New Market for Authenticity in the Age of AI
Swipe through any of the most popular social media platforms and you will be met with a plethora of hauntingly realistic AI pictures, videos, and even voiceovers. You will see everything from Taylor Swift flying above NYC as a superhero to Spongebob singing an emotional rendition of “Bring Me To Life.” For just a moment, they’ll trick you into believing you’re watching and hearing actual humans or characters doing actual things in actual places. But then your brain will recognize that, while almost life-like, there’s something just not right about the images on your screen.
These images have all the markers of reality, but most people have an intuitive sense that lets us know we are being tricked. This feeling is called “the uncanny valley,” a phenomenon whereby even when we view hyper-realistic digitally rendered images, our brain subliminally knows they’re fake. Hollywood CGI and video game studios have been unsuccessfully attempting to override this sense for decades. But with the advent of AI technology, can they finally do it? Could they replicate real images and voices so expertly that we can’t tell the difference between replica and reality?
Artificial intelligence is one of the most important technologies history has ever seen, and we’re only a few years into it being widely available. Naturally, people are excited about the new, useful, and entertaining things it can accomplish. But as the technology becomes more sophisticated, people across numerous industries are suddenly apprehensive about its darker flipside. Artists of all mediums—from music to design to writing to filmmaking to acting—have been wringing their hands in anticipation of their potential displacement due to AI technology.
In my own industry of TV and film acting, there was a union strike largely focused on protections from AI replacing actors or studios using technology to replicate actors and use them for multiple scenes while only paying them for a single day of work. Some regulations were put in place for now, but the fear that “it’s only a matter of time” persists. I admit, I have felt trepidation that the craft I have been honing and living off of for a decade and a half will disappear in favor of a digital rendering, that not just my face and likeness will be replaced, but also my skill, experience, and dedication to my craft. But before I get too worried, I remember that feeling I get when viewing AI art, that sense that subtly tells me, “This isn’t real.”
I’ve tried to put my finger on what it is about AI art that produces this reaction, what tips me off that these life-like images and voices aren’t “real.” I pondered this question until an old favorite song recently came across my speakers. It was “Hold Me Jesus” by the beloved late CCM artist Rich Mullins. In both the lyrics and performance of this beautiful song, there is an unmistakable humanness. His voice isn’t finely tuned. It breaks and swells, occasionally swerving off-tune. The result is a flawed but moving human performance. The lyrics aren’t tight and tidy. They draw the listener into a stream of consciousness, a tour of images that weaves a beautiful tapestry of one man’s conversation with God. The song is marked with a signature of human imperfection and authenticity, which is something more real than AI could ever emulate.
This unreproducible human authenticity is evident in almost all of the greatest art we encounter, whether in the masterfully imperfect strokes of Caravaggio’s paintings, the rasp and wail of Billie Holiday’s voice, the unpredictability of a Charles Dickens plot, the visceral depth of Langston Hughes’s poetry, or the emotional variance of Al Pacino’s performances. When humans, made in the likeness of God, create well, an unmistakable and beautiful chaos emerges from our lived experiences, distinctive personalities, conglomeration of influences, and unique perspectives—all of which culminate into something that is unmistakably human. This kind of artwork is what we truly desire. We crave authentic human art as a means of understanding ourselves, articulating reality, deriving comfort and catharsis, and ultimately finding God, something AI-rendered art cannot and never will be able to offer.
With AI-created art flooding our screens, fear is a natural response. But the barrage of digitally created art also stirs up a demand in the market for the “real.” In the last decade, as art has become more commodified, digitized, airbrushed, autotuned, and mass produced due to advancing technologies, we’ve seen a steady increase in a desire for substantive and meaningful creation away from things that feel “fake.” Terms like “NPC” (non-playable character), “psyop,” and “bot,” all of which reference behavior that is seen as inauthentic and programmed, have been grafted into the modern vernacular and are commonly used as internet insults. Vinyl records had what industry experts call a “revival” in 2022, outselling CDs for the first time since 1987. Some of the most successful recent films, like Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer, were shot on film, even though digital cameras are far cheaper and easier to use.
People want real art. Art with dirt beneath its fingernails. Art that comes from the heart and mind of another human and facilitates a communal experience of love, joy, grief, hope, and worship. Of course, as AI technology becomes more sophisticated, we will continue to see it take over the shallower media we consume. But I think it will ultimately overplay its hand. While it might be able to produce more entertainment more cheaply, it can never truly offer what humans desire from art: authenticity.
When it comes to the question of whether AI art will replace human-made art, the answer is yes—but only the shallow, surface-level junk food art that has already been in production for a century. Humans alone have the power to create art that touches the soul. If you are an artist who worries about becoming irrelevant in the wake of AI technologies, fear not. There is a renewed demand for quality, deep, authentic, imperfect art that speaks to something true about the human experience. AI art will only ever be able to replace bad art, which means there is a new and exciting demand for a renaissance of good, true, and beautiful art.
