Human creativity and authenticity must be protected in the AI era

By Samuel Pearton

The rapid acceleration of AI has led the creative industry to a crossroads where human-conceptualized creativity, authentic art, and technology collide. AI’s capabilities to generate music, novels, and movies have blurred the lines between man and machine, questioning the essence of originality and ownership.

Zero-knowledge Machine Learning (zkML) is a technical innovation that restores balance and integrity in the creative industry. zkML empowers creators to encode intent and embed originality into digital proofs, watermarking their work for privacy-preserved data protection and authorship.

AI takes away art’s authenticity

AI has had an outsized impact on the music industry, creating ethical, legal, and philosophical dilemmas about the nature and production of art.

For example, in 2023, an AI-generated song became popular among hip-hop fans for its uncanny resemblance to Drake and The Weeknd’s melody and lyrics. Although it reached 9 million views, the artists’ record label, Universal Music Group, asked TikTok and Spotify to take it down.

A TikTok user had created the new AI-produced song after training AI models on Drake and The Weeknd’s existing works. The issue raised concerns about artistic freedom, musicians’ copyrights, means of protection, and artistic creativity to produce new work.

But it was not an isolated incident. The legendary Donna Summer’s voice is now available to create AI music covers, even as Summer’s estate has alleged that Kanye West algorithmically recreated her songs without permission.

Living artists like Celine Dion have unequivocally condemned AI-generated songs resembling her voice and cautioned users against using them. Simultaneously, the music fraternity has lashed out against startups like Suno and Udio for using copyrighted music to train their AI models.

The use of such iconic artists’ voices, lyrics, and songs for training AI raises serious questions about copyright issues. Besides legal protection, it demonstrates the philosophical hollowness of critically analyzing the centrality of human creativity in making music.

It’s time to think what creativity means, is it defined by the final result, or by an individual artist’s intention and conceptualization. Human identity, expression, performativity, and harnessing the emotional spectrum are critical for producing authentic art that resonates with people.

But music streaming platforms like Spotify and YouTube are increasingly adopting AI-generated music for cost-efficiency. Such AI-generated music within playlists and user suggestions saves billions of dollars by replacing copyrighted studio music with unlicensed AI tracks.

In doing so, the lines between human artistry and corporate efficiency get blurred, as platforms prefer to remain opaque about their source. These machine-made tracks are a death knell for independent artists who depend solely on their creative genius to compete against studio-backed, established musicians.

The rise of AI agents that can independently write, produce, and market music will diminish the visibility of artists’ creative authenticity. Since AI doesn’t require per-song royalties and time off to fuel creative energies, they’re economically more viable for music companies.

But creative arts and music need cognitive resonance and philosophical foundations to remain meaningful. So, while the courts and law agencies determine how copyright laws will apply to AI-generated music, the industry must grapple with more existential questions.

AI isn’t going anywhere. An equally powerful tech innovation can paradoxically resolve the vulnerabilities that AI introduces to the music industry. Zero-knowledge Machine Learning (zkML) is the tech solution to protect artistic freedom and human creativity AI takes over the music industry.

zkML restores creativity to art

zkML empowers artists and creators to codify their intent into original works, using privacy-preserving digital proofs to secure artworks. These proofs function as indelible watermarks transcending simple data protection rules because they safeguard human creativity without exposing sensitive methodologies.

The underlying philosophy of zkML embodies a commitment to protect human creativity and affirm authorship while training AI models. With zkML, it is possible to use data libraries containing copyrighted songs, lyrics, tunes, and melodies without revealing individual identifying features.

Creative ownership rights are a precious and fragile concept that needs stringent protection for society’s sustenance and human progress. zkML helps protect artists’ and content creators’ Intellectual Property (IP) rights to ensure no company can infringe or replicate human creativity.

The benefits of zkML are manifold. They can guarantee secure and transparent ownership records and flag unauthorized AI-generated content to protect artists from exploitative and extractive companies. Further, music tracks, videos, and other creative assets can have embedded cryptographic proofs to ensure fair, automatic, and transparent royalty distribution.

Besides zkML’s practical utilities, they present a novel way to preserve human intent, authenticity, and creativity in an increasingly algorithm-dominated world. zkML ensures creative integrity is not lost to meaningless automation while artistic expression’s core stays accountable to its human origins.

Creativity is a fundamentally human trait. In the age of AI, as creativity’s definition is expanding, it is equally important to affirm originality, safeguard intellectual property rights, and uphold the integrity of artistic expression.

zkML’s profundity lies in its ability to respect and protect artists’ creative essence. Thus, zkML isn’t merely a tech innovation. Rather, it’s about honoring human creativity and ensuring artists continue to define society’s cultural narrative.

Author Bio

Samuel Pearton is the Chief Marketing Officer at Polyhedra, driving the future of intelligence through its pioneering, high-performance technology in EXPchain—the everything chain for AI. Drawing on decades of experience in tech, global marketing, and cross-cultural social commerce, Samuel understands that trust, scalability, and verifiability are essential to AI and blockchain.. Before officially joining Polyhedra’s executive team in October 2024, he played a key advisory role as the company secured $20 million in strategic funding at a $1 billion valuation. Prior to Polyhedra, Samuel founded PressPlayGlobal, a social commerce and engagement platform that connected athletes and celebrities—including Stephen Curry and other leading global brands—with China’s largest consumer fan market.