By Michael-Patrick Moroney
Under a canopy on a sweltering summer night in upstate New York, a young city singer stood on a makeshift stage. Without show-business production or auto-tuned perfectionism, she breathed new life into late-1930s and early-1940s antifascist cabaret songs. It wasn't virtuosity that attracted the crowd; it was the bare humanity, blemishes, and bracing honesty that entranced them. Why did this humble performance taste so deeply magical in the AI-obsessed era?
As an artist, I've always explored music - and the technology making it happen - both as a doorway and sign of how innovation comes and impacts our broader culture. We've journeyed from recording sound, radio, tv, electric guitars, synthesizers, and MIDI to digital audio, streaming, and now artificial intelligence, and each wave reshaping our definition of artistic authenticity. This process isn't specific to music, however. It's true of all the creative arts, struggling in their own manner with the new revolutionary force of AI.
We've grown to demand perfectly crafted, infinitely optimized AI-driven entertainment - algorithmically generated music, generatively written podcasts, digitally maximized drama for maximum emotional impact, as ew’ve become accustomed to imagery created with perfect CGI over the last 25+ years. But although this “content” may be algorithmically perfect, we increasingly find these experiences not connecting with us at all. AI's perfectionization ironically highlights its most essential failing: the irreplaceable warmth of human imperfection.
Oliver Anthony's popular live video, "Rich Men North of Richmond," forcefully argues the point in song. Its raw emotion and authenticity, simplified to a resonator guitar and vocals by Anthony, propelled it to record-breaking levels. As The New Yorker explained, "a guy in the woods pouring his heart over his guitar is real." The tune resonated so well because it delivered something AI can't: human vulnerability and authenticity.
Beyond music, we see this shift in other forms of art. Podcasts have seen AI's influence too, with scripted, computer-read episodes ruling the streaming channels. Ive worked with the technology and see the potential - for sure - but I can’t listen to it. So, listeners increasingly actively seek unedited, chatty podcasts in which actual humans share unscripted stories with pauses, laughter, and genuine emotion. Similarly, live drama and play performances provide a sense of real risk and uncertainty: actors literally laboring through their words and emotions on stage build up an irreproducible tension out of reach for digital or AI-driven performances.
Humans work without a wire.
Film and television also show the dynamic. CGI action sequences can be incredible, but they lack the unmediated thrill of watching an actor do a deadly stunt. The physical danger being taken - and the reader's implicit knowledge that it is being taken - creates tension, suspense, and thrill that CGI can't compete with. Like watching a sport in which an athlete competes for victory in real-time, watching actors push themselves physically and emotionally creates a sense of shared human vulnerability.
The rise of "AI slop," low-quality, rapidly churned-out content optimized purely for algorithms, accelerates this shift. Platforms saturated with superficial articles, robotic podcasts, and synthetic personalities provoke audiences to rediscover their appreciation for authentic, amateurish expression. Dr. Kate Darling from MIT emphasizes, "People naturally crave authenticity. As AI saturates our experiences, genuine human connection only becomes more valuable." Stanford's Fei-Fei Li argues similarly, "AI’s goal must be to amplify - not replace - human creativity and empathy."
In addition, as more-gigantic platforms like Meta awkwardly integrate AI into everyday life - often reducing rich conversation to shallow chatbot-like interactions - users become increasingly alienated rather than connected. Redditors' conversations highlight concerns that AI-generated content would drown out human touch unless individuals proactively work to uphold creative veracity and genuine storytelling.
Ironically, because AI-created content is so prevalent, the authenticity is that much more effective. Performances, podcasts, films, and plays that unashamedly bare their humanity - replete with mistakes, hesitation, and emotional exposure - will ring a truer chord.
Authenticity is becoming a luxury item. Raw performances and unedited storytelling are more valuable just because they possess something that AI lacks: genuine imperfection and human danger. The future may very well see creators intentionally ramping up their humanness to project their authenticity in contrast to AI.
In sweat and summer heat, in a canvas tent that night, the young singer was not merely performing antifascist songs of the past. Spontaneously, she was becoming a symbol of a cultural shift to come - a shift toward the loving of the amateur, the flawed, the risky, and the unapologetically actual.