Keep AI out of Philippine theater

Art should never be automated.

A Philippine theater company is facing suspicions that it has been churning out musicals created with artificial intelligence, raising uncomfortable questions about creativity, authenticity, and the future of live performance.

The suspicions remain unverified, and no conclusive evidence has been presented to establish that the company’s productions were AI-generated. But the issue raises a provocative question: Should artificial intelligence be allowed to create the stories, music, and emotions that theater is supposed to bring to life?

For theater practitioners who have dedicated their lives to writing, composing, directing, and performing, the implications could be devastating.

Theater is supposed to be human

Theater is arguably the most intimate of all performing arts. Unlike film or television, it unfolds before a living audience, where every breath, hesitation, and emotional outburst becomes part of the experience.

A playwright writes from experience. A composer transforms emotions into music. An actor brings those words and melodies to life.

Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, generates content by identifying patterns in existing material. It can produce dialogue, lyrics, and musical compositions, but it has never experienced grief, heartbreak, poverty, or love.

It can imitate human expression without having lived through the emotions behind it.

If a machine can generate an entire musical within hours, what happens to writers and composers who spend months, sometimes years, developing original productions?

When cost-cutting replaces creativity

Theater is already a financially vulnerable industry. Many Filipino playwrights, composers, designers, and performers struggle to earn sustainable incomes.

Generative AI threatens to make their situation worse.

A producer could theoretically commission AI-generated scripts, lyrics, promotional materials, and scenic designs at a fraction of the cost of hiring creative professionals.

The result might be cheaper productions, but critics argue that the savings could come at the expense of artistic originality and employment.

There is also the question of transparency.

Should audiences paying hundreds or thousands of pesos for a supposedly original musical be informed if substantial portions of its script or music were generated by AI?

Should producers be allowed to market such productions as original creative achievements without disclosing how they were made?

A tool or a replacement?

Not every application of AI necessarily threatens theater.

Technology can help manage ticketing, rehearsal schedules, audience research, and even technical stage effects.

The distinction lies between using technology to support artists and using it to replace them.

Theater has survived cinema, television, streaming platforms, and countless technological revolutions because it offers something no machine can fully reproduce: the unpredictable connection between human performers and their audience.

The growing debate over AI-generated musicals is therefore about more than technological progress.

It is about whether theater companies still value the people responsible for creating theater.

Because when producers begin treating playwrights, composers, and other artists as expenses that technology can eliminate, they risk destroying the very art form they claim to celebrate.

Theater without human creativity may still be a production. But what exactly is left of its soul?

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