Did Video Kill the Radio Star, or Did AI Kill the Artist?

From Creators to Curators: The Legal Frontier

When we grant this pass to a machine, the consequences are more than just ethical, it’s structural. This economic shift is where the "death" feels most literal. The video era created jobs, such as directors, stylists, and choreographers. AI, by contrast, is a compressor. It doesn't necessarily delete the artist, but it shifts their role. It's moving artists from being creators to becoming curators. Entry-level roles are shrinking as tasks become automatable. Output expectations are skyrocketing. In an economy driven by speed, scale has become the ultimate weapon. The threat isn’t that AI will produce better art than you. It’s that it will produce faster, cheaper, and endless content, drowning out the human signal in a flood of synthetic noise. Unlike previous shifts, artists today are fighting back in the courtroom. We are currently in the middle of a massive legal "land grab" over training data. Can a machine use your life’s work to learn how to replace you? For now, the law sides with humanity. In the United States, copyright still requires "human authorship." A prompt alone doesn't make you an artist in the eyes of the law. This legal boundary reinforces a powerful cultural truth: creativity is still, for the moment, a protected human territory.

The New Luxury: Authenticity

History tells us that technology rarely kills art. It just changes what we value. Photography didn’t kill painting; it made the painter's unique perspective more valuable. Streaming didn’t kill music; it turned the "live experience" into a premium product. We are likely headed toward a tiered creative world. Mass-market content, the background music in elevators, and the stock photos in brochures will be automated. It will be fast, cheap, and disposable. Meanwhile, human-made art will become a luxury. We see this pattern in other parts of our lives. Things that used to be basic necessities often become luxuries once they become inaccessible. Homemaking became a luxury once a single income could no longer support a household. Gardening and fresh produce became premium experiences in the face of a surplus of processed, fast food. As efficiency becomes the default, the "slow" and "manual" versions of life gain a new kind of prestige. In the same way, we will most likely value human-made art more than ever after this shift, primarily because it represents effort, vulnerability, and struggle. In a world of digital perfection, the "flaw" becomes the feature, and in the world of music, the grit and edge take center stage.

The Final Question

Ultimately, the question isn’t whether AI will kill the artist. The question is how we, as an audience, will choose to spend our attention. If technology can provide instant access to every artistic endeavor, will audiences continue to value the work of those who dedicate significant time and effort to expressing human vulnerability? The answer to that question won’t just shape the future of the art market, but will define the future of our culture.