The Impact of AI in the Field of Sound for Picture. A Historical, Practical, and Ethical Consideration

The paper covers the emergence and evolution of AI in the commercial field of audio: from the pioneering German audio software company Prosoniq Products Software, which first used artificial neural networks for commercial audio processing, creating in 1997 the program Pandora Music Decomposition Series that managed to separate music into its components, to the indispensable technologies for sound processing involving machine learning (iZotope and Audionamix ADX Trax Pro 3), to the spleeter technology, ChatGPT from OpenAI that applies AI technology also to the area of sound processing, to Adobe or ElevenLabs that offers online AI services with Text to Speech and Speech to Speech functions. The second part of the paper will review specific audio plug-ins that use Artificial Intelligence, making it possible to identify to what extent AI is an important tool in the field of sound and music, but also what are its current limitations. The last part of the paper refers to the ethics of AI in the field of sound. Even if plugins facilitate the work process in sound design, music production, voice cloning and synthesis, or sound restoration, thus reducing costs and personnel, what are the ethical limits of using these tools?