AS INDUSTRIES INTEGRATE artificial intelligence (AI) systems into our everyday lives, our use of it is rapidly increasing, whether we’re aware of it or not.

From our phones to commercial ads and customer service platforms, all of us are interacting with AI in some shape or form.

At their inception, the emergence of large-language models (LLMs) and generative AI that can produce audio and visual content were met with scepticism.

In its infancy, AI-generated music was juvenile, audibly synthetic – a poor imitation. AI-generated imagery was much the same; crude, and even to an untrained eye, could be easily identified as inauthentic – people depicted with warped irises and extra digits. LLMs were fine for quickly drafting passible, if boilerplate, emails – not for creating compelling stories.

But the more these systems have been fed a broader range of human content and the more resources that are spent bolstering the tech, the more refined their outputs have become.

What does that mean for human creativity?

For those discerning enough to still spot AI-generated content, there remain obvious markers – hyper-perfect studio lighting, dolly shots and lens quality in an unnatural context, trite lyrics comprised largely of commonly used tropes in a million-dollar-studio-quality vocal track with nursery-rhyme rhythm.

But for a growing number of people, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the difference between the artistic outputs of a human and a machine.

AI-generated content has flooded the creative industry. Since 2022 the AI-art market has expanded to an estimated value of $0.62 billion, with projections that it could be worth $2.51 billion by 2029. An estimated 35% of fine art auctions globally now include AI created works.

AI images are being generated at an approximate rate of 34 million per day – that’s almost 400 images a........

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