Generative algorithms have the ability to create new things, as opposed to simply analyzing existing things, which AI has traditionally been designed to do. This means that it’s always possible to have a meaningful new conversation with ChatGPT or get an inventive new scene out of Midjourney. By tapping into the imagination of these AIs, creative communities on the internet are laying the groundwork for elaborate fictional universes that will be accessible to a global audience. This has led to a great deal of tension, as journalists, policy-makers, and political activists have grown wary of the potential problems that might arise from an environment that is unmoored from an objective reality.

Nor can AI replicate every single facet of human ingenuity—it’s largely constrained by the data it was trained with. Thus, AI is not an exclusive competitor to human artists but something different. A better way to think about it is as a new medium, which one can choose to use, much like the situation artists found themselves in with the introduction of film photography in the nineteenth century and digital photography in the twentieth.

AI is a product of human ingenuity; thus, any AI necessarily carries with it some of the humanity that underpins creativity.

Does all of this social activity around AI tell us something about why it has become such a phenomenon on the internet? A common theme emerges in the digital communion between people and machines. The joy that comes from the shared experience of creating with others, be they real or artificial, is elevating that communion to something resembling McLuhan’s original vision for the internet.

It is not the existential risk we might think it is. It is an extension of who we are. It is indeed very good.