Background. As generative AI becomes prevalent in music creation, understanding its impact on student learning and ethical awareness is essential. Beyond technical proficiency, this study investigates how perceptions of AI’s role—and its intersection with cultural heritage—evolve under a structured pedagogy.Aim. This poster reports findings from a 2024 undergraduate popular-music composition course in China, examining shifts in student perspectives regarding: (1) AI’s role—from efficiency tool to collaborative partner; and (2) responsibility when using AI to engage with Qinghai’s intangible vocal traditions.Method. The course integrated AI across ideation, lyrics, harmony, arrangement, mixing, and mastering, alongside a consent-based field trip to Xining (Qinghai) to document local vocal heritage. Data comprised weekly reflective journals and peer-discussion transcripts. A codebook was iteratively developed; two coders applied constant-comparative analysis, resolving discrepancies through negotiated coding. Prompts captured episodes of surprise, friction, agency, and ethical reasoning.Results. Analysis revealed a three-stage perceptual trajectory: (i) efficiency framing (AI as shortcut and productivity aid); (ii) co-creative partnership (AI as ideation catalyst expanding harmonic and arrangement options); and (iii) stewardship-oriented partnership anchored in emergent criteria for style fidelity (e.g., timbre, melodic contour, modal tendencies, ornamentation, prosody). Students instituted human-in-the-loop checkpoints and shifted from “what can AI do?” toward “what should AI be allowed to do when representing heritage?”. In addition, the course culminated in an original album themed on Qinghai heritage, co-produced with a provincial culture-and-tourism organization; several tracks received awards at a juried international electronic-music composition competition in China (2025) judged by an international panel, offering external validation of stewardship-oriented criteria.Content of the poster. Visualizations will map the perceptual journey; present the coding scheme with anonymized excerpts; and display curated field-trip assets (photos, audio spectrograms, lyric annotations, waveform stills). QR codes will link to additional media and adoption templates.Conclusions and Implications. A pedagogy that intertwines AI collaboration with grounded cultural immersion can foster responsible innovators: students develop production fluency while treating AI as a relational entity in creativity and committing to cultural stewardship.