Set off the fireworks – or send up the drones – it’s our semiquincentennial! 

Or, in simpler terms, it’s the 250th anniversary of the United States of America’s founding. And while it’s natural to think we are living in “unprecedented times,” we might have more in common with our forebears than meets the eye. Looking at the past can help anticipate how consumers, creators, and companies may respond to technologies that feel uniquely modern.

It’s astonishing to consider just how much has changed in a quarter of a millennium, especially when it comes to innovation. Back when the American experiment began in 1776, the hot technology of the day was something called the spinning jenny, a new form of textile spindle. The genius of the spinning jenny allowed up to 120 spools of thread to be spun simultaneously, where its predecessors could spin just one at a time.

While this marked an enormous leap in productivity and efficiency, one that helped usher in a new era of mechanized textile fabrication, it wasn’t universally celebrated. Up until that point, spinning had been done by independent workers, who acutely felt the threat this new technology posed to their livelihoods.

Some of these disgruntled workers went so far as to break into the home of the spinning jenny’s inventor and sabotage his machinery, and their resentment eventually inspired a movement of so-called Luddites, anti-tech agitators protesting the labor displacement and cheapening of handicraft brought on by such inventions.

The New Machine Age

Fast forward to the present day, and nearly everything about our world would be unrecognizable to America’s founders. But there is one aspect of our current situation that might feel strangely familiar. Once again, we find ourselves reckoning with a technology that promises extraordinary productivity while threatening established ways of working. This time, generative artificial intelligence, or genAI, is our modern-day spinning jenny.

GenAI, among other things, has the capacity to produce creative content across various media, from music to video to the written word, at a fraction of the cost and speed of human-made work. Just like the thread from the spinning jenny, the quality might not be as good as when it’s handcrafted, but it’s good enough that the sheer volume of the output makes it a valuable commodity. And just like the textile artisans of the past were distraught to be undercut by a new mechanized competitor in their field, the dawn of genAI has professionals in the creative arts on edge.

Whether AI ultimately augments human creativity or replaces much of it remains an open question. What is already clear, however, is that it has dramatically lowered the cost of producing passable creative work, fundamentally changing the economics of content creation.

Mass Production, Modernized

As early as a decade ago, keen observers started to notice something odd going on with one of the most popular music apps on the planet. Spotify had begun introducing stock tracks into its playlists and recommendations. These anonymously manufactured songs weren’t identified as such, and many were credited to fabricated “ghost artists.”

Now that genAI has entered the scene, ghost artists often have no warm-blooded creator whatsoever behind the instruments, microphone, or mixing board. And it’s not just music. Algorithms are constantly improving their outputs across text, audio, and visuals, meaning “ghost” content may spread throughout a much wider variety of media platforms sooner than we think.

The economics become even more consequential. Platforms are incentivized to favor AI-generated content because it is dramatically cheaper to produce and license. Films, albums, podcasts, books, articles, and other works created for pennies can also be distributed for pennies, lowering costs while expanding available inventory. And the casual consumer, who doesn’t care to research a creator’s backstory, might develop a real affinity for that work, unaware that it’s the product of a machine, or in the contemporary case, an algorithm.

This year, IP giants like Sony and Disney (who, it should be noted, have a longstanding and extensive partnership), quietly pulled titles from various digital libraries. That doesn’t mean just removing access for streaming subscribers, which happens regularly. This time they actually removed digital copies of films and episodes from the libraries of customers who had purchased them individually.

The reasons cited were unsurprising, namely expired and restructured licensing agreements. After public backlash, representatives expressed contrition and pledged to restore purchases where possible. But the episode exposed something larger: the fragility of cloud-based digital ownership.

Put those pieces together and a possible future begins to emerge. As audiences become more accustomed to AI-generated content, platforms have every financial incentive to recommend inexpensive artificial creators over more costly human ones. It won’t happen overnight, but recommendation algorithms may increasingly favor AI-generated content while licensed human-created works become harder to find. Consumers may not always notice the difference.

The same dynamic is already emerging in countless other industries, wherever AI can produce work that is “good enough” at dramatically lower cost.

Competing on Authenticity

Not all is lost. As consumers, we can interrogate the subscriptions and services we rely on to access our content. We can value authenticity over mere utility, opt for physical media that won’t vanish without notice, and pursue in-person experiences where possible, which in a media landscape overrun with ghosts may become an increasingly sought-after luxury.

As companies, we can decide to label content and products that are predominantly AI-generated, giving customers the conscious choice of whether to support a human creator and earning their trust in the process. Whether operating in media, retail, hospitality, or beyond, organizations can choose and own their lane, whether that means craft and quality with a human touch or AI-powered convenience and scale. Both have their merits, and both will require distinct strategic playbooks to remain competitive.

As AI makes passable content abundant, authenticity becomes scarcer and therefore more valuable. There will still be a market for human creators for decades to come, albeit a progressively more constricted one. 

Just like an expertly handmade garment commands a premium to this day, even 250 years after the craft took its first big step toward mechanization, so too will human-made works and products at their best continue to be valued, and valuable. But in the same way a knitter would need to be exceptionally talented and hardworking to support themselves and build a business nowadays, creators will need to fight harder than ever for their piece of the pie.

These imperfect parallels remind us not to forget our past, and bring to mind the famous adage: History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Those words are commonly attributed to the great American wit Mark Twain, a lover of technology himself and a trenchant chronicler of the nation’s history, but there is scant evidence he ever uttered that phrase. For all we know, it was written by AI.