Rosy Lett is a 22-year-old author. She wants to be a voice “for a new generation.” Rosy’s debut novel is called New Horizon, and you can read it on Mofibo.
Wait, rewind. No, Rosy is neither an author nor a “she.” It’s an algorithm. An AI. A piece of technology with no interest in the young generation and no experiences of being young. Rosy is a concept created by the people behind Mofibo.
It is surprising that Mofibo has chosen not to make it clear to the average user that the book was written by AI. Instead, they call it “an experiment in creative writing.” Judging by the reviews, it’s also a really bad book. But nonetheless, it is a sign of where we are headed—toward a world where AI will compete with humans in creative fields that we once thought were exclusively ours.
But are we actually okay with a world where books, music, art, poetry, design, and architecture are created by artificial intelligence? In a time when digital developments are reshaping how we produce and consume culture, we face some important questions.
Is reading a book written by AI just as fulfilling as reading one written by a human? Does AI-generated music provide the same experience as human-created music if you can’t tell the difference? Can a piece of art created by a mechanical AI evoke the same emotions as one created by a flesh-and-blood artist?
Digital services that offer cultural products like music, literature, and film already benefit greatly from using AI to analyze trends and user preferences, strategically commissioning and planning content based on those insights. The next step is to skip the inconvenient, slow, and costly human process altogether and let AI generate the content itself—fast. This way, user interests and needs can be met almost instantly. But what consequences might this shift have for cultural life?
For musicians on platforms like Spotify, competition is already fierce. Many struggle to receive a fair share of the revenue their music generates. But now, AI-generated music—created in minutes with no production costs beyond server power—is emerging. No artists need to be paid. And when Spotify serves you music that sounds exactly like what you already enjoy on your run, you likely won’t even notice the difference.
Bands like Jet Fuel & Ginger Ales and Awake Past 3 are just some of the Spotify acts that Reddit users have long suspected of being AI-generated. We don’t know for sure, because Spotify is not transparent about it. AI music is not part of the traditional systems where artists get paid for streams. That makes it a highly profitable business for streaming services to push AI-generated music. But it’s obvious that this approach could push human artists even further away from the financial and cultural space they are already struggling to maintain.
So when streaming services produce AI-generated content, they don’t have an artist to pay. Or do they? One of the most pressing ethical issues surrounding AI-generated art is the use of training data. AI models are often trained on human-created works without the creators’ consent. This means that AI repurposes and reinterprets music, books, and other creative works without credit—or payment—returning to the original artists. This creates what could be called a form of copyright laundering, where artists’ work is used without respect for their rights.
So how do we ensure that human-created cultural products still have a place in the future? Maybe we need to revisit our definitions.
What is art, really? It can be many things, but it is undoubtedly a manifestation of human thought, emotion, and experience. Art emerges from human reflections on life’s complexities and our ability to create meaning out of chaos. In particular, human fallibility is a crucial inspiration—whether in music, painting, or any other art form.
Can we even call something art if it is created by AI, which has no understanding of what it means to be human? AI models are programmed to mimic humans and reinterpret existing works based on vast amounts of data. But algorithms do not understand human life and cannot create anything truly new from genuine experience—they can only recycle and remix what humans have already made.
When we hand over art to machines, we lose more than just unique works. We lose the connection to the human experiences behind them. Music and literature created by humans are often deeply rooted in personal experiences and emotions. They originate from specific cultural contexts, societal movements, and snapshots of time. A large part of our cultural experience is the feeling of shared humanity—the ability to empathize with the painter who survived the Holocaust, to relate to the musician with a broken heart. AI has experienced nothing at all.
As algorithms begin to dominate, we risk reducing creative works to an ultra-processed version of culture—one that satisfies our immediate cravings but never gives us anything truly nourishing to chew on.
It is so easy to generate AI-created cultural products. Anyone can do it. But this means we are heading into a world where we will drown in a tsunami of content—tailored to algorithms but devoid of genuine creativity. Devoid of humanity.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. If we insist on knowing when something is AI-generated so we can opt out, and when something is human-made so we can opt in, things might change. Human-created culture will cost more. But if we choose AI-generated culture, the price we ultimately pay may be an irretrievable loss of what it means to be human.
The article was first posted on elektronista.dk
