It’s official. AI’s guardrails have come off. Strike that – they’ve been blown off as part of the thunderous onslaught of executive orders and investments ushering in a new administration. As news broke about the Stargate Project (a $500 billion private sector deal to expand U.S. AI infrastructure), reactions ranged from manifest destiny-level industrial optimism to sheer dread at the environmental implications of unfettered AI growth, which comes at the cost of massive, energy-guzzling data centers. Add in the launch of China’s DeepSeek, and the competitive pressure is on. All of this, of course, is happening amid a climate of regulatory rollbacks, creating a technological Wild West with little concern for the consequences such an AI shoot-out will leave in its wake. As federal oversight is increasingly stripped in place of one-upmanship, those of us in creative professions face an existential crisis: we want to embrace the tools that could make our jobs easier (and perhaps get us better work-life balance), but we also don’t want to see AI eliminate our livelihoods – or even more important – our humanity. From my perspective, the future of the creative industry hinges on how we come together and race for authenticity. And winning that race requires an understanding of what we’re up against. The Protections of Oversight As AI technology continues to evolve, oversight is extremely important. We’ve already seen blatant disregard for copyrights with training models, where content (intellectual property) is swept without permission and terms/clauses are often buried in agreement legalese. We’ve also seen the beginnings of job replacement in the creative industry, not to mention the environmental impact. Taking all this into... Read More