A Future Where Human Creativity Costs More
One day, it might cost more to listen to music made by humans.
I think something interesting might happen as AI gets better.
Right now we’re in a strange middle period where AI can produce images, music, writing and video that are… convincing enough. Good enough that most people can’t immediately tell what’s real and what isn’t. And the technology is improving fast.
Which means the internet will increasingly fill with things that look creative but weren’t created in the way we’ve traditionally understood creativity. Images that look like photographs but never existed. Songs performed by bands that never met. Articles written by someone who technically isn’t someone.
I’ve already started noticing a strange feeling when scrolling online.
Sometimes I see an image that looks impressive, but after a few seconds it feels a bit… hollow.
Like it was created instantly rather than discovered, crafted or struggled into existence, and once that thought appears, the image becomes much less interesting.
At first, this feels like abundance. Unlimited content, infinite creativity, a machine that never gets tired.
But abundance has a strange side effect.
Eventually, it makes things feel cheap, and when everything can be generated instantly, effort starts to matter again.
We’ve seen something like this before.
When digital music arrived, it was supposed to replace physical media entirely, and for a while it did.
Then something odd happened.
Vinyl records came back.
Not because they were more convenient. They are objectively worse in almost every practical way. They scratch, they warp, you have to get up and turn them over halfway through the album like some sort of Victorian.
But people liked them.
They liked the imperfections, the ritual and the sense that this was something tangible, something made and something that had passed through human hands.
I wonder if something similar will happen with creative work in the age of AI.
Could human-made creativity become a premium product?
You can imagine how this might evolve. Labels that say “Human Made” the way food labels say “Organic.” Platforms verifying that a song was written and performed by real musicians. Marketplaces where designers, photographers and illustrators prove their work wasn’t generated by a prompt.
Not as a rejection of AI necessarily, but as a different category.
Machine-made creativity for speed and scale. Human-made creativity for meaning and connection.
None of this is guaranteed. But history suggests humans have a habit of rediscovering the value of effort once convenience becomes the norm.
Which means the strange future AI might create is one where the most valuable creative work is the kind that machines didn’t make.
-Darren