Holy Angel University (HAU) has long positioned itself as a sanctuary of arts, culture, and Kapampangan identity — a place where student creativity and regional expression are nurtured. However, its usage of artificial intelligence (AI) in its recent promotional materials stands as a stark contrast to what it claims to stand for.
This January, HAU posted an advertisement featuring a free piano concert from Dr. Raffi Kasparian — one that bore unmistakable signs of AI generation. The image contained the classic hallmarks of AI generation: inconsistent lines and malformed elements that do not reflect what an actual piano looks like.
Photo sourced from Holy Angel University Facebook page.
Moreover, in October 2025, HAU posted two reels on Facebook containing the usage of AI voice generation, narrating the story of the HAU orchestra and the advertisement of the free concert held by the said organization.
On June 4, 2025, the Basic Education Department also posted a publication material on Facebook. The publication material used a background that also shares abnormalities the previous publication material mentioned: inconsistency of windows in the structure behind the students and distorted texts which can be seen in their IDs.
Traces of AI can be found such as unreadable text and abnormalities in the generated image. Photo sourced from Holy Angel University – Basic Education Facebook page.
In the same month, a large tarpaulin advertising HAU’s enrollment featuring the Guardian Angel statue displayed near the HAU’s main building or known as Don Juan D. Nepomuceno (DJDN) building.
(L) Photo by The Angelite taken back in June 2025, (R) Photo by Rolian Sarmiento/ The Angelite.
For a university that claims to nurture competence and creativity, outsourcing its message to a machine doesn’t just betray the artists it raises, but also the very values it claims to uphold.
AI art is widely known for recurring issues: malformed text, stylized distortions, and uncanny visual elements. Popular AI models often prefer to generate Pixar-like aesthetics — similar to the mentioned post in June 2025.
AI voice generation on the other hand, is widely used in social media and audiobooks but is often monotone and cannot express emotions. The AI voice used in HAU’s reel closely resembled ElevenLabs’ David Castlemore.
While HAU produces graduates that specialize in making publication materials and voice-over such as Bachelor of Science in Entertainment and Multimedia Computing and Bachelor of Arts in Communication, it is telling that these talents were overlooked.
Within the university, student organizations like the Multimedia Aficionados For Interested Artists (MAFIA) have consistently produced compelling, student-made publication materials — works marked by the 3 C’s of creativity, competence, and care.
In contrast, the decision to use AI-generated visuals in recent enrollment campaigns undermines the image of the university as one that nurtures those 3 C’s.
While students pay considerable tuition to develop skills in design, communication, and multimedia, the institution appears to bypass its own talent in favor of convenience. That employed staff would turn to artificial means, instead of cultivating student involvement, raises deeper concerns about what kind of creativity is truly being supported — and what is being left behind.
Students have their talents and skills which could be used, as it is helpful for the university to build student connections. Beyond cutting costs, involving students in university promotions helps to build pride and a sense of belonging in HAU’s community — something AI cannot replicate.
This could have been a chance to connect, to showcase students’ creativity, and to stand by the values the university claims to uphold. By choosing automation over such collaboration, it didn’t just miss a creative opportunity — it undermined the trust and morale of the very students it claims to empower.
HAU has the resources to do better. Past materials shared on the same Facebook page were clearly man-made, demonstrating the university’s ability to deliver high-quality, human-driven designs.
The decision reveals more than just budget constraints or efficiency, it reflects a misalignment between its professed values and the choices it makes about whose work it uplifts and invests in.
This raises a deeper question: can artificial intelligence ever truly belong in the world of art — or does it only mimic its form while stripping away its soul?
It could ultimately undermine the value of graduates trained in the arts, especially in a country where digital artists already struggle to find fair compensation. In the Philippines, freelance artists often face low pay and precarious gigs, competing for attention in an oversaturated online market.
As someone who has worked as a digital artist, I know the difficulty of securing commissions without an established audience. I was fortunate to find opportunities in gaming communities, but many others are not.
In a country where artists are already underappreciated, institutions like HAU adopting AI without ethical consideration only aggravates the problem. It contributes to the ongoing devaluation of skills that take years of dedication to master — skills that its own students depend on for their livelihood.
That said, AI need not be inherently harmful. When used responsibly, it can serve as a tool to assist rather than replace human talent.
Take Cadmium, for example, an app which could assist animators as a tool that colors in every frame of the existing animation. Easing the process of coloring each frame which is tedious to do.
Across industries, AI has been integrated to ease workflows: in medicine, radiologists use AI to identify abnormalities in scans, but final diagnoses remain with physicians. In banking, AI cross-references user data to flag fraud in milliseconds.
These are cases where AI augments — not replaces — human oversight and decision-making.
As a computer engineering student, I understand the potential of AI as both a subject of study and a tool in real-world systems. At HAU, our curriculum and laboratories actively engage with AI, especially in the Computer Science program. But these innovations should support human growth — not bypass it.
As Pope Leo XVI frames AI as a new challenge to human dignity, justice, and labor, will HAU — as a Catholic institution — must decide whether to uphold that ethical concern.
I do not intend to fully reject the existence of AI within the university. We cannot reverse its increasing presence.
That said, to move forward, AI can exist within the university, as long as it doesn’t do all the heavy lifting. It can assist in ideation, support workflows, and improve efficiency. Many educators now allow AI tools for proofreading but caution against replacing critical thinking with shortcuts. There are ethical ways to use this technology — but not as a substitute for effort and intention.
AI is not meant to replace human judgement or creativity, rather, it must support and augment our capabilities; in the first place, it won’t exist without organic human intelligence.
We made AI. But art? Art made us. From cave paintings to street murals, art has shaped our cultures, preserved our histories, and deepened our sense of self.
In the end, no machine can bleed, break, or burn the way a human does — and that pain, that vulnerability, is what breathes life into true art. Let us never surrender our agency to the artificial. Instead, root ourselves in the soil of human consciousness — where our flaws nurture empathy, and our wounds grow into wisdom beyond what data can measure.
Because in this fertile soil, we cultivate not only meaning, but also the courage to imagine futures that do not yet exist. Technological progress must not be uncritically rejected, but neither should it replace us.
AI must be harnessed, shaped as a tool to humanize, not erase, our collective soul.
Rolian Sarmiento is the Senior Arts Editor of The Angelite for the Publication Year 2025-2026, and writes opinions under the column “The Renegade”
The views and opinion of the editor does not necessarily reflect those of the publication.
