For decades, filmmakers, authors, writers and scholars have speculated on how AI would arise and what its consequences would be. Would AI gain consciousness? Or take over the world? AI is growing faster than ever in 2025. It may not have consciousness and it may not seem like a global threat, but there are plenty of ways in which AI, right now, is becoming a problem. One of the biggest issues surrounds how AI is being used to create and assist in the creation of art.
I believe the use of AI in art to be a major problem.
The first major issue is the lack of disclosure in AI-created art pieces. While it used to be quite easy to tell when something was created with AI, with images of people often picturing human beings with far too many fingers and an overwhelming “uncanny valley” sensation, recent AI advancements have led to AI art becoming harder to detect. When AI was creating silly images that were obviously AI, it didn’t pose much of a threat to creatives.
But now that it can create technically impressive work, human artists are at greater risk of losing their jobs. In a study conducted by Samuel Goldberg, an assistant professor of marketing at Stanford, it was found that an increase in AI-generated images led to an increase in sales overall, but a decrease in human art, and, even worse, consumers seemed to be drawn to AI art over human art.
Gaming franchise Call of Duty’s latest entry, Black Ops 7, released on Nov. 13, and was filled to the brim with AI-generated images. Call of Duty is one of the most popular franchises, with Black Ops 6 reigning as the highest selling video game of 2024. While Black Ops 7 has shown a decrease in sales, specifically in the U.K., it doesn’t bode well for a giant of the gaming industry to be resorting to cost-cutting AI shortcuts. However, it should be noted that Black Ops 7 is receiving negative reviews and fan outrage for its use of AI, a sign that not everyone will settle for non-human art.
Even California Congressional Representative Ro Khanna expressed disappointment in the game’s use of AI.
“We need regulations that prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs to extract greater profits,” Khanna wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The film industry is also seeing a rise in AI content. Not only have films like “Late Night with the Devil” and “The Brutalist” used AI in their creation, but major film studios are beginning to explore the possibilities of AI. Earlier this year, film studio A24, known for their distribution of independent cinema, created A24 Labs, a division dedicated to AI usage. This decision was surprising, as I, and many others, have come to know A24 as a studio that puts art first, and an AI film division is anything but that.
Filmmaker and screenwriter Alex Garland even praised the studio for its openness to creative ideas in an interview with The New Yorker.
“I don’t have to smuggle ideas in,” Garland said. “In fact, the ideas are things that we will freely discuss and try to exploit.”
This emergence of AI in the unlikeliest of places is concerning, but could AI be a good thing? In the same study about AI-generated images conducted by Stanford professor Samuel Goldberg, Goldberg proposed that the rise in AI images may not be all bad.
“There was also quality improvement specifically among non-AI images. Competition increased, and the non-generative-AI artists who left the platform were probably lower-quality artists,” Goldberg said. “The good ones stay and the bad ones leave.”
Josh Williams, a visual effects student at Bournemouth University, used AI to assist him in the creation of a short film he otherwise would not have been able to create. The short ended up winning Williams an award at the Kling AI NextGen Creative Contest.
“It’s really driving filmmaking and how people see the world, and connecting everyone, from all different cultures, into one place where, even with limited budgets, limited teams, limited actors, we can all get our voices out there, which is just so incredible,” Williams said at the contest, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
While AI’s usage as a tool may sound appealing, I believe the overall effect on human artists is negative. Art is an inherently human expression, and taking it out of the hands of human artists, and putting it into the digital code of AI, strips art of much of its beauty. I don’t want to see an AI-assisted short film that looks big budget because it’s artificial; I want to see what a visual effects student can do with their own two hands, their own resources and their own creativity.
AI’s environmental impact should also be considered. Even if one can excuse the creative failings of AI, they should at least be able to see the potential for harm in its heavy usage of water and electricity. According to AP News, large AI data centers can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day.
“That’s roughly the same as the daily water demand for a town of up to 50,000 people,” wrote AP News climate choice reporter Caleigh Wells.
From my perspective, AI’s lack of humanity and massive environmental impact are enough to plant me firmly against AI usage, both in the arts and outside of them. It’s simply not worth the cost, and I fear that in a few years we’ll all begin to reap the consequences.
Graeme Taskerud is a senior journalism major at the University of Northern Colorado and the editor-in-chief of The Mirror.
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