I remember watching TV as a kid on a 12-inch screen, with a dial and bunny ears perched on top. We only had a couple of channels, one of which played Saturday morning cartoons. We had a landline, and the dial-up sound still haunts my dreams. Sometimes I hear, “You’ve got mail,” in my head, in that same computerized voice.
Twenty-five years ago, it was clear: technology was accelerating fast. But as a six or seven-year-old, I didn’t understand what that meant. Society still had remnants of the past. What comes to mind is my mother’s cassette collection and the corded phone. It was years after DVDs became popular before my family finally got a player. We were still rocking VHS well into my high school years. I started high school in 2008, and yes, we still had a VCR.
In the past few years, though, technology hasn’t just grown, it has evolved into something beyond our comprehension. With AI infiltrating nearly every corner of life, our long-held fears about machines replacing us feels more real than ever.
It’s not quite The Terminator, a film about a time-traveling robot assassin. However, it’s unsettling in its own way. At a time when we should be more connected than ever, AI seems to be widening the distance between us and reality.
Take the rise of ChatGPT: students across the country are using it to write entire essays, even at Ivy League institutions. Emails, books, paintings, voiceovers and more. AI is doing it all. Even romantic relationships are being simulated through AI companionship apps.
You can now write code with AI. Generate an animated short. Or create AI models.
Vogue’s recent use of AI-generated models struck a chord. Modeling has long drawn criticism for perpetuating impossible beauty standards and unrealistic body ideals. Now, we’re not even working with real people. The implications go beyond aesthetics. The use of AI models replaces working professionals, as do AI-generated writing, voices, or code replace artists, actors, and programmers.
And that’s the core problem: we’ve given ourselves permission to hide behind a screen. First it was through dating apps, social media, and video games. Now, we’ve allowed AI to infiltrate the very things that make us human.
What was once a tool, like a tractor replacing the horse-drawn plow, has become an autonomous machine dragging us somewhere we neither understand nor control. We let it do the work while we scroll through TikTok, let it write our papers, create the perfect partner who tells us what we want to hear, generate fake models, compose music, even shape the way we think.
AI is no longer just a tool, rather a false reflection of us. By definition, it isn’t real. It’s a simulation. But the danger lies in how convincingly real it appears.
When Vogue features AI models, the images we see aren’t real, yet, present as such.
And it doesn’t end there. In USA Today, Alyssa Goldberg reported how AI was used to turn ordinary selfies into sexually explicit content. Other reports have surfaced of people’s stolen photos being used to generate AI-based pornography.
AI has created a world of fiction. The things we consume, admire, and even desire are no longer real, but artificially constructed, so we no longer have to make them ourselves.
Recently I saw articles testing the use of ChatGPT. I wanted to do this myself. To see what would happen if I asked it to write me an introduction for this very article. Here it is:
“There was a time when the idea of artificial intelligence belonged to the realm of science fiction—far-off futures filled with humanoid robots and machines smarter than their makers. But that future is no longer distant. It’s here. Quietly, invisibly, and at astonishing speed, AI has woven itself into the fabric of daily life. It recommends the songs we hear, finishes our sentences, predicts our preferences, edits our photos, and increasingly, replaces the human touch once required for art, conversation, even intimacy.
From corporate boardrooms to classrooms, fashion magazines to film studios, artificial intelligence is not just a tool—it’s becoming the hand that holds the pen, clicks the shutter, and shapes the narrative. The result? A world that looks familiar but is subtly altered, pixel by pixel, prompt by prompt. The more we automate, the more we risk forgetting what it means to make, to think, to be human.
The question now isn’t whether AI is changing the world. It’s how much of that world will still belong to us.”
After reading this, it feels incredibly off putting for the reason, I personally wouldn’t know it was AI generated if I hadn’t gone through the trouble. Perhaps there are signs, and I just don’t know how to spot them. Which makes me wonder, am I the norm or am I the few that are unable to distinguish between what is real and what is fake. I believe I’m the former.
Digging into AI reminds me of the interviews David Foster Wallace would give on technology and loneliness. How it would become easier and easier for us to seek pleasure from behind a screen from people who don’t love us, “but want our money.” With this in mind, we have to ask ourselves. What do we value more? The artificial or the authentic? How far are we willing to take this? AI models, movies, books, desire, relationships. How much are we willing to sacrifice for the pleasures we desperately crave?
For now, it seems however much it will take. And that’s a terrifying thought.
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