I’m scared about AI. And I don’t mean that in a Terminator kind of way, where I fear waking up in a sci-fi dystopia in which marauding machines have risen up to enslave humanity. I’m scared about AI in the same way as many people who work in the creative industries are. My living relies on the words I write having value – value that is theoretically diminished if a computer program can generate a decent facsimile of an article.
I think a lot about the words of Fede Alvarez, who’s a filmmaker best known for Alien: Romulus and the Evil Dead remake. In an Empire Magazine feature on the future of cinema last year – pick up the December 2024 issue to read it in full – he said: “I hope [AI] cures cancer and brings blessings to humanity, to compensate for the damage that it will create in some other fields.”
AI is an incredible technology that I am certain will, in some ways, be an enormous help to the world – though we once again rely on the whims of tech billionaires to control it, which will concern anyone who has spent any time on either X or Facebook recently. Whatever benefits AI does bring will come with a sacrifice, and it could well be the arts and creative industries that suffer.
The rise of generative AI is, without doubt, the most pressing and contentious issue affecting the arts today. The speed of advancement in the field has been nothing short of remarkable, to the extent that generative AI programs like OpenAI’s market leader ChatGPT are now a daily fact of life for many people. It’s now quite common for a friend to wonder why I visibly bristle when they casually refer to having used AI for something in the workplace and I find myself shaking my head on a daily basis when I receive something as simple as a two-line email that has clearly been drafted by a chatbot.
As someone who has rarely – if ever – used these sorts of tools, I am stunned by their prevalence. In February 2025, Times Higher Education reported that 88% of students who responded to a survey had used generative AI while working on assignments – up from just 53% a year earlier. It should be noted, though, that only one in four students admitted to actually using AI-generated text as part of submitted work. The others were more likely to ask AI to summarise an article for them or explain something they didn’t understand in simpler terms.
So I’m frightened. But I’m also aware that I don’t fully understand the nuances of the AI debate and the balance we clearly have to strike between the benefits offered by AI and the threats it poses. That’s why we’re launching a new editorial series on Voice, entitled: ‘Artificial/Intelligent?’
In this series, we’re going to explore the various ways in which AI has made its way into the arts and culture landscape – interviewing those who think it’s a vital part of the future, as well as those who can’t see a positive way forward. We’ll look at the controversial occasions in which major movies have used AI, the onslaught of AI-generated books in online stores, and answer the key question of whether AI art is actually any good.
But we also want to hear from you – the Voice Community. If you have a take on the role of AI in the arts, post a blog to Voice and add the tag “Artificial/Intelligent”. Let’s dive into the conversation.
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