Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a tool. How you use this tool is up to you. AI being used in media and other aspects in our lives has become a larger conversation; it seems that people don’t realize how much it has been a part of our lives so far.
The level of AI has become almost unnoticed in everyday life, from Word Doc AI suggestions to AI denoising images in Adobe Lightroom. The main point of debate for many seems to be the ethical usage of it.
University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) junior civil engineering major Caleb Munoz has an optimistic outlook on AI.
“It’s helped me through a lot of my classes,” Munoz said. “I’m not the type of person to learn automatically in a lecture. It takes time for me to process it.”
The use of AI in the classroom is an ever-changing landscape with teachers and students throughout the academic world. Music artist Timbaland announced his recent project being an AI music artist known as Tata Taktumi.Timbaland debuted his first song with Tata called Glitch x Pulse in collaboration with the JABBAWOCKEEZ dance group in early October. Music artist SZA commented on Timbaland’s Instagram post that announced the release of the song, with a disappointed outlook.
“WHY NOT ELEVATE AND POUR YOUR GENIUS EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE INTO A REAL HUMAN BEING !??,” SZA said.
As of Nov. 20, the music video on YouTube has 2.3K likes and 9.5K dislikes. Although the music is generated by AI, a lot of human input can still be seen in the music video and its end credits. While Tata still needs the use of humans to create music, it seems like movie producers are looking to use AI to create ideas and productions.
The 2025 film “Tron: Ares,”… as of Nov. 20, has 54% on the Tomatometer score and 85% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes. The film’s Disney executives received backlash from the public when they wanted to have an AI generated character be a part of the film. The main concern for many critics is that these multi-billion-dollar corporations will try to save as much money as they can instead of paying an artist for their work.
The thought that so many talented artists in El Paso who create music, dances and writing might become a second thought as AI artist like Tata are being pushed into the spotlight by well-established artist within the industry is disappointing.
There are so many great uses for AI even beyond the media. Just like everything else in the world, the tools we use to navigate life are neutral. The purpose of your tools and the ethics of how you choose to use them is all up to you.
Kristian Hernandez is the sports editor for The Prospector and may be reached at [email protected] and on social media @northeastvideography.
