This article was written by humans

🏭 AI — the new factory line: AI content attracts interest for the same economic reasons that drove the industrial revolution — like factories churning out identical products, AI can produce vast quantities of serviceable content instantly. Need 50 product descriptions? Done in minutes. Want to remake your iconic Christmas commercial? Coca-Cola reported reducing production time from a year to about a month, while cutting the team size from 50 people to about 20.

But when Coca-Cola released its 2024 Christmas advertisement, the backlash was swift and visceral. The ad, generated entirely by AI, felt hollow to viewers — a cold (no pun intended) replica of the warm, nostalgic campaigns that had defined the brand’s holiday identity for decades. This year, Coca-Cola doubled down by releasing yet another AI-generated Christmas commercial, with the company’s Global VP of Generative AI Pratik Thakar defending the decision, saying that, “The genie is out of the bottle, and you’re not going to put it back in.”

Like the first industrial revolution — even in hindsight — we’re forced to reckon with what we lose when we prioritize efficiency, what we gain from the mass production of creativity and artistry, and ultimately, what we value.

Why was mass production so tempting in the first place? The industrial revolution didn’t just change how things were made — it fundamentally transformed what people expected from the products they bought. Before factories, each item was unique, a trait we now value, but it often meant unpredictable quality. Mass production promised products that met baseline quality standards every single time at a fraction of the cost.

The economics are irresistible to corporations. Why pay human creatives when you can generate adequate content for pennies? The logic is identical to replacing artisan furniture makers with factory workers — except now the workers are algorithms you don’t need to pay, and the yield margins are even wider. Companies view creative work as a cost center to be minimized, regardless of the cultural stakes.

Good enough: Just as factory furniture promised certain standards, AI content often meets baseline requirements. It’s grammatically correct, coherent, and effectively covers the topic. For many commercial applications — product descriptions, social media posts, routine marketing copy — AI produces work that passes the threshold of acceptability. University of South Carolina researcher Wolfgang Messner notes that AI “may satisfy a short-term need: a quick summary, a plausible design, a passable script. But it rarely transforms.”

But here’s where the parallel breaks down in a crucial way: Industrial products often exceeded handmade quality in consistency and precision — a factory-made table might actually be more level than one made by a carpenter back in 1760. AI content, by contrast, tends toward mediocrity, with content riddled with inaccuracies and hallucinations that require constant human oversight, and any bursts of creativity are being directly plagiarized. AI can only recombine existing patterns — it can’t create something truly original. It is derivative by nature and by definition — a remix of human creativity scraped from the internet, rearranged according to statistical probability.

The defenders of AI make the same arguments factory owners once did: Progress is inevitable, efficiency benefits everyone, and those who lose their jobs will find new ones. This framing — that opposition is merely fear of change — ignores the legitimate question of whether society benefits when creative work is devalued and gains accrue to a handful of companies.

Speedrunning history: After centuries of mass production, “handcrafted” has become a symbol of quality. The global handicrafts market, valued at USD 740 bn last year, is projected to reach nearly USD 1.2 tn by 2030, driven by consumer demand for sustainable, authentic, and culturally meaningful products. But it is content, not products, that are now being replaced by AI mass production. Showrunner Vince Gilligan promotes his new series by stating that Pluribus was “made by humans.” Meanwhile, companies like Polaroid and Heineken marketing their rejection of AI signals that we are entering a new yet familiar era. If AI represents the new mass production revolution, we’re already seeing the early stages of a counter-movement — a return to valuing the handmade, the bespoke, and the demonstrably human.