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highplainsdem

(62,863 posts)
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 04:52 PM Apr 15

Berklee College of Music Students Furious That It's Offering an AI "Songwriting" Class

Source: Futurism

Hundreds of students at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston have signed an online petition protesting a new course on generative AI music and songwriting, marking another salvo in the continuing battle between artists and a technology they believe is stealing their hope for a livelihood.

As of Tuesday, 418 people have signed the petition, which is targeting the two-credit course “Bots and Beats: AI and the Future of Songwriting” and calling for the school to stop leveraging AI on campus.
The petition accuses the school of promoting OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which “steal the art of [tens of thousands] of artists and rot the essence of the industry and have devastating consequences on the environment all to create facsimiles of real human art,” the petition’s organizers wrote.

Angry comments from current and former students filled the discussion area of the petition, with many expressing disappointment that a school known for fostering the creation of popular music has gone into bed with a technology implicated in the theft of countless original songs.

-snip-


Read more: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/berklee-college-ai-music



How disgusting of Berklee. Using AI is the opposite of both learning and creativity.
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Berklee College of Music Students Furious That It's Offering an AI "Songwriting" Class (Original Post) highplainsdem Apr 15 OP
I'm furious... 2naSalit Apr 15 #1
Generative AI needs to be rejected, both publicly and privately, for all the reasons it's unethical, illegal, highplainsdem Apr 16 #16
AI will be stealing all the original music in the next few years FakeNoose Apr 15 #2
They already stole everything they could get to. And yes, they will continue to steal. highplainsdem Apr 16 #14
And each song will sound remarkably like every other song. paleotn Apr 15 #3
True. There's no real intelligence in AI. highplainsdem Apr 16 #15
college instructor here - cab67 Apr 15 #4
Good for you! highplainsdem Apr 16 #11
My Cousin is a Berklee grad pfitz59 Apr 15 #5
AI is a threat to almost all human workers, and was designed to be. The AI bros are planning to have highplainsdem Apr 16 #12
"How disgusting of Berklee. Using AI is the opposite of both learning and creativity." OldBaldy1701E Apr 15 #6
Fruity Loops (FL Studio) started out as a drum machine, and I was never a fan of drum machines. highplainsdem Apr 16 #13
"It's complete - and completely unethical - pretense. Pure fraud." OldBaldy1701E Apr 17 #19
That's an expensive school tonekat Apr 15 #7
We're seeing more and more of a backlash against AI, especially from younger people who can highplainsdem Apr 16 #10
Just a matter of time before the Grammys drop "Song of the Year" and replace it with "Prompt of the Year". LudwigPastorius Apr 16 #8
Nope. Won't happen, unless the AI bros control everything, and everyone's lost their mind. Prompts highplainsdem Apr 16 #9
If Any Institution Should Know Better... ProfessorGAC Apr 16 #17
No, you don't. Shame on Berklee for doing this. highplainsdem Apr 16 #18

highplainsdem

(62,863 posts)
16. Generative AI needs to be rejected, both publicly and privately, for all the reasons it's unethical, illegal,
Thu Apr 16, 2026, 01:38 PM
Apr 16

and harmful in lots of ways. Starting with the theft of the world's intellectual property.

If it's rejected, the financial house of cards it's based on - theft, dishonest hype, and circular financing - will collapse, and AI use will become the mark of shame it should be, rather than something to brag about or at least try to excuse.

FakeNoose

(42,156 posts)
2. AI will be stealing all the original music in the next few years
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 05:32 PM
Apr 15

Just like they've "archived" all the human-written books and articles in the last 10 years or so.
The only way to protect your work is to never have it digitized, and never post it on the internet.

paleotn

(22,576 posts)
3. And each song will sound remarkably like every other song.
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 05:41 PM
Apr 15

AI isn't intelligent or creative. It's a very expensive parrot, regurgitating whatever is in it's training database, without understand one damn thing.

pfitz59

(12,872 posts)
5. My Cousin is a Berklee grad
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 08:11 PM
Apr 15

and compises music for a living. I'm sure he's voiced his concern.

highplainsdem

(62,863 posts)
12. AI is a threat to almost all human workers, and was designed to be. The AI bros are planning to have
Thu Apr 16, 2026, 01:06 PM
Apr 16

robots replace workers who can't be replaced by software alone.

Dealing with the public at large, the AI bros have long tried to peddle their illegally trained tools as meant only to make workers' jobs earlier, with shorter work weeks.

Talking to employers, AI bros' main sales pitch is replacing human workers with AI.

OldBaldy1701E

(11,429 posts)
6. "How disgusting of Berklee. Using AI is the opposite of both learning and creativity."
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 09:54 PM
Apr 15

I agree completely.

However, I said the same thing about Fruity Loops and other similar programs when they came out over a decade ago, and people are getting Oscar nominations for using them in their scores.

So, it's nothing new, really.

And, yes, it is the opposite of both.

Of course, learning and creativity are the opposite of the modern music industry, but that is another story for another time.

highplainsdem

(62,863 posts)
13. Fruity Loops (FL Studio) started out as a drum machine, and I was never a fan of drum machines.
Thu Apr 16, 2026, 01:25 PM
Apr 16

Tony Visconti is a legendary producer, one of my favorite producers, and he has an understandably low opinion of that sort of tech:

https://musictech.com/news/music/tony-visconti-on-modern-producers/

“They’re making bullshit records with loops. Everything’s sampled,” Visconti explained. “I think old-school production with a band is the only way to make great records. Sure, I can make a record on my laptop. No problem. Any 12-year-old with a laptop and GarageBand or Ableton can.”


You wrote that AI is "nothing new, really." I wish that were true, but AI is much worse. It can take just a few words in a text prompt to get multiple tracks/songs as options.

The AI user can know absolutely nothing about a type of music or types of instruments mentioned in a prompt, but if they're in the AI music generator's training data of stolen intellectual property, the AI will produce in seconds some fake music cobbled together based on text descriptions of the music (endless books, articles and reviews also had to be stolen to train the music AI) linked to all the world's recorded music the AI company could steal.

Zero effort required.

Zero real knowledge required.

And zero thought beyond a wish to pretend to be a musician without any of the skill, work and commitment.

It's complete - and completely unethical - pretense. Pure fraud.

OldBaldy1701E

(11,429 posts)
19. "It's complete - and completely unethical - pretense. Pure fraud."
Fri Apr 17, 2026, 09:33 AM
Apr 17

And, you just described most of the modern society we live in!

LOL.

Yes, I agree. However, music is in the eye of the beholder. It is the popularity-driven, money making desire that created the criteria that we keep wanting to use to describe music and its effect.

We got away from what it means for us and made it a 'product'. Of course, we have done that with pretty much everything in this country, so I guess we have to either live in it, or leave it.

Of course, we could change it, but that seems to be a very impossible task to some people, so we don't talk about it.

tonekat

(2,559 posts)
7. That's an expensive school
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 10:57 PM
Apr 15

Basically, it's a course on what is coming that no one asked for.

How will composers price their work if there is an online jingle factory that just needs an account established to get something that's "Good Enough"?

Will Hans Zimmer and Trevor Horn be up against this vending machine?

highplainsdem

(62,863 posts)
10. We're seeing more and more of a backlash against AI, especially from younger people who can
Thu Apr 16, 2026, 02:27 AM
Apr 16

see what a threat it is.

The AI bros set out to steal.humanity's knowledge and culture, with the intent of selling it back to people, even possibly convincing people they can't create and can't be succrssful without AI.. They have convinced some particularly gullible people that using AI plagiarism machines somehow makes them creative - and some of those gullible people have been flooding the internet with all the slop they can create - but they also stirred up anger and loathing for both the continuing theft by the AI industry, and the fraud that AI enables, and all the other harms it creates.

LudwigPastorius

(14,927 posts)
8. Just a matter of time before the Grammys drop "Song of the Year" and replace it with "Prompt of the Year".
Thu Apr 16, 2026, 01:03 AM
Apr 16

highplainsdem

(62,863 posts)
9. Nope. Won't happen, unless the AI bros control everything, and everyone's lost their mind. Prompts
Thu Apr 16, 2026, 02:15 AM
Apr 16

aren't real creativity. They're a verbal nudge to a genAI model to try to cobble together a pastiche of work stolen from real artists - truly creative human artists, not wannabes pretending via AI.

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