Muscat: Has an incalculable amount of images swept you with your favourite celebrities in weird scenarios? The Avengers as vegetable vendors and otherworldly scenarios that seem too hard to believe; ever felt that the world around you doesn’t seem authentic anymore? Are you often wondering if what you see on social media is real?  

With official reports stating that Deepfakes double every six months, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly changed how we function. The film industry and various actors across the globe have raised their voices over being subject to AI and its misuse to take advantage of their identity. With AI also taking over jobs across industries, we have come to a crossroads in defining what humanity is and what it will take to stay authentic.

To be human is to express freedom; one way to express one’s freedom is through art. With the onset of AI, art has been rendered to mere prompts on screen, which the AI will use to generate a masterpiece in seconds. But we must ask ourselves, what about the satisfaction of delivering the final stroke to a sketch you had been perfecting for days? Or the last letter that sums up the write-up you had been obsessing over for years? The desire to be free lies within that struggle.

AI has given us an opportunity to be more than we could ever be, but if we are to look at the trajectory of its effect on the world, we can observe that the lines between reality and imagination have never been more blurred. It’s alright to take extra steps to be artistically expressive rather than risk losing yourself in the race to simplify things.