In June 2026, Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan “fact tank” that conducts public opinion polling, content media analysis and demographic research, published an article stating that about “half the U.S. adults use artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots” nowadays.
While the rise of AI usage demands discussion in various sectors—see the negative effects it has on the environment—a constant concern has been how it’s affecting the arts in terms of authenticity and ethics, even being described as “the next step in the death of art and artists.”
But what is authenticity in the arts?
According to the author and assistant professor of art history at Queens College, Christopher D.M. Atkinson, “the meaning of authenticity of the work of art aligns with issues of originality.” But, in 2026, originality has become hard to identify in artistic contexts. Artists cross languages and borders with a click. Pop stars borrow from genres thousands of miles away. Collaborations between cultures have become a defining feature of contemporary music. And now, artificial intelligence can produce music without ever having lived the experiences that human artists have traditionally drawn from.
In cultural terms, authenticity is tied to identity—where you were born, what language you speak, where your family is from. But Aigerim Alpysbekova, MPH, a researcher who focuses on cultural stress among other topics, states that “our sense of self is made up of different roles, not a single fixed identity.” Identity, as well as culture, are both constantly shaped by migration, contact, and exchange. Scholars call this “cultural hybridity”: the idea that in a globalized society, where everyone is interconnected, artistic traditions are rarely “pure,” but rather formed through ongoing interactions between societies.
The concept of cultural hybridity raises an uncomfortable question: if cultures are always mixing, who gets celebrated as innovative for doing it, and who gets dismissed as inauthentic or appropriative? The difference, many argue, comes down to cultural appreciation versus cultural appropriation—whether someone engages with a tradition with knowledge, respect, and recognition of its origins, or simply extracts from it for their own benefit without reciprocity.
Digna Ojito (’29), a music student at Rollins, puts that distinction in personal terms. She sings in both Spanish and Portuguese, but not interchangeably or casually. “I think authenticity has a lot to do with what you feel you’re contributing to the art form,” she said. “I don’t think I would have been able to sing songs in Portuguese if I didn’t take the time to learn on my own a little bit more behind each piece” — the same way, she said, singers research the emotional context behind a piece for a jury (music final performance at the end of each semester).
Ojito’s process of research, relationship, and connection before performance is arguably the clearest answer to dispose of if it is appropriate or not for an artist to perform a genre without belonging to the culture that created it. It ties back to the questioning of AI usage in the arts: an algorithm can replicate a ballad’s structure, for example, but it cannot ask a grandmother to recall the boleros she listened to when she was young or spend years studying to earn the trust that makes an interpretation “respectful to an art form,” in Ojito’s words. If authenticity requires that kind of accountability, AI’s lack of lived human experience is not just a technical gap, it is the gap that separates appreciation from appropriation.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published an article in regard to these matters. The article explores the complexity of artistic AI usage and its effects on cultures, stating that AI’s evolving nature calls for “forward-looking reflection on what AI may signify for the futures of culture”; the mass production of content is creating a shift from the challenge of creation in the cultural sector to a challenge of validation. Jayla Cargill (’28) said “sometimes I use AI to finish editing a flyer, but I took the pictures, decided the font, and created a draft… I think it’s okay to use it as a tool, but not for it to do the whole work. I can totally see when something is completely AI generated and I don’t like it.” The ability to discern AI-generated from human-made art is one that many people have not developed. Results from a study published by the National Library of Medicine show that although “human-made images are more readily recognized as such,” AI-generated art is easily misclassified as human-made, which makes it hard for people to accurately determine the source of the art, therefore affecting their assessment of credibility.
Cargill, as well as UNESCO, agree that to maintain authenticity in the arts, the maintenance of “human intent, originality, accountability, and the ability to incorporate significant resistance and profundity into artistic creations” is required.
None of this means AI has no place in the creative process, and it does not mean every cultural crossing is exploitation. Many people, like Cargill, believe AI can be a useful tool to aid human creation. But like any tool, its impact depends on how it is used. AI is not inherently an enemy of authenticity in the arts, just as human-created art is not automatically culturally responsible or authentic.
That is the real distinction this discourse keeps circling back to, whether the subject is a pop star borrowing a genre from another culture or an AI chatbot generating a melody: not who is “morally allowed” to make the art, but what they brought to it, and from where. So, perhaps, the question isn’t whether AI belongs in art, or whether an artist “earned” the right to perform a piece from a culture that is not theirs. Perhaps the question is smaller, but harder: what do we owe to the traditions we draw from, regardless of how we draw upon them—a decade of practice, or a single prompt?
Authenticity is not necessarily about keeping art untouched, but about awareness in terms of what we are creating and from where it comes from. Art has always evolved through collaboration, exchange, and re-interpretations. Whether an artist is working with different musical traditions, or an AI program, their responsibility remains the same: understand the art, recognize and respect the people behind it, and be intentional about what they add to it.
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