Music AI's Potential Impact: Scoping the terms of the debate about value

https://aimc2023.pubpub.org/pub/rwi3v7tb

The debate around the impact of AI on creative industries such as music has become increasingly mainstream as innovations in creative AI technologies appear apace, and companies are seeking commercial opportunities in the field. Often these debates are only loosely grounded in holistic thinking about value. Using academic frameworks for understanding value in the arts, we can think more formally about AI’s impact on different arts stakeholders and practices. This paper draws on critical work on value in the arts, applied to current debates about AI’s impact on music, illustrated by recent online discussions. It concludes that equal attention needs to be paid to the intrinsic as well as the instrumental value of creative production, and that arguments around commercial and professional aspects of music need to be expanded in terms of societal benefits, and with an awareness of the social context of competitive individualism and its alternatives.