Ugandan creatives have mixed emotions about the brave new world of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As they grapple to come to terms with it, they are embracing it cautiously. What is the AI experience of creatives? “AI is a simulation of human processing abilities and work-abilities into artificial computers and machines,” said Samson Enabu, third-year student of a Bachelor of Arts in Education (Religious studies and music). Culton Scovia Nakamya, a journalist, said she uses AI on a daily basis and it has helped her improve her work. “AI in my basic understanding is an automated computer system that helps you simplify the work,” she said.
Enabu said AI has made work easy and even better. “AI eases work. For instance, we used to record actual local instruments like drums when making a song, but nowadays because of AI, we use computers to generate such sounds. As humans, we tend to make errors. With AI, there is now increased efficiency,” he said.
To designers, there is nothing impossible to create, thanks to AI-enabled tools at their disposal. “I have used some of the tools like Canva. It has tools that can place an object on a shirt instead of manually doing it like a graphic designer using overlay. With AI, you can do it with a snap of a finger — you can type in a prompt of what you want to happen to your graphic and enhance it using mere speech,” said Paul Mwebaze, a digital illustrator/designer and performing artiste.
Nakamya said there is a lot she can do in her career with the assistance of AI. “There are many AI tools to help you improve the work. For example, if a journalist sends me a picture, it is my duty to verify if the picture is authentic. I will get the picture and put it in the Google image search. The search will use the AI algorithm to give me all the sites where that picture has ever been posted and if the picture doesn’t exist anywhere, then I know it is new and authentic. That is basic AI work,” she said.
AI is greatly lauded for its creativity but it is that ability to create that is a double-aged sword. To creatives, AI’s inventiveness is like a beautiful sweet scented rose flower with thorns. “It replicates what artists do. AI is a big danger to the creatives at large. Software today is able to replace an artist; it is able to replace your touch. For example, I might want it to do a portrait of Mona Lisa, not the Leonardo da Vinci way, but in a Picasso sort of way. So, you basically replicate the man’s work when he is actually dead,” Mwebaze said.
Closer to home, Mwebaze faces a real danger of losing his job. “AI has actually replaced most graphic designers. We are facing an era of a poster done with AI. That means we don’t need graphic designers any more. I have seen a number of ‘AI artists’ – they give prompts to software and create an art work,” he said.
Enabu said AI kills creativity. “The more we use AI, the more our creativity is eroded. There’s no need to put effort in thinking, there is no innovation or invention — the work is just simplified artificially,” he said.
He added that he no longer needs colleagues in producing music in the studio, heralding the death of teamwork and jobs. “Alone in the studio, I can do everything. I can just play my instruments and feed them into a computer. The computer does everything, which means it has excluded other people,” he said.
Enabu thinks AI is a threat.
However, Nakamya is not bothered by AI. “For me, I don’t see AI as a threat because it is not creative. That is why if somebody uses AI to write a statement, you can just read three or four lines and you are able to tell that it is AI -generated,” she said. She added that even in songs created by AI, when one listens to the voices critically, one can tell that the AI song lacks authenticity and so are the AI pictures which clearly do not look ‘human’.
She argued that content done by human beings is better. “Anything done by a human creator is much more appealing than something created by AI. If five people make an input into an AI tool to generate something, they are likely to come up with the same thing,” she said.
In this brave new world, Mwebaze put it aptly:” We need to co-exist with AI”.
AI generated Masavu song ruckus
Nakamya, a fan of singer Azawi, said she was not amused when Tik Toker Eyo Shatta used AI to reproduce the Masavu song. Masavu was done by Azawi but Shatta recreated a version that featured Radio’s voice. It was very emotional for music lovers to hear Radio (who died eight years ago) sing a new song in 2024. Many online and in dancehalls enjoyed the remix, but according to Nakamya, that is how AI can be manipulated to destroy. “He used a dead musician’s voice to sing Azawi’s song and the song came out perfectly well. If I had not listened to the first song by the original creator, I would have assumed that this guy died and left the song in studio. So, they just released it. It is AI playing that game. It brings conflict to the creatives. If somebody is not knowledgeable about AI, they might think that somebody plagiarised or infringed on one’s copyright and yet it is AI,” she said.
Shatta only concedes on the ground of the song holding moral and ethical questions. “I am trying to solve the moral and ethical issues with Radio’s family members. They reached out to me and I am in talks with them,” he said
On breach of copyright, Shatta says he awaits the amendment of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act 2006 to see how it affects him, but not now. Last year, artistes, under the Uganda National Musicians Federation successfully pushed for the tabling of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights (Amendment) Bill. Though it has not been processed into law yet.
Shatta has a case to answer according to the secretary general of Uganda Musician’s Association and artiste Phina Masanyalaze. However, the association cannot take on the copyright infringement case unless the owners of the song expressly show concern.
In the mean time, Shatta is determined to go on with content creation using AI. He said he is in studio making an AI artiste and song. “I am still cooking my original music. He or she will be a real AI artiste. An artiste made by AI,” he said.
As we wait, the general consensus is AI is good. “Broadly speaking, AI is good for us. We only have to embrace it and see how to improve on our day-to-day work. If you have an idea, how do you incorporate it into the different AI tools so that you have something appealing. The only way human artists can survive AI generated art is to be creative,” Nakamya concluded the matter.
