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Alexander Baer

Professor Merrill Horton

English 102

18 February 2025

Writing Project One: The AI Ethical Dilemma

I have chosen to explore the ethical dilemma of artificial intelligence dominating the

creative industries in the world. With the advent of advanced AI, this topic has become the

leading issue in the creative arts industry. Artists have been pushing for a solution to the AI

dilemma for years. Still, with art being a rather niche community in the grand scope of society,

there needs to be more attention and critical thinking brought to the forefront of this unethical

problem. Although I would like to cover every aspect of AI art against human art, the goal of this

research paper is to investigate philosophical and legal tensions surrounding the use of

AI-generated material in the creative industries as well as discuss the outside views of this

fabricated material.

Artists around the world have been in an uproar over the possibilities that exist for blatant

rip-offs within the industry with the emergence of AI. Everything from film and photography to

drawing and writing has been affected by AI, with programs like ChatGPT, Grammarly, and

DALL-E at the forefront of the issue. I know that the hyper-advanced image-generating

technology from DALL-E has put the photography and art industry into a tumultuous state, the

question seems to be whether the system will get advanced enough to simply fabricate art.

People believe the most important factors of art are human expression and emotion (Julianna

Nunez, 2023). AI can simply create pictures of places that would take effort for photographers to
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get to, or drawings that would take an artist weeks. AP journalist Matt O’Brien states “Artists

can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report

by the U.S. Copyright Office” (O’Brien, 2025). The emergence of this information has caused

concern over whether the effort of those in a creative field will cease in favor of allowing AI to

do all the work. I want to summarize the overall views on this ethical dilemma and bring

attention to the need for education in differentiating between real and generated.

The opinions on the usage of AI seem to heavily vary. As far as the main point goes,

there exist 3 primary ideals, the first being that AI should under no circumstance be present in

today’s creative industry as it serves only to make artists less equipped to work on their own. The

second (and least popular) is that humans should be able to create AI so advanced that it can

entertain us and perform fine arts all on its own, giving more human manpower to other

industries. The most popular idea is that humans should work in tandem with AI to create

something beautiful in a time-efficient manner, the primary standpoint for this being

“[G]enerative AI can bring about positive change, allowing users to reach new creative potentials

only possible with advanced technology,” I’d like to expand upon this ideal during this essay and

bring practicality to the minds of those opposed completely to the usage of AI in these fields of

work, and show that it can be helpful if used sparingly (J. Nunez, 2023).

There are two questions that I would like to answer throughout this essay. The first

question I’d like to cover is how AI art affects artists, and how can we use AI in art in an ethical

manner to improve the quality of art without entering territory where copyright laws and ethical

beliefs stop us from using our product. Throughout the last few years, this topic has been a

mainstay in the art community and has been covered by nearly every news site hundreds of

times, with all the differing opinion pieces available, it should be extremely easy to go in-depth
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on the morals of practicality of this topic. Insight on this topic is fluid and is constantly moving

around the internet, with that in mind, it would be great to factor in other ideas from the one I

hold and try to convince others of the helpfulness of using AI sparingly and show statistics of

time-efficiency with and without the usage of AI, whilst also showing that using it doesn’t mean

things have to be completely AI-generated. It should also be important to inform others on how

to identify cheap AI-generated art apart from AI-enhanced art.

AI has been villainized through media for generations, long before it had ever been

released for public usage, in films like The Terminator. My biggest challenge is finding a way to

inform others about its practical uses without making it seem like artists should be letting it do

too much of their work. The goal is to inform about the ethical dilemma of AI, explain why there

is an opposing viewpoint to the unethical side, and teach how to responsibly use it. The last thing

I’d want is for my research to come off preachy towards artificial intelligence and make the

reader uncomfortable with my advocacy for it, so I will need to bring a lot of information on its

negative applications and harm as well, the goal is to inform, not sugarcoat. Finding accurate

statistics as well is important, artists don’t like AI and people will often fabricate or exaggerate

evidence to further the point they’re trying to make, so I will need to research heavily on whether

or not the information is provable.

Almost all news sites have information on artificial intelligence dilemmas, however, for

bias purposes, the best source to use for insight on how artists feel is the Associated Press. One

search on the AP website tells us that this problem has hundreds of reports covering it on many

different levels. The AP also credits all sources heavily with links to all used media. This would

help keep my essay fact-based and trustworthy to the reader if they can easily view all statistics

used. The AP believes to support them is to support independent, fact-based journalism

(Associated Press News: Breaking News, Latest Headlines and Videos | AP News, n.d.). There

are other more scholarly sources I will use for the more in-depth statistics as well, such as UNSW

and The Academy Chronicle. These will help me find more research-based information in

contrast to the societal information provided by the AP. The combination of these two sources

will allow me to conduct an advanced deep dive into the topic and cover all important areas of

conversation within the dilemma. I can find reliable information easily through these sources,

summarize them, and produce a simplified product to educate others on the research conducted.

Works Cited

Associated Press News: breaking news, latest headlines and videos | AP News. (n.d.). AP News.

https://apnews.com/

Nunez, J. (2023, June 1). AI-Generated Content in Creative Industries: The Ethical Concerns.

Academy Chronicle.

https://academychronicle.com/8835/science-technology/ai-generated-content-in-creative-

industries-the-ethical-concerns/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

O’brien, M. (2025, January 29). AI-assisted works can get copyright with enough human

creativity, says US copyright office | AP News. AP News.

https://apnews.com/article/ai-copyright-office-artificial-intelligence-363f1c537eb86b624

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