{"id":299914,"date":"2026-10-05T04:06:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T04:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/299914\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T04:06:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T04:06:06","slug":"our-opinion-protecting-artistic-integrity-in-age-of-ai-a-discussion-worth-having","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/299914\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Opinion: Protecting artistic integrity in age of AI a discussion worth having"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last month, a scheduled metal and alternative rock show at a popular Lackawanna County music venue was canceled over online bickering<\/a> among fans and the artists themselves.<\/p>\n

That one-sentence summary of what happened might barely rank as newsworthy, for some.<\/p>\n

For those in the artistic community, the entire debate centers on an existential struggle that came for them first but, someday, will have to be reckoned with by all.<\/p>\n

To go into a little bit more detail: A handful of acts \u2014 Slapjaw, Purple Lung, DOUR and Shodemon \u2014 were scheduled to perform a Sept. 25 show at Union Vapors 570 in Dickson City. One of the bands, the Scranton-based Slapjaw, posted an image evidently generated by artificial intelligence on its social media platform to promote the show.<\/p>\n

The bands decided to cancel the show after a lively online discussion between critics of AI use and a Slapjaw representative devolved into \u201cbullying,\u201d said Ken Stucker, a co-owner of the venue. Union Vapes 570\u2019s social media accounts became the center of a continued debate over how AI should be used in the arts when news of the cancelation hit, and Stucker vowed to create a written policy that would prohibit any act that wants to perform at his venue from using AI to promote the gig on any platform.<\/p>\n

Only issue is, he doesn\u2019t know how far this policy could, or should, go.<\/p>\n

Modern artists are too often caught between the lure of affordable digital tools that can easily generate promotional materials with a few keystrokes and the click of a button and that community\u2019s unwritten standards that protect the most important tenets of art itself: Humanity, authenticity and individuality.<\/p>\n

It is worth wondering whether any of those can truly be achieved with the help of AI. It is also worth considering whether AI simply helps all of us enhance all three. That is why venue owners like Stucker get caught in the middle when having to develop anti-AI policies. On one hand, AI tools offer the less artistic among us to execute artistic ideas they otherwise wouldn\u2019t have the ability to create. On another, isn\u2019t true art based in our ability to create it without the help of computers inspired by work developed by tens of thousands of other artists?<\/p>\n

If anyone is going to understand the value of artistic ability, and spearhead the need for the guardrails that will protect it over the long term, it has to be artists backing other artists.<\/p>\n

This is an issue considered vital to understand and address not just by promoters locally, but by one of the world\u2019s most recognized leaders.<\/p>\n

Pope Leo XIV published a message on his X account stressing the Catholic Church\u2019s\u00a0desire to \u201crenew alliances\u201d with artistic and cultural institutions in order to \u201csafeguard our humanity\u201d in the face of AI\u2019s advancement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce,\u201d the pontiff wrote. \u201cThere is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlgorithms lack the spark of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

It very well could be that, in 50 years, that six-word sentence winds up rating among the most prescient messages this pope ever delivered. Because the time to seek, define and protect that spark for mankind, is unquestionably now.<\/p>\n

We believe the issues brought forth in this story could provide the impetus for\u00a0an all-important discussion human beings need to have as technology and artificial intelligence change, every day, the world we know. The world we built.<\/p>\n

There is a longstanding tradition in the music industry that promotion of the act has to be as genuine, as authentic, as the music itself. As Stucker so poignantly pointed out, these were things meant to be done affordably, but also authentically.<\/p>\n

The acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson famously described the difference between science and art. Science, he said, is a study of the preexisting. A scientist can discover something about the universe, all the while knowing that it existed even undiscovered. Art is not that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the arts, what you create, no one born before you, or who will be born from your death onwards, will ever compose exactly the same thing you did,\u201d Tyson pointed out. \u201cSo in that sense, art is a unique expression of the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that way, artistic integrity is distinctly human, the most key cog in a world that thrives on creation. It is up to us to determine how much of it has to stay human, and the lengths we\u2019ll go to make sure it stays that way.<\/p>\n

Maintaining artistic integrity shouldn\u2019t be about a rejection of all technology. But it should insist, above all else, that human intention and human effort remain at the center of that work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late last month, a scheduled metal and alternative rock show at a popular Lackawanna County music venue was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[9079,1559,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-299914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-editorials","tag-opinion","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}