Proponents

Sora 2

December 20 2025, New York, United States

On human-made art – Caitlin Petre and Julia Ticona in NYT;

‘It’s a perilous moment for creative life in America. While supporting oneself as an artist has never been easy, the power of generative A.I. is pushing creative workers to confront an uncomfortable question: Is there a place for paid creative work within late capitalism? And what will happen to our cultural landscape if the answer turns out to be no?’

(…)

‘In a short span of time, A.I.-generated content has become ubiquitous. Prose written in A.I.’s unmistakably tedious style is pervasive, while in recent months, newer tools like Sora 2 and Suno have filled the internet with hit country songs and squishy mochi-ball cats.’

(…)

‘The proponents of A.I. often claim that, as good as it may get, the technology will never be able to match the talent and ingenuity of superlative human-made art. Amit Gupta is the co-founder of Sudowrite, an A.I. tool designed for writing. He believes that A.I. “will help us get to the 80 percent mark, maybe the 90 percent mark” of human writing quality, “but we’re still going to be able to discern that last bit.” Anyone with an iPhone can take a very good photo, Mr. Gupta has pointed out, but “there are still photographs that hang in museums; they’re not the photographs that you and I took.” Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, similarly talked about how A.I. will eventually replace the “median human” in most fields but not the top performers.’

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‘This is not a novel phenomenon; the starving artist is a cliché for a reason. Creative and cultural labor markets have long been beset by an imbalance between supply and demand: There are more people who want to write, paint, direct, act and play music than there are paying jobs doing those things. As a result, most artists aren’t paid especially well for their most creatively fulfilling work. Historically, this has advantaged those with the connections to score, say, a coveted unpaid internship at an art gallery or a film studio — and the independent wealth to pay for food and rent while completing it.’

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‘When generative A.I. is put into actual practice, “its functionality is so limited and so disappointing and so mediocre,” said Larry J. Cohen, a TV writer who serves on the A.I. task force for the Writers Guild of America East. But because A.I. is surrounded by what Mr. Cohen called “a complete reality distortion field,” its mediocrity may not actually matter. Studios may use A.I. anyway because they are too nervous to miss the bandwagon.
There’s a scholarly term for this: institutional isomorphism. In a 1983 paper, the sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell confronted an apparent puzzle: Why do organizations in a field so often resemble one another in structure, practices and products, even when it might be advantageous to differentiate themselves? Mr. DiMaggio and Mr. Powell argued that when organizations are operating in an environment of uncertainty, especially one in which “technologies are poorly understood,” they look to see what other organizations are doing and copy them. The result of this mimicry is that over time, certain modes of operation become taken for granted as the correct and legitimate ones within an organization, even if they do little to advance its aims.’

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‘While contending with media companies that seem hellbent on deploying A.I., guilds and unions are also trying to educate audiences about the differences between human and A.I.-generated works, in the hope that they will place a higher value on human-created art and have an easier time finding it. For example, the Authors Guild has pioneered a “Human Authored” certification, which writers can obtain by attesting that their book has at most minimal use of A.I.’

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‘But Simon Rich, an author, screenwriter and playwright, isn’t so sure. “There will always be people who see art more as a form of communication and who make art and enjoy art because they crave that spiritual connection with another human soul,” he said — similar to the way that some people will pay a premium for free-range organic eggs or shoes that were handcrafted in Italy. Yet he questions how many of those people there are. Will they be sufficient to support even a midsize industry? Mr. Rich sees a possible future where what we now think of as human-made “mainstream art” — novels, TV, film, popular music — will become like ballet or opera: “It’s still beloved, but it really needs to rely on philanthropy to continue to exist.”’

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‘The A.I. industry claims that it wants to democratize creativity, but the real goal is dominance. It can seem inevitable that A.I. will rewrite the future of the arts — a natural consequence of the tools’ technical and economic momentum. But the impacts of technological change are always shaped by human action. If we believe and behave as though A.I. dominance is a foregone conclusion, we risk making it so. Instead, we should support the creative workers who are fighting for a different outcome — and have already landed a few punches.
The future of human creativity is inextricably linked to the future of creative labor. The sooner we recognize this, the better chance we have to preserve artists’ livelihoods — and human-made art itself.’

Read the article here.

A beautiful article, with many insightful conclusions.

Human-made art as the last endangered seal pup.

Perhaps a foundation can come to help. Save Human Art.

Philanthropy, as Mr. Rich mentioned.

Organic eggs, shoes made in Italy, a novel written by a real human being.

And let the computer do the screaming, and maybe do the mourning. I lost my beloved pet, but because of time constraints my ai is doing the mourning.

And the human certification might be handy on a first date.

The credit check is a thing of the past. Do you want to marry me, can I do a credit check? Answer the second first.

Now it is, do you want to marry me? I can afford real humans, do you have a Real Human Certificate?

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