Young people are increasingly using AI to make music – but is it killing creativity? | UK News

Young people are increasingly using AI for various creative processes like making music, according to a charity.

Tee Peters, musician and programme director at Sound Connections, has been using AI in the process of making his music for years.

He said that for him, AI acts as the “perfect assistant” when it comes to mixing and mastering songs.

“Throughout my journey so far I’ve had times where I’m alone – I don’t have my full team with me, I don’t have my producers, I don’t have my engineer.

“Software and tools that are run by AI help me fill that void of the people that are missing in the room.”

Mr Peters also uses it to help create cover art and marketing materials.

“I spent a lot of time while doing music kind of figuring out how to do so many things as one person with a short amount of time.

“If I spent so much time doing a bunch of tasks that aren’t to do with the music that I need to complete, it’s kind of counterproductive, so AI has helped me a lot.”

According to a new survey by Youth Music, 63% of young creatives aged 16-24 years old are using AI in various ways, including music making.

The charity spoke to 2,829 people of all ages across the country, and identified that people over 55 were sceptical of using assistive AI – with only 19% making use of the technology.

Matt Griffiths, Youth Music CEO, said AI is particularly useful in helping improve accessibility and removing barriers that young creatives often face.

“So much of the industry has often been about privilege, and actually this gives people a chance who haven’t got that privilege to get involved.

“I think some of the positives are that for a young creative that’s often doing it for themselves so they don’t have the resource to buy in other people to help them.

“They have access to AI which enables them to write song lyrics, write press releases, write marketing copy and all those important administrative things that they can do themselves.”

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Singer songwriter Paul Martin said he questions the use of AI.

“There’s some things that can assist creativity, and there’s some things that can stem creativity.

“For example, beat generation, melody generation and lyric generation – if you’ve got machines doing that for you, there’s no point of even doing it.

“It’s supposed to come from the heart or the soul when you come up with a rhythm, it’s supposed to be a flash of inspiration.

“If a machine is doing it for you, it’s like, why am I even making music in the first place?

“On the flipside of that – you can get inspiration from AI that helps you learn melody, lyric writing, rhythm.”

He said there were also concerns around legal challenges that AI could introduce.

“AI generated music has learnt from hundreds of thousands of melodies and songs from original artists.

“Who do you sue in a copyright case?”