Before anybody starts sharpening the pitchforks, let me say right up front that this isn’t intended to be either an endorsement of artificial intelligence or an attack on it. There are plenty of people on both sides of that debate, and I understand why. What concerns me isn’t whether AI is good or bad. What concerns me is what it may mean for the future of music, journalism, and every other profession that depends on people creating original work.
Like most of you, I’ve spent some time trying to understand what AI is, how it works, and why suddenly it seems to be everywhere. Ask it a question and, in a matter of seconds, it often comes back with what sounds like a thoughtful, well-researched answer. Whether you find that exciting or unsettling, it’s hard not to be impressed.
But the more I learned about it, the more one question kept coming back to me.
Where did that response come from?
The answer, of course, is that it came from somewhere. It came from books, newspapers, magazines, research papers, web sites, and countless other places where somebody invested the time to create something original. Somewhere along the line, somebody conducted the interview. Somebody attended the festival. Somebody researched the history. Somebody wrote the story.
That thought hit especially close to home.
When John Lawless and I launched Bluegrass Today in 2011, we weren’t thinking about artificial intelligence. We were thinking about building the best source of bluegrass news we possibly could. Since then, we’ve published tens of thousands of original stories. We’ve interviewed artists, covered festivals from coast to coast, reported on the business of bluegrass, tracked charts, announced births and deaths, celebrated achievements, and documented the ongoing history of this music every single day.
None of that happened by accident. It represents countless hours of reporting, writing, editing, photography, travel, phone calls, fact-checking, and no small amount of financial investment. Like every other legitimate news organization, we invest in original journalism because we believe it has value.
Today, AI can answer questions about bluegrass in seconds. In many cases, those answers are generated by information that publications like Bluegrass Today spent years gathering, verifying, and publishing. Readers get an answer almost instantly, but they may never visit the publications that created the original reporting in the first place.
That raises a question I don’t think enough people are asking.
If our work—and the work of newspapers, magazines, and publishers everywhere—helps make artificial intelligence smarter, how do the people who created that work continue to support themselves? How do they pay reporters, photographers, editors, and writers to create tomorrow’s stories?
As it turns out, I’m not the only one asking.
A coalition representing nearly 400 local and regional newspapers recently filed a federal lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that their copyrighted reporting was used without permission or compensation to help train artificial intelligence systems. They join other major publishers, including The New York Times, Ziff Davis, and Encyclopedia Britannica, in raising many of the same concerns. The publishers argue that years of original reporting have been used to build AI products that can now answer readers’ questions without sending them back to the source. OpenAI and Microsoft strongly dispute those claims, maintaining that training AI models on publicly available information is protected under the legal doctrine of fair use.
I have no idea how those lawsuits will ultimately be decided, and I’m not pretending to predict the outcome. But the fact that some of the largest news organizations in America are now battling some of the largest technology companies in the world tells me this is no longer just an interesting philosophical debate. It’s a real issue with real consequences.
It also made me realize that this isn’t just a problem for large publishers.
Bluegrass Today isn’t the size of the New York Times. What we do have, however, is more than fifteen years of original reporting devoted almost exclusively to bluegrass music. Along the way, we’ve built one of the largest collections of bluegrass journalism anywhere. That archive exists because thousands of stories were researched, written, edited, and published, one at a time over many years.
If AI systems are learning from that work—as they are alleged to be doing with countless publications large and small—then our reporting becomes part of the knowledge those systems provide to users around the world. The question that naturally follows is a simple one.
If readers no longer need to visit the source because AI has already provided the answer, who pays for creating the next story?
As I thought about that question, I couldn’t help but think back to something our industry has already lived through.
Napster.
Those of us who have been around the music business for a while remember exactly what happened. Suddenly, music was available faster, easier, and, in many cases, free. Consumers loved it. Artists, songwriters, publishers, and record companies were left wondering how they were going to survive.
Eventually the industry adapted. Downloads gave way to streaming, and today we have instant access to more music than we ever imagined possible. That’s an incredible technological achievement. At the same time, it’s hard to find many songwriters or independent artists who believe the compensation system is perfect.
Technology solved one problem while creating another.
I can’t help wondering if journalism—and perhaps every creative profession—is standing at that same crossroads.
Whether it’s a song or a news story, somebody has to create it before anyone else can benefit from it. Every bluegrass song begins with a songwriter staring at a blank page. Every recording begins with musicians walking into a studio. Every news story begins with somebody making the phone call, asking the questions, verifying the facts, writing the copy, editing it, and finally publishing it.
Artificial intelligence can summarize that work. It can organize it. It can explain it. But it still depends on somebody creating it in the first place.
I’m not suggesting AI should be stopped. I don’t believe that’s realistic, and I don’t think it’s the point. Every major technological advancement has forced creative industries to adapt. Radio changed music. Television changed radio. The internet changed journalism. Streaming changed the record business.
Artificial intelligence is almost certainly going to change all of them again.
The question isn’t whether AI will continue to evolve. It will.
The question is whether we’ll figure out a way to encourage innovation while still rewarding the people who create the original work that innovation depends on.
As bluegrass fans, I think we understand this better than most. We know songs don’t write themselves. Musicians don’t tour for free. Festivals don’t organize themselves. Somebody has to invest the time, talent, and money to create something worth enjoying.
The same is true of journalism.
Every day, somebody has to make the phone call, ask the questions, verify the facts, write the story, edit it, and publish it. If artificial intelligence becomes the primary way people consume that information without supporting the people who created it, we’re eventually going to have to answer a difficult question.
Who will pay to create tomorrow’s stories?
I don’t pretend to know where all of this ends. I do know the conversation is worth having, and I suspect it’s one we’ll be having for years to come.
As long as Bluegrass Today is here, we’ll keep showing up. We’ll keep making the phone calls, covering the festivals, interviewing the artists, checking the facts, compiling the charts and writing the stories.
Because no matter how intelligent artificial intelligence becomes, somebody still has to create something original first.
