Beyond the Uncanny Valley
What's Coming From AI Genuinely Scares Me
Yesterday, Sora released its new app, and after watching the demo clips, I’ll be honest: I’m officially scared.
For the last few years, it’s been easy to dismiss AI-generated video. The consensus was basically, “Sure, it’s bad, but who cares? It looks like garbage. No human would ever make something like this.” That’s over.
The uncanny valley isn’t really a thing anymore. These new clips? Seamless. If you didn’t tell me they were AI, I wouldn’t have known. And that reality changes everything.
Of course I’ve known we were on this trajectory for awhile now, but seeing it in action is something else.
Why This Feels Existential
On a geopolitical level, the implications are terrifying. If I can’t even trust my own eyes, what does that mean for truth, for news, for reality itself? But closer to home, I keep circling back to the same thought: what happens to creators?
What happens to people who’ve spent their lives learning videography, editing, design, performance… skills that are now reproducible at the click of a button?
We already saw it with background actors during the SAG strike, and voice actors fighting for protections in gaming. Tech companies want cheaper, faster, more efficient workflows. If they can replace human artists with prompts, they will.
And the scariest part? The results don’t even look fake anymore.
The One Thing AI Can’t Do
I’ve had to sit with this fear. No human can compete with the scale, speed, and polish that billions of dollars in funding can generate. It’s a losing game.
So I’ve been asking myself: what do I actually have to offer?!
The answer I keep coming back to is authenticity. Imperfection. Messiness. Creatively, these attributes can often be viewed as a weakness in our craft, but maybe it will actually prove to be our salvation.
What Makes Something Feel Authentic
When Jaime Lyn Beatty and I were working on Space Baby for Starkid, we had long talks about what makes a StarKid project resonate. We realized one of the core appeals is that you can see the strings. The joy, the flaws, the rough edges. It doesn’t feel like a product conjured up in a corporate boardroom. It feels real, and that’s exactly what people are drawn to.
That’s the playbook moving forward. Not trying to out-scale AI, but leaning harder into the things that make us human. That means embracing the awkwardness, the limitations, the handmade quality of art that could only have come from this person, at this time. Show the strings!
Where We Go From Here
I don’t have all the answers, but I know this much: in an era where perfection can be faked, truth will matter more than ever. Live performance, real connection, and the kind of specific human voices that can’t be replicated at scale are going to carry the most weight.
I’m trying to double down on what’s real by sharing honestly, creating imperfectly, and making space for connection that no algorithm can fake. (yet...)
A Question for You
How are you thinking about this? What scares you most about where this is headed?
And what would it look like for you to stop trying to compete at scale, and instead get more specific, more authentic, and more human with your art?
🎥 Here’s the companion video on YouTube where I unpack this in real time: