re making such things as an AI “artist,” if you can even call it that. They’ve named it Xania Monet. The person who has turned herself into this AI figure for her music career is actually a woman named Telisha Jones. She doesn’t even sing her own songs, instead making an AI creation sing for her. Recently, her AI model has debuted on Billboard music charts after gaining tons of traction and streaming numbers online. What is even more insane to me is that it has landed a multi-million dollar record deal. 

It isn’t even the only AI singer. There is another AI model, a cowboy figure named “Breaking Rust” who seems to fit into the country category of songs. The song “Walk by Walk,” published under Breaking Rust, has even hit number one on the Digital Song Sales Chart. 

Furthermore, this particular AI “singer” is completely AI generated, with both music and lyrics being made entirely by AI. There is no person behind this AI robot compared to Telisha Jones’ AI model. The voice isn’t real, the model is complete AI. Nothing about it is real. 

Unsurprisingly, these recent AI bots have been sexualized heavily, as the AI “can’t have a say against it,” so it isn’t bad to do so because they aren’t real people. At least they realize that part.

Something that literally no one who uses AI seems to care about is the fact that AI is using important resources like water to be generated. States and countries have been subjected to droughts because of people’s obsession with AI and the companies that supply the apps to make AI even when they’re informed about the situation. People say that it’s just because they need help with things or that they get things done that they would have struggled with.

Some even argue that AI should only be banned from copying art and instead used for science and math so they have more for work. I think that AI will take over people’s opinions and thoughts, that it will cause people to stop thinking for themselves and lose intelligence.

Another common argument that people use is that AI-generated art helps people with disabilities to be able to create art, and it’s still creative because they have to give the prompt for the piece. Have we forgotten artists who were disabled, like Beethoven, for example? Beethoven, who was deaf and still was able to create compositions that he was celebrated for? He made such iconic music pieces despite his disability, and people still argue that they should use AI just because a disability stops them from creating art.

“AI makes art accessible for everyone!” Maybe we could just be creative like we always have been? I don’t know, just a thought…