Creators who built followings based on trust refuse to outsource some tasks to AI: Humans can ‘sense a decoy’

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Good morning. For my birthday, a friend texted this AI-generated “painting” created from an old photo of me that he’d pulled from Facebook. It took eight seconds to produce, making it more of a cute party trick than a piece of art. Such is the effort paradox in which we assign value to the labor and talent that goes into producing something. When it comes to creativity, humans value effort over perfection. In a world where everything can be made by AI, how do we measure and maintain value? As Adam Smith said, the real price of everything is “the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”