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highplainsdem

(62,512 posts)
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 04:52 PM 6 hrs ago

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.
7 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Berklee College of Music Students Furious That It's Offering an AI "Songwriting" Class (Original Post) highplainsdem 6 hrs ago OP
I'm furious... 2naSalit 6 hrs ago #1
AI will be stealing all the original music in the next few years FakeNoose 5 hrs ago #2
And each song will sound remarkably like every other song. paleotn 5 hrs ago #3
college instructor here - cab67 4 hrs ago #4
My Cousin is a Berklee grad pfitz59 3 hrs ago #5
"How disgusting of Berklee. Using AI is the opposite of both learning and creativity." OldBaldy1701E 1 hr ago #6
That's an expensive school tonekat 28 min ago #7

FakeNoose

(41,890 posts)
2. AI will be stealing all the original music in the next few years
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 05:32 PM
5 hrs ago

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

(22,377 posts)
3. And each song will sound remarkably like every other song.
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 05:41 PM
5 hrs ago

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

(12,767 posts)
5. My Cousin is a Berklee grad
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 08:11 PM
3 hrs ago

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

OldBaldy1701E

(11,264 posts)
6. "How disgusting of Berklee. Using AI is the opposite of both learning and creativity."
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 09:54 PM
1 hr ago

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.

tonekat

(2,548 posts)
7. That's an expensive school
Wed Apr 15, 2026, 10:57 PM
28 min ago

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?

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