This was a week AI stopped being a hypothetical for culture industries and started leaving fingerprints everywhere. The New York Times fired a freelance critic who used AI to write a book review. Hachette pulled a novel for suspected AI authorship — publishing’s first real scandal on this front — and the industry has no idea what to do next. Meanwhile, HarperCollins signed a multi-year deal with an AI animation studio, and Netflix acquired Ben Affleck’s AI production company, which promises to cut below-the-line costs by 20%. The pattern: the same technology being punished at one end of the pipeline is being embraced at the other.
Alongside this, the fights over who controls cultural institutions kept intensifying. The Smithsonian’s board sits with empty seats as the White House stalls appointments. A Tennessee library director was fired for refusing to pull books. And a Moscow court sentenced a German artist to prison — for art made in Germany.
In this week’s AJ Chronicles, a deeper dive into this week’s stories, I write that we need to drill down on what we mean by artistic excellence. Why? Because as we try to figure out how to deal with AI and “creativity” we need to clarify what we’re talking about.
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
