What Do We Lose When AI Makes the Art?

AI-generated music has officially reached a point where the music industry has had to draw a line.

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) has updated its chart rules so that tracks that are “wholly AI-generated” cannot compete on the national charts. ARIA’s new rules essentially draw a distinction between music where AI is used as a tool and music where AI is responsible for creating the work itself.

And I think I understand why. I’ve noticed that whenever my friends and I realise we’re listening to an AI-generated song, video, or piece of content, there is almost an immediate reaction: “Oh. It’s AI”. And somehow, the thing we were enjoying suddenly feels a little cheaper.

Maybe that’s unfair. The song might actually be good, the video might be funny. But knowing that someone typed a sentence into an AI music generator and received a finished song a few minutes later makes it feel different. It feels less like someone created something and more like someone ordered something.

And I think that’s the distinction we’re struggling to put into words. AI can be a tool in the creative process. Artists have always used tools. But when the software is generating the lyrics, melody, vocals, instrumentation and production with very little human creative input, it starts to feel less like using a tool and more like outsourcing the creation itself.

I think this is what ARIA is trying to protect: human artistic achievement.

But then I get stuck on another question. If people voluntarily listen to an AI-generated track thousands or even millions of times, should it really be excluded from the charts? Those streams are real, the listeners are real, so the popularity is real. If the charts are supposed to show what people are listening to, excluding an AI-generated song means the charts are no longer simply reflecting consumption. They’re making a judgement about what counts as music.

And maybe that’s actually okay. Perhaps ARIA is saying that its charts represent something more specific: Music that humans made.

Because if everything becomes eligible, the charts could eventually become less about artists and more about whoever is best at generating content at scale. And I think that is a much bigger question than just music. We’re going to have the same conversation about books, films, photography, design and visual art. At some point, almost every creative industry is going to have to decide where it wants to draw its own line.

And personally, I think we will always want art created by people. Not necessarily because humans will always make better art. AI might eventually be able to make something technically more impressive than anything a human could create. But because the final song, story or painting isn’t the entire point.

The story and the person behind a song matters. Fine, AI can reproduce the output of creativity incredibly well. But it didn’t have a childhood, or experience heartbreak, embarrassment, loneliness. Maybe those things become part of what we value and we’ll realise it more as AI-generated ‘art’ becomes more popular. Maybe as creating things becomes easier, the human effort behind them becomes more valuable, not less.