Is it wrong to like something that AI made?

Even that question is loaded—and I really only ask it assuming that anyone reading this post likely came to the party with a strong opinion on the matter.

It’s a bit of a gut punch, though, for those of us that are attempting to adjust to a world of generative content where once nearly everything was human made. One finds themselves scrolling through a feed, clicking a link, or navigating to a video—and chuckling at a clever joke or enjoying the beautiful scene only to realize a moment later that it is not real. That thing was the output of an algorithm.

This is the whole crux, isn’t it?

We’re struggling with how to react to content honed by design, generated with purpose, and curated through thousands of positive interactions by other people before us. And most people have simply surrendered, shrugged and ignored the source. It’s funny. It’s cute. It’s interesting. Who cares if it was made by a machine.

They’re not wrong, of course. But there are those of us who stand here in on the edge of frustration trying to put our own work out into the world and find ourselves in competition with untiring bots who have the secret formula for scooping up human attention.

So we chuckle, sigh, and feel a bit guilty that on the surface we enjoyed that thing we were ourselves honed by eons of psychology and evolution to enjoy. How do we reconcile that we were entertained by AI when that is precisely the effect it was designed to evoke?

That’s the rub: I’m not here to spoil the fun. I am simply here to ask if maybe we shouldn’t shirk the experience so much as notice the gap.