The Authorship Line Conundrum
In the near future, almost everything we read, watch, or hear will have AI in its DNA. A novelist may use AI to brainstorm a subplot. A musician might feed raw riffs into a model for arrangement. A journalist could run interviews through AI for summary and structure. Sometimes AI’s role is obvious, other times it is buried in dozens of small, invisible assists.
If even a light touch of AI counts as “machine-made,” then the percentage of purely human works will collapse to almost nothing. Platforms could start labeling content based on how much AI was involved, creating thresholds for “human-created” status. But where do we draw the line?
At 50%?
10%?
Any use at all?
Draw it too low, and nearly all future art will wear the machine-made label, erasing a meaningful distinction. Draw it too high, and we risk ignoring the very real creative leaps AI provides, reducing transparency in the process. The public’s trust in what is “authentic” will hang on a definition that may never be universally agreed upon.
The conundrum
When nearly all creative work carries at least a trace of AI, do we keep redefining “human-created” to preserve the category, even if the definition drifts far from its original meaning, or do we hold the line and accept that purely human art may vanish from mainstream culture altogether?
