Speaker 1: It's strange how fast everything changes when you're not paying attention.
One day, you're on top of things, feeling like you're
part of something that matters. The next you're watching it
all slip away, wondering when it started to go wrong.
I've always loved creating, telling stories, making videos, writing articles.
It's what got me into this business. I've been a
content creator for years, working for a digital media company
that until recently, felt like it valued creativity. I'd spent
hours crafting content that meant something to me, stories that
weren't just about clicks, but about connection. That's the reason
I got into this. The Internet was supposed to be
a place where creativity could thrive, where voices could be heard,
where people like me could take idea and make it
into something real. And for a while, it was my
videos we get decent traction, my articles, we get thoughtful comments.
I wasn't viral, but I had an audience. I felt
like I was doing something worthwhile. But lately things have
been different. It started slowly. At first, it was just
a few AI generated articles popping up here and there.
They were mostly filler content, top ten lists, quick news recaps,
nothing too impactful, just the tool to help with the workload,
or so they said. But then those pieces started doing numbers,
big numbers. Suddenly the content I'd spend days, sometimes weeks
working on was being outperformed by some thing that took
minutes to generate. I tried not to let it bother me.
After all, human creativity would always win out in the end,
right people could tell the difference between something made with
heart and something churned out for clicks. At least that's
what I used to tell myself. But then the shift
really started. The higher ups of the company, seeing how
well the AI content performed, began relying on it more
and more. It wasn't just the filler pieces anymore. We
were being asked to lean into the efficiency of AI tools.
Focus on the numbers, they said. And the numbers were good, great.
Even the articles were optimized for SEO, videos cut down
to the perfect length for social media, everything neatly packaged
to hit that sweet spot with the algorithm. It felt
like everything I valued about creating was being reduced to
a formula. Don't get me wrong. Technology has always played
a role in what we do editing, software, analytics, scheduling tools.
It's all part of the process. But this was different.
This wasn't just a tool to help me create, This
was a replacement. Slowly, without saying it outright, we were
becoming irrelevant. It didn't happen all at once. At first,
we were just streamlining, using AI to cut down on time.
But then the AI wasn't just helping. It was doing.
It was generating, and the worst part, it was winning.
The AI content was outperforming our work every single time.
I couldn't wrap my head around it. How could something
so hollow, so formulaic, be doing better than real content.
It wasn't that people didn't care about quality any more,
was it? Was? It all just about cliques and shares.
I tried not to panic. I kept telling myself that
there was still a place for human creativity, that people
would eventually get tired of the machine made stuff and
start craving something real again. But every day it felt
like I was fighting a losing battle. We had a
tool that let us check the performance of content on
the back end, metrics that measured against our own content,
earn external competitors content of similar types. It also let
us see who had helped in the creation of said content.
A list of the writers editors and producers, etc. This
helped us contact those who could help with creating an
effect or style if you're inspired by something they put out. However,
I was noticing AI labeled more and more in various
parts of people's credits. One morning, I opened the analytics dashboard,
excited to see if my latest piece was climbing the charts.
It was something I'd put real work into, an investigative
piece on the hidden costs of influencer culture. I'd spent
weeks gathering interviews, diving into data, writing, rewriting, editing. I
felt good about it. I thought it had a real
shot at connecting with people. But when I checked the stats,
my heart sank. Wasn't there buried drowned beneath a flood
of AI generated fluff. The top article ten life Hacks
you Didn't Know you needed entirely credited to AI. It
had over three hundred thousand views, thousands of shares, and
a comment section full of generic praise. Nothing about it
was groundbreaking, thoughtful, or even remotely creative. It was designed
for one purpose clicks. I scrolled further down the list,
looking for something anything, made by a real person, but
every single top performing post was either entirely AI generated
or heavily involved in the process. Listicles, how to guides,
even the short form videos all perfectly optimized, perfectly forgettable.
My piece, the one I'd poured myself into, was sitting
in some forgotten corner of the site, gathering dust. I
couldn't believe it. This couldn't be what people really wanted right.
I closed the dashboard and sat there staring at my screen,
my frustration boiling over my work. My actual, human created
work didn't seem to matter anymore. He felt like everything
I'd been doing was just filler, now, something to be
swept aside in favor of algorithm friendly content that lacked
any soul. I wasn't ready to give up, though not yet.
The next day I pitched a new idea in our
team meeting, something different, a documentary style series exploring the
way social media affects mental health, something that could dig deep,
really resonate with people. I thought, maybe if I could
offer something unique, something AI couldn't replicate, it would remind
them why human content still mattered. I was halfway through
my pitch when my boss Gareth cut me off. Sounds interesting,
he said, not looking up from his phone. But I
think we can have the AI put together something similar.
They've been doing really well with the shorter form videos
gets more engagement that way. I stared at him, feeling
like I'd just been punched in the gut. Yeah, but
I started trying to find the words to explain why
this was different, why this needed a human touch. Look, Liam,
he said, finally making eye contact. I get it. I
know you've got some great ideas, but right now we
need content that hits quick. The AI can do that,
and it does it faster. That's just where we are.
Just where we are. That phrase stuck in my head.
This wasn't just the one off. This was the new normal.
A I wasn't just a tool any more. It was
the priority I was no longer needed. I felt my
hands clench into fists under the table, but I forced
myself to stay calm. No point in making a scene.
But deep down I could feel the resentment growing. Everything
I had worked for, all the hours spent perfect in
my craft, seemed like it was being traded away for
the sake of efficiency. I left that meeting feeling like
I was on the verge of being phased out. If
AI could do the work faster, cheaper than pulling more engagement.
What was the point of having me here? The shift
became impossible to ignore. Each day I'd log in, hoping
to see some spark of hope that things were turning around.
But it was always the same story. The dashboard was
filled top to bottom with AI generated content, all perfectly
optimized to the algorithms every whim. No matter how hard
I worked on a piece, no matter how much of
myself I poured into it, it was getting buried. The
engagement numbers told the story. It wasn't just my work.
Human made content across the board was struggling. Comments were sparse,
likes were down, and shares had all but dried up. Meanwhile,
the AI posts were thriving, popping up at the top
of every feed like an unstoppable force. I watched as
my colleagues, the one who used to care about making
something meaningful, started to adapt. One by one, they gave in,
They stopped fighting it. They leaned into the AI tools,
using them to churn out faster, more frequent content. Sure
it lacked depth, but it didn't matter. It performed, and
in the end, that's all that anyone seemed to care about.
The office slack chat, once filled with discussions about creative
ideas and new projects, was now a graveyard of links
to AI pieces. The tone had shifted completely. What used
to be passion was now reduced to efficiency. How fast
can we get this out? Replaced what message are we
trying to say? As the core concern. The team meetings
became shorter, more automated, with the AI now handling most
of the data analysis and content suggestions, essentially feeding itself
to grow and grow. More of my colleagues were phased out, quietly,
replaced by endless streams of machine made work, and the
worst part, no one seemed to notice or care. One afternoon,
I came across a viral video on our company's platform.
It had everything, millions of views, countless shares, a comment
section full of people raving about how great it was.
At first glance, it was the kind of work I
would have been proud of, a hot button topic, beautifully shot,
seamlessly edited, with a catchy soundtrack, and a story that
hit all the right beats. But then I saw the
tag AI generated. I clicked on the video, not sure
what I expected. Maybe it was just the visuals that
AI assisted. Maybe the idea had come from a human,
But as I watched, it became painfully clear that this
entire thing, from concept to execution, was machine made. It
was flawless, technically flawless. Every frame was polished, every shot
meticulously composed. But there was something missing, something I couldn't
put into words right away, and then it hit me.
It had no heart. It was the kind of video
that was designed to grab attention, to hit the algorithm's
sweet spot, but it wasn't about anything, not really. It
was just noise, empty words, barely scratching the surface of
the topic it betrayed. Yet it was viral, racking up views,
being shared all over social media, outperforming everything we'd put
out that week. I scrolled through the comments, expecting to
see at least a few people mentioning how robotic it felt,
how it lacked any emotional depth, But there was nothing
like that, just waves of praise people couldn't get enough.
I sat there, staring at the screen, feeling like the
wind had been knocked out of me. Did it even
matter if content was made by a person anymore? Did
anyone care about storytelling, about meaning, about connection? Or was
it all just about numbers, views, clicks. As the week's
dragged on, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was
deeply wrong. It wasn't just that AI content was out
performing human creators. It felt like the entire Internet was
starting to lose its humanity. The more I engaged, the
more hollow everything seemed. Even the creators I used to
admire were churning out content that felt eerily similar, robotic,
like the soul had been drained from their work. Then
I started noticing something stranger the interactions. I was scrolling
through the comments on a popular creator's new post, a
creator I had followed for years. At first glance, the
comments were positive, typical Internet stuff, But as I looked closer,
something didn't sit right. The comments, though supportive, were all
oddly generic things like great work, keep it up, or
love this video. But none of them really said anything,
no specifics, no real engagement with the content. I clicked
on the profiles of some of the commenters just out
of curiosity. Most of them had barely any activity, just
a few basic posts, maybe a profile picture, but no substance.
It was as if they'd been created solely to leave
those bland noncommittal comments. It was happening everywhere, on videos, articles,
social media posts. Comments were flowing in, but they were
all so shallow, so service level. Even the creators I've
followed for years were getting the same kind of responses,
as if the people leaving comments weren't people at all.
The more thought about it, the more I've realized that
I wasn't just questioning the comments, I was questioning the
creators themselves. Their content started to feel less authentic too,
like they were just going through the motions, hitting all
the right algorithmic beats without really saying anything meaningful. I
started to wonder were they even real anymore? Had they
given up on being themselves let AI take over their
creative process, or worse, were they using AI generator personas
to maintain their online presence. I couldn't be sure, But
the deeper I looked, the more unsettling it became. The
line between human and AI was blurring, and I could
barely tell the difference anymore. That when it hit me,
what was the point of any of this? What was
the point of creating, of pouring your soul into something
if no one could even tell whether it was made
by a real person or a machine, and worse, did
anyone even care. I had spent years believing in the
power of storytelling, of human expression. I thought people wanted
something real, something with heart. But every day the evidence
pointed in the opposite direction. People were engaging with the
algorithm driven content not because it was meaningful, but because
it was efficient. It was fast, easy to consume, and
perfectly optimize for the dopamine hits they craved. It was
like human creativity was being replaced piece by piece with
a well oiled machine, and I was caught in the middle,
shouting into the wind, trying to convince people that we
still matter, that I still mattered, But the numbers told
a different story. I wasn't ready to give up, though
not yet. There was still a part of me that
believed in the power of human creativity, that believed people
still wanted something real, even if they didn't know it yet.
I had to hold on to that or I'd lose
myself completely. That's when I decided to make my stand.
It wasn't enough to just make something good anymore. I
had to make something that mattered, something that felt alive.
The only way to fight back against this tidal wave
of AI driven content was to remind people what real
human creation looked like, to draw the real people of
the Internet back to the surface. So I came up
with my plan. Was going to create a video, one
so raw, so undeniably human, that it couldn't be ignored,
something that AI could never replicate, something filled with emotion, imperfections,
and vulnerability. I wanted to reach out through the screen
and grab people, make them feel something real, something that
no amount of optimization or algorithmic tweaking could ever produce.
The concept was simple, but it had to be deeply
personal about me, about all of us. The video would
be an open letter to the people of the Internet.
I wanted to talk about everything I've been feeling, or
the fear, the frustration, the sense of isolation that had
been building up inside me. I talk about the state
of the Internet, about how it felt like we were
losing the very thing that made it special, the people,
the real people. I wanted to tell a story, not
a polished, perfect story, but a messy, flawed one, the
kind of story that felt like a conversation. I wasn't
going to hide behind sleek edits or fancy effects. I
was going to sit down, turn the camera on, and
speak honestly from the heart. The rough edges, the pauses,
the rawness, it was all part of the point. It
had to feel real. It had to remind people that
the Internet wasn't just a machine, that there were real
humans still behind the screen. But it wasn't just going
to be a rant. I wanted the video to be
a call to arms, a challenge to everyone watching. I
wanted to bring the real people of the Internet back together,
to make them see that they weren't alone, that they
didn't have to settle for lifeless, soulless content, for shallow
interactions with bots pretending to be humans. I wanted to
make people question what they'd been accepting as normal. The
video hit all the notes I wanted to cover, addressing
everything that had happened so far with AI creeping into
every crevice of creativity, the impact it was having not
just some people like me, but the consumers of this
new wave of hollow media. And finally, I called to
action to bring back real, thought provoking media. I knew
it was a long shot that the Internet was a vast,
faceless place, and the odds that my video would reach
anyone who actually cared were slim, but I had to try.
If I could reach even a few people, remind them
that they were still here, maybe, just maybe it could
start something. Days I worked on it, I scripted out
parts of it, but left space for improvisation, for my
real emotions that come through in the moment. I recorded
in long takes, no fancy cuts or edits. It was
just me sitting in front of my camera, speaking my truth.
There were moments where my voice cracked, moments where I
stumbled over my words, but I left them all in.
Those imperfections were part of the point. It had to
feel real, because it was real. By the time I
finished editing, I felt drained, but strangely hopeful. This was it.
This was my last stand. If this didn't work, if
this didn't reach people, then maybe the Internet really was
lost to the machines. I uploaded the video, heart pounding
in my chest, and hit publish. Now all I could
do was wait. I sat there, refreshing the page over
and over. At first, I thought it just needed time
to gain traction. I personally didn't have enough follows for
videos to hit the ground running. But the more I refreshed,
the more that hollow feeling grew in my chest. The
numbers didn't move. A few views trickled in ten, maybe twenty,
but that was it, barely a blip. I knew what
the algorithm favored, I knew how it buried content that
didn't meet its formula. But I convinced myself that this
time it would be different, that people would see it
and its divergent nature would grab people's attention. But the
algorithm was stronger than that. My video was already sinking.
I clicked over to the trending page and felt my
stomach drop. It was full of the same garbage, AI
headlines and viral clips, all designed to keep people mindlessly
scrolling quick dopamine hits. Everything I fought against in my
video was thriving, while my own work was nowhere to
be seen. I tried to push it further. Maybe social
media would help. I posted everywhere I could think of, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
each time with a caption explaining how important it was,
why people needed to watch it. But it barely made
a dent. My posts got swallowed up, drowned beneath the
wave of trending memes, auto generated posts and viral challenges.
I watched as the notifications I hoped would flood in
turned into a slow trickle of likes, all from the
same handful of people who had been with me from
the start. The more I watched, the more it felt
like everything I believed in was slipping through my fingers.
I'd spent days, weeks working on this video, hoping it
would break through the noise, but it was like no
one even noticed, no one cared. The video wasn't bad.
I knew it wasn't. It was everything I'd set out
to make, real, human, imperfect, but in a world where
the algorithm ruled, it wasn't what people wanted. All that work,
all that effort, and for my heart sank as I
realized what was happening and my worst fears were being confirmed.
People didn't care. I stopped refreshing the page after a while.
There was no point. My video was gone, buried beneath
the noise, and it felt like a piece of me
had gone with it. That when the paranoia started to
creep in. I scrolled through my feed, looking at the posts,
the comments, the endless waves of content, and it all
started to feel wrong, hollow, like there was no one
behind the screen anymore. Even the comments on my own
posts felt off generic, lifeless, like they'd been written by
an algorithm just to fill space. People saying things like
great video or no work, but there was no depth
to it, no real engagement. I checked my video to
double check the comments there, and though there were few,
it was the same thing. Some comments saying something completely
irrelevant like this recipe was amazing, mismatched generic responses that
would have been drowned out in a booming video that
stuck out so oddly. Here I clicked through the profiles
of some of the people who had commented, it was
the same story. Empty accounts, barely any content, just a
few posts here and there. It felt like they weren't
real people, just bot designed to simulate interaction. Was anyone
real anymore? The more I scrolled, the worse it got.
Everything felt automated, from the posts to the comments to
the interactions. Even the email I received started to feel suspicious,
like they were being written by AI programs designed to
sound human, but missing the little nuances that made conversations real.
I tried to tell myself I was overreacting, that it
was just my imagination running wild, but deep down I
knew something was wrong. It was like the Internet had
become fully automated and the people I used to know
were gone. I started to wonder if there were any
real humans left on the other side of the screen,
or if they had all given up just like I had.
The email came on a Friday morning, a kind of
email that looks harmless at first glance, but you know,
the moment you click it, everything changes. Subject line upcoming
company try transition AI generated content strategy. I opened it
with a sinking feeling. The message was brief, sterile. The
company was transitioning to a fully AI generated content model.
No more hybrid system, no more human creators. All content
would be produced by AI from here on out. They
framed it like a victory efficiency, cost cutting, engagement metrix skyrocketing.
They didn't even try to soften the blow. The last
paragraph got right to the point. In light of these changes,
we will be reducing our staff. Unfortunately, this means that
we will no longer require your services as a content creator.
Your contributions have been invaluable. I sat there staring at
the words, feeling the ground drop out from beneath me.
It wasn't just my job, it was everything I knew
this day might come, but I convinced myself it was
still years away that people would eventually push back, demand
something more than just endless streams of machine make content.
But I was wrong. The machines had won. Everyone I
knew from the company had gotten the same email, Every creator,
every writer. They were all being let go. All that
was left were a handful of supervisors to manage the output.
No more human voices, just AI churning out endless streams
of content designed to feed the algorithm. I closed the
email and sat in silence my work. My voice was
no longer needed. I spent my last few days at
the company in a day's The office, once buzzing with
the ideas and creativity, was now eerily quiet. Most of
the staff had already packed up and left, and the
few who remained were just biding their time, waiting for
the inevitable. I tried to keep working, to push through
the last few tasks before my account was deactivated, but
it felt pointless. Every time I uploaded something, I knew
it didn't matter. No one was going to see it.
It would be buried under the mountain of generic clickbait
content flooding the site. I started looking round at other platforms,
hoping to find some glimmer of hope, some corner of
the Internet where human creators still had a place. But
it was the same story. Everywhere where I looked, Every
major platform was saturated with these kinds of posts. The
places that once celebrated human creativity, Platforms that had been
built on the idea of individuals sharing their voices were
now nothing more than echo chambers. Videos, articles, podcasts, social
media posts. Everything was generated by the same algorithms, perfectly
optimized for engagement, were completely devoid of soul. I found
a video something that seemed interesting at first, a piece
that looked like it might have been made by a
human desperate to connect. I clicked on it, and as
I watched, I felt that faint glimmer of hope. Maybe
this was it, maybe I'd found a corner of the
Internet that hadn't been taken over. But as I scrolled
down to the comment section, my heart sang. It was
the same story, endless lines of empty, robotic responses. It
was like a chorus of bots, each one repeating the
same hollow praise. I tried to leave my own comment,
something thoughtful, something real, but As soon as I hit post,
it felt like my words had been swallowed up, lost
in the noise. There was no response, no engagement. My
comment was just another drop in the ocean of meaningless interaction.
I sat back in my chair, the weight of it
all crashing down on me. This was it. There was
no place left for human expression online. My voice and
the voices of every creator like me had been drowned
out by the endless churn of generated content. We didn't
matter any more. I stared at the screen, my last
comment still sitting there on read ignored. I wasn't even
sure if any one would ever see it. The Internet
was dead.