As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in musical practices worldwide, it reshapes not only how music is produced and taught but also how creativity, authorship, and artistic value are culturally understood. This paper examines how music educators in Germany and South Korea – two contrasting yet technologically advanced educational contexts – negotiate the meaning of “musicking” (Small, 1998) within AI-mediated learning environments.
Drawing on empirical findings from a qualitative study with music teachers and experts, this research explores how teachers conceptualize the role of AI tools in fostering, challenging, or redefining creative processes. 

Rather than focusing on technological functionality, the study investigates the cultural logics that underpin teachers’ responses: How is musical creativity reinterpreted when human and machine agency intertwine? What values are mobilized when educators justify, resist, or aestheticize the presence of AI in their classrooms?

By comparing two educational cultures shaped by distinct pedagogical traditions – Germany’s humanistic ideal of “Bildung” and Korea’s collective yet innovation-driven approach – the study reveals that, despite structural and ideological differences, both contexts engage in similar cultural negotiations around authenticity, autonomy, and the meaning of creativity.
Through this cross-cultural lens, AI-based music education emerges not merely as a pedagogical or technological issue, but as a site where broader cultural discourses on art, ethics, and human–machine interaction unfold. The paper thus contributes to an ethnomusicological understanding of how contemporary societies reimagine the act of musicking in dialogue with intelligent technologies.