Berklee Students Push Back as AI Music Tools Enter Classrooms
More than 400 students at Berklee College of Music have signed a petition opposing generative AI in their curriculum, reflecting broader anxiety about the technology's threat to careers in composition and songwriting.
The Boston school, one of the world's top music institutions, has integrated AI into multiple courses over the past year. Faculty members teach classes on AI in composition and production. The college is hosting an AI Music Summit in June to explore ethical questions around the technology.
Carson Zuck, a senior studying music composition, said he watched Berklee progress through "five stages of grief" about AI, with denial arriving first and acceptance following later. He said professors in the film scoring department now use generative AI to write musical cues.
"I'm not against it," Zuck said. "I'm skeptical about what the curriculum is teaching you."
Students Fear for Their Futures
The concerns are concrete. Keira Mann, a freshman studying songwriting, said she writes songs to tell her own stories. AI tools, she argued, prevent that personal expression. "We want to tell our own stories," Mann said. "We don't want to tell [someone else's] version of that."
Michael Hoffman, a junior film scoring student, said he worries less about AI replacing him than about people losing the ability to distinguish AI-generated music from human work. "It is never truly going to create something that's going to push a boundary," he said.
Evan Williams, an assistant professor of composition, expressed particular concern about film scoring students entering the entertainment industry. He fears Hollywood will embrace AI-generated music to avoid paying human composers.
Williams said faculty discussions on AI in the curriculum have been "pretty vigorous" and left some colleagues worried about how the school wants them to use the technology.
The School's Position
Berklee said in a statement: "As an artist-first institution at the forefront of contemporary music and performing arts education, Berklee has a responsibility to prepare our students to navigate technologies impacting the creative industries."
Ben Camp, who teaches an AI songwriting elective at Berklee, serves as an adviser to Suno, a Cambridge-based AI music company. Camp previously wrote on X that Suno's output was "musically better than 80% of my students, but my best students beat it by miles." He declined to comment for this article.
Mark Ethier, founding executive director of Berklee's Emerging Artistic Technology Lab, said he wants students educated regardless of their stance on AI. "I want students to be educated regardless of where they fall on the spectrum of wanting to incorporate this into their art or not," Ethier said.
Faculty Divided on the Issue
Marti Epstein, a composition professor, has noticed student attitudes shifting. When she returned to campus last fall, students were less trustful of AI than they had been the previous semester. She tries to reassure them by noting that musicians have always struggled financially and worked multiple jobs before earning full income from their craft.
Jesse Williams, an associate professor in harmony and jazz composition, raised a fundamental question about the creative process. "Art is a very primary human experience, and when we take the creation part out of it, you're losing something pretty significant," he said.
The tension at Berklee reflects a broader industry shift. AI-generated artists have accumulated millions of Spotify streams using fabricated backstories and photos.
For education professionals overseeing curriculum decisions, understanding generative AI and LLM capabilities is increasingly necessary. Schools face pressure to prepare students for AI-integrated workplaces while preserving the human elements that define creative disciplines.
Your membership also unlocks:
