What is A.I.?
I was fortunate to go to CES about 20 years ago in Vegas, presenting the Contour Design Shuttle Multimedia Controllers. Lots of fun; I love technology! When I was there, the buzz word was HD that year. There was HD everything, TVs, cameras, photo, video, you name it. HD this, HD that. If a company wasn’t talking about HD, no one was at their booth, which I saw firsthand.
These days the A.I. thing (Does it bug anyone else that it reads as al instead of AI when it’s in print? Who’s this AL guy anyways?) reminds me of that same trend at CES. I can only imagine the hubbub these past couple of years there. I’m sure there were marketing meetings where some department VP insisted the company rebadge products with some kind of AI spin, even if there’s no actual artificial intelligence at work. (eyeroll) It’s both the consumer’s fault as well as the industry’s fault. Most people can’t really explain what AI is. They generalize and say AI when they mean something that is made ON a computer, versus made by a computer. Which I don’t think is correct. If I create an image in a computer program (like the image above done using Photoshop), but all of the parts of the image are made or manipulated by me, that’s not AI. If I go to ChatGPT and type in “create an image of a skull with a microchip on the forehead in front of a data center background” that would spit out something similar. The machine/computer is outputting something from a prompt, not on its own. Another AI example are those robot/computer phone operators that have been around for years or more recently, those online chat bots. We’ve all used them. “Press 1 or say one to pay your bill, press 2 or say two to get your balance…at any time you can say ‘Representative’…” They’ve been trained to do a task and do it with little supervision, much like ChatGPT has been trained to do things. Instead of pressing a number, it recognizes your voice.
Am I Gonna Get Replaced By A.I.?
I think the short answer is no, but there’s an asterisk. My brother is a voice over actor. He makes a living by recording words that are used for commercials and other things broadcasted and on the web. His work has dried up, sadly. These days it’s very easy to go to a website, paste in the copy (text) of what you want to be read and choose a voice, male or female, deep or high, or the type of accent. You can do that any time of day, and much like the line from the movie Terminator 2 “it can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with…”, doesn’t call in sick and the only limiting factor is cost. The better AI voices give better inflection and sound more human and usually cost more. The cheap ones don’t sound as good and that seems to be true for any AI art. Does the consumer care? I think it depends on the audience.
Your average kid or young person who is using a site like ChatGPT for making memes won’t pick up on subtle things that a lot of AI artists are leaving out. For example, an AI generated image may not display shadows correctly, won’t blur objects that are in the background properly, it’ll give someone 7 fingers on their hand or even leave things out like a wheel or door handle on an AI generated car. I think the garbage in, garbage out rule applies here.
We still need human artists. We need musicians, we need painters, sculptors, we need people like my artist daughter who can use a multitude of media to create, whether that’s on paper, on a screen or cutting out fabric and sewing it into a cosplay costume. We need human voice actors like my brother. We need human created content. Even if these artists are the ones behind the curtain like The Wizard of Oz, moving switches, pressing buttons, training the machines to make things more like us, we need those people. They have an eye for detail, they have an ear for detail. We can use AI like we use other technology, as a tool, not as something that replaces us.
There was a panic in the 1960s when synthesizers came out. Musician’s unions wouldn’t pay keyboardists who were using early synths or keyboards like the Mellotron which used magnetic tape to play back loops of instrument sounds (like some of the orchestral sounding instruments on “Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles). People were in a panic saying these new keyboards would replace musicians. In the 1970s, the movie industry was against home video recorders (VCRs) saying that would destroy the movie industry. That didn’t happen either. Both the synthesizer and VCRs became instruments for us to use and helped those industries.
Artists Should Embrace It*
I use AI when I create music. In Apple’s Logic Pro, the program I use to record music, there are built in drum machines called Session Drummers that will create a drum part in a style I choose. I put in the parameters like what kind of drum kit, what vibe I want such as Motown, surf music, hip hop, grunge, etc., I choose the time signature and can even tweak the pattern it plays. That’s AI. Does it replace a real drummer? No, in the same way that a simple drum machine from the 1980s didn’t replace every drummer. Remember the song “Jack and Diane?” What’s the most recognizable part of the drums on that song, the claps made by the drum machine sound or the human drum break (Kenny Arnoff’s iconic drum fill) before the “So let it rock, let it roll…” part? It’s the human played drum fill! I’d much rather have my friend play on the track, but Logic Pro’s Session Drummer fills the gap for me so I can put my idea down. It may inspire me to play my bass one way, or even give my buddy a jumping off point if we redo the song with him playing drums.
My point is as artists, we can use AI to enhance our art. Consumers should see the difference: Using AI as one of many a tool one can use versus sole AI generated art and people taking credit for it for that. And the industries and consumers need to remember this and restructure or retask artists and workers instead of laying them off so companies can make $1 more on their profit and loss statement.
The Grammy Awards recently said ‘The Recording Academy stipulates that only human creators are eligible for Grammy Awards, meaning entirely AI-generated music cannot win. While AI-assisted music is allowed, it requires “meaningful” human contribution. The Academy aims to protect human artistry while adapting to technology.’ (from Google’s AI Overview) and The BBC recently reported “Spotify adds ‘Verified’ badges to distinguish human artists from AI”. These are steps in the right direction. Hopefully in 10 years time we can look back and see that the buzzword was just that and now it’s as mainstream as high definition, synthesizers and VCRs were/are.
-Terry, May 2026