The Ethics Of AI Generated Music

In 1992, British Band Swallow would release one of their two Albums, Blow.

The album would go under the radar, without critical acclaim and the band would later disband, only to release three singles on Spotify in 2025. But something was different about these singles; two aspiring artists did not craft them. Instead, the songs were made on an AI-generated music service with AI album covers.

This is not a unique issue. AI music is no longer a theory; it is real and invading the mainstream music space, taking ears away from up-and-coming artists who dedicated real effort and time to the creation of their art and putting them onto music that was simply typed into a prompt and made in a matter of seconds.

This summer, “Predador de Perereca,” a Brazilian Funk song blew up on TikTok. The song is being sold as an ’80s funk song that went under the radar in the ’80s, only to be rediscovered and made popular through social media, as so many songs have been in the past. In reality, the song is an AI-generated remix of a 2015 song of the same name.

Taking that one step further, AI artist Sadie Winters didn’t just release a song; she created a persona. As an AI-generated, independent alternative artist, she has released a music video and even built a fan base with covers of her songs being posted online.

An existential problem has arisen as AI music has progressed – most of the music… is good.

However, this raises a question that we, as a society, must answer: What is the purpose of art?

Is the music industry only here to serve the public with simple songs that follow a formula and are guaranteed to make money, or is music built to be an artist sharing their unique ways of conveying the human experience? We make friends with people who like the same music we like. “It creates a sense of community around the people who listen to it,” says George Nason ‘26.

There are many different reasons to listen to music. We can use it to get through a rough time, to feel like the main character, to impress people, or even to judge others for their inferior taste in music.

After releasing the album Loveless in 1991, lead singer and songwriter Kevin Shields of the band My Bloody Valentine would discuss how much the album ruined him mentally. The Album took over two years and £250,000 to produce, a labor of love that would go on to be declared the best album of the ’90s by Pitchfork. Great art requires hard work and years of dedication to a craft–the reason we go to concerts. We want to watch the amount of talent on display. If we remove that talent, what do we gain? We don’t gain access to expression because the user isn’t expressing themselves; AI is taking on that role for them.

From Punk Rock to Synth Pop, music has been used for decades as a method of storytelling. Many people have resonated with it because it conveys a mood or offers something for others to connect with in their times or their worst. We fall in love with the tragedies of those like Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, and Nick Drake, and listen to their music to understand the mentality behind their art as they pour their hearts onto the page.

Humans are the only species that can make music, and it is an integral part of the human experience. According to Jacob Boyle ‘26 “It can serve as a representation of cultural and political standing through varying genres.” Amongst the phrase “Human experience” we must value those two words equally. We can’t sacrifice humans for the experience. This is why AI music generated music is unethical; because it removes the human from the art and instead replaces it with the equations of an algorithm.