{"id":3583,"date":"2026-08-26T13:01:39","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=3583"},"modified":"2026-08-26T13:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:06:10","slug":"culture-the-real-costs-of-being-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2026\/08\/culture-the-real-costs-of-being-real.html","title":{"rendered":"Culture: The Real Costs of being Real"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/divotomezove-letters-6638774_1280.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/divotomezove-letters-6638774_1280.jpg?resize=1024%2C700&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3584\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/divotomezove-letters-6638774_1280.jpg?resize=1024%2C700&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/divotomezove-letters-6638774_1280.jpg?resize=300%2C205&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/divotomezove-letters-6638774_1280.jpg?resize=768%2C525&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/divotomezove-letters-6638774_1280.jpg?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><sup>Image by <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/divotomezove-1979640\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=6638774\">Jo Re<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=6638774\">Pixabay<\/a><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">We collected 127 stories on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\">ArtsJournal <\/a>last week. Here&#8217;s what I learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">A couple of weeks ago, I got a PR pitch from a theatre. It praised my writing in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\">Diacritical<\/a>, not just mentioning particular posts but engaging with the ideas and building on them. It was, I admit, flattering. Was it possible, the writer asked, that we could talk, and she could show me the exciting things her theatre was doing? We are aligned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">But there was something just slightly off about the pitch. It was a little too good, too detailed, too perfectly calibrated to understand what would pique my interest. I demurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Book critic Ron Charles <a href=\"https:\/\/roncharles.substack.com\/p\/chasing-ron-charles\">wrote on his Substack this week<\/a> about a solicitation he got from &nbsp;Reese Witherspoon. She was, she wrote, a big fan of his books and wondered if they could work together. They weren\u2019t his books. You can read the hilarious ersatz correspondence in his post. It\u2019s highly entertaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Then there was the s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/us\/whyy-s-fresh-air-host-terry-gross-is-at-the-center-of-catfish-style-scams-targeting-stars-and-media-personalities\/ar-AA2azNuB\">tory this week in the <em>Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em><\/a> reporting that authors were being solicited by Fresh Air host Terry Gross, offering interviews for a fee. Fake of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s getting difficult to trust what (or who) is real in the age of AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Since May, a company by the name of Runtime Wire has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/ai-newsrooms-are-breaking-news-now-haha-im-in-danger\/\">published nearly 2000 stories<\/a> by crawling court databases, online forums, company filings, social feeds, online press conferences and other news reporting. It isn\u2019t aggregating, it\u2019s breaking news. This is work reporters do. But machines are now reading the exhaust of other machines and breaking stories competing with traditional journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Then there\u2019s this report from Press Gazette that traffic to the top ten US news websites is <a href=\"https:\/\/pressgazette.co.uk\/media-audience-and-business-data\/media_metrics\/traffic-to-10-biggest-us-news-websites-down-a-third-in-two-years\/\">down about a third from two years ago<\/a>, and that across the top 50 sites, monthly visits have fallen 37 percent since July 2024. More than a third of web pages published since ChatGPT\u2019s release three years ago show s<a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/08\/20\/a-third-of-webpages-published-since-chatgpts-launch-show-signs-of-ai-authorship-study-finds\/\">igns of AI authorship<\/a>, according to Pew research. And the most recent audit of traffic on the web shows that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpnetsecurity.com\/2026\/04\/30\/thales-ai-driven-bot-traffic-rise-report\/\">53 percent of all traffic online is now machine-generated<\/a> (and rising quickly). Humans are now the minority audience. When AI search summaries answer your question directly, there\u2019s no reason to visit actual sources or websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Count the layers between something real and the person who eventually is able to find it. There used to be essentially one\u2014a reporter working for a news organization. Now there\u2019s a crawler, a model, a syndication feed, a recommendation engine, and some bot that summarizes the result so a person never even has to click. Every layer adds distance and subtracts accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">And it\u2019s happening from all sides. Content may or may not be human-made. But increasingly, the audience might not be real either. So we\u2019ve got machines making content for other machines. And, if you believe the numbers, humans are being crowded out at both ends of the marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">What it means to be the \u201cauthor\u201d of something is getting murky. <a href=\"https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2026\/when-ai-art-has-no-author-generated-images-often-cant-be-traced-to-training-data-0818\">An MIT study<\/a> reports that at the scale of a large language model, you can remove any single image or even the collected work of an artist, and the generated output won\u2019t change. Another study reports <a href=\"https:\/\/mashable.com\/article\/ai-generated-music-survey-people-cannot-tell\">that 97 percent of listeners<\/a> couldn\u2019t tell whether a piece of music was created by humans or by AI. Prize-winning books have been <a href=\"https:\/\/thewalrus.ca\/the-real-scandal-isnt-that-ai-wrote-a-prize-winning-story-its-the-response\/\">\u201couted\u201d as written by AI,<\/a> and there are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/ai-slop-books-on-amazon\/56269\/\">thousands of fake AI-produced biographies<\/a> in the Amazon store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Attribution, credit and compensation all assume definitive attribution. Diffuse \u201cinfluence\u201d isn\u2019t provenance that proves anything. It means creative ownership has become increasingly difficult to trace or to prove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;Consider what that does to attribution, to authorship. At scale, there is, essentially no definitive source anymore. Influence survives the removal of any and every individual who supplied it. That isn\u2019t theft you can prove, it\u2019s a style with no parent. News with no author. Art with no artist. The record of creation isn\u2019t being erased so much as it\u2019s being repossessed, relocated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">So we have disruption at the creation layer. But we also have it at the audience layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">So what if the audience is fake, if the audience is bots and machines? Traditionally, the way we have measured the commercial value of something has been by the audience it attracts. In pre-internet times, that usually meant the audience was buyers\u2014buy the cd, subscribe to the newspaper, buy tickets to the movie. Billboard, Nielsen and NYT Books Bestseller lists reported sales as a proxy for culture that was worth our attention. Of course commercial success has never been a reliable predictor of quality, but at base it served as the currency of popular taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In the internet era, where digital copies of culture are essentially free to make and easy to obtain, bestseller lists and streaming charts are even less justifiable indicators of what\u2019s getting traction in the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Now in the AI era, with machines talking to machines, the audience numbers are Alice-in-Wonderland manufactured. Which isn\u2019t just a problem for artists whose work is online, it affects all of us in finding and shaping taste and directing what culture might get made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Media critic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=https:\/\/mattdpearce.substack.com\/p\/you-couldnt-create-a-more-anti-news-internet\">Matt Pearce recently argued<\/a> that platform algorithms have scrambled the meaning-making that the middleware layer of culture used to do. Stripped of context, content feeds offload the sorting and aesthetic judgments the middleware used to provide. He calls it a cognitive tax on the consumer overwhelmed by having to figure out what to pay attention to, let alone make sense of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The obvious hope is that all of this pushes people toward things they can verify with their own bodies, and yes, there\u2019s plenty of evidence for this. <em>Hadestown<\/em>&#8216;s filmed stage run was billed as five nights in movie theatre, then <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/news\/box-office\/hadestown-the-musical-breaks-box-office-records-hamilton-1235212066\/\">extended to four weeks<\/a>, grossing $20.7 million in tickets. <em>Ragtime<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2026\/08\/broadway-box-office-ragtime-paranormal-activity-1237044419\">broke Lincoln Center Theater&#8217;s box office record<\/a>. Nate Bargatze grossed <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/tv\/news\/nate-bargatze-guinness-world-record-comedy-tour-tickets-sold-1236835016\/\">two million tickets across 128 venues<\/a> in sixteen months. Portland&#8217;s newest dance company found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.orartswatch.org\/firewerks-dancers-light-up-moda-center\/\">tens of thousands of new fans<\/a> by performing at WNBA games. Somebody built <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/bookselling\/article\/101065-lit-circle-in-beta-testing-with-national-launch-in-the-works.html\">a national database of author readings<\/a> because there\u2019s now big demand for these live events. A writer in <em>The Guardian<\/em> described a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2026\/aug\/14\/pop-concerts-brain-benefits\">&#8220;collective effervescence&#8221;<\/a> to explain what happened to her at a Nick Jonas concert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">But being real doesn\u2019t make you findable or verifiable in the new machine-infested marketplaces. There\u2019s no question that the flood of AI slop has produced a backlash in the form of demand for \u201creal\u201d human experiences. &nbsp;Audiences want the real thing. But can you be still be found when discovery runs through layers you don\u2019t control and can\u2019t audit? Google\u2019s new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.niemanlab.org\/2026\/08\/googles-new-ai-tool-helps-fact-checkers-investigate-ai-fakes\/\">Backstory tool<\/a> lets a fact-checker ask where an image came from. But nothing lets you ask where an audience came from or, more crucially, if it was ever there at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Being an artist and being findable used to be a marketing problem. Now it\u2019s what\u2026&nbsp; Sherlock Holmes hunting for documentation, verification and provenance? My theatre PR pitcher was next level good. It wasn\u2019t just information or messaging. It aimed to persuade by getting inside my own words and aligning itself with my curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Ultimately? It doesn\u2019t matter whether that email was written by a person, a bot, or a person using a bot. What matters is that I couldn\u2019t really tell, and that finding out would have cost me more than the pitch was worth. That\u2019s the shift. Not that the fakes are getting better, but that verification got expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Most people won\u2019t pay it. They\u2019ll do what audiences are already doing; retreat to the few things that can\u2019t be faked because you have to be in the room. That means that the only culture we can trust is the culture that can\u2019t scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Also Worth Your Attention<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The National Symphony announced a season with no Kennedy Center.<\/strong> From September to June the orchestra will stage <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/2026\/08\/national-symphony-announces-new-season-no-kennedy-center.html\">some 60 performances at six venues across the region<\/a>. This while the Kennedy Center board voted to restore Trump&#8217;s name, the tarp still hanging over the removed lettering two months on, and a <em>Washington Post<\/em> critic arguing that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/style\/2026\/08\/14\/closing-kennedy-center-may-be-best-bad-options\/\">closing the building may be the best of a bad slate<\/a>. The National Symphony will be okay. Other institutions challenged by withdrawal of support (public media after losing federal funding, the Washington National Opera) have seen a flood of support. In fact, this could be an opportunity to find new audiences, reinvigorate programming, and focus on testing its identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The argument has moved to the courts.<\/strong> ABC <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/abc-fcc-kimmel-disney-lawsuit-8c379d4d4dc90e97a8ef57371f203bfa\">sued the FCC<\/a> on First Amendment grounds, calling the demand for early license review an &#8220;existential threat.&#8221; Paramount asked a court to make plaintiff states and the Writers Guild <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/media-advertising\/articles\/paramount-demands-1-9-billion-185102232.html\">post a $1.9 billion bond<\/a> to keep suing \u2014 the cost of litigation deployed as the weapon. The National Trust told the Supreme Court the administration&#8217;s ballroom request was <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/regulation\/court-battles\/6035436-national-trust-for-historic-preservation-supreme-court-donald-trump-white-house-ballroom-pause\/\">&#8220;astonishing.&#8221;<\/a> And Utah&#8217;s statewide removal of <em>Push<\/em> happened <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sltrib.com\/news\/education\/2026\/08\/20\/utah-book-ban-push-novel-that\/\">automatically<\/a>: state law bars a title everywhere once three county districts ban it. Procedure is cheap to deploy and expensive to resist, which makes legal capacity a class marker. Disney can spend. A museum that just cut half its staff cannot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong>\u00a0<em>These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world.\u00a0Want to support our work? Subscribe to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/artsjournal.com\/artsjournal-signup\">ArtsJournal\u2019s free newsletters<\/a>. Or better yet, support us with a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plans\/newsletters-2\">premium ArtsJournal subscription<\/a>\u00a0at $5\/week or $52\/year. Much appreciated.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s getting difficult to trust what (or who) is real in the age of AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-tech","category-arts-and-ai","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-VN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":947,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/08\/is-opera-the-real-21st-century-art-form.html","url_meta":{"origin":3583,"position":0},"title":"Is Opera The Real 21st Century Art Form?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"August 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A 2015 survey\u00a0by blogger Mae Mai reported that\u00a0260 new opera companies started since 2000 in the United States. There are 80 opera companies now working in New York alone. Over the past couple months the New York Opera Fest showcased many of the New York companies.\u00a0For the most part, these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;arts &amp; tech&quot;","block_context":{"text":"arts &amp; tech","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/13-17-brainTraffic.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/13-17-brainTraffic.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/13-17-brainTraffic.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/13-17-brainTraffic.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/13-17-brainTraffic.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1169,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/09\/five-storiestrends-from-this-weeks-artsjournal-how-the-arts-speak-to-real-life.html","url_meta":{"origin":3583,"position":1},"title":"Five Stories\/Trends From This Week&#8217;s ArtsJournal: How The Arts Speak To Real Life","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"September 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This Week: Why is it so hard to tell\u00a0if American theatre is thriving or not?... Have art and technology had a falling out?... Perhaps TV is the solution to our political polarization... The music industry seems to be finally getting it together... A cautionary tale about getting swallowed up by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Weekly AJ Top Stories&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Weekly AJ Top Stories","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/weekly-aj-top-stories"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/free-1641264_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C780&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/free-1641264_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C780&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/free-1641264_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C780&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/free-1641264_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C780&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/free-1641264_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C780&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":94,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/04\/theatre_celeb_journalism_and_j.html","url_meta":{"origin":3583,"position":2},"title":"Theatre, Celeb Journalism, And Journalism","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"April 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Two articles over on the ARTicles blog at the National Arts Journalism Program. First, Laura Collins-Hughes has a take on this year's Pulitzer for theatre and why it's important that the finalists are all women:...women playwrights are vastly underrepresented on our stages. Because \"diversity\" isn't just a buzzword. The Pulitzer\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1240,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/11\/this-weeks-aj-highlights-hamilton-teaches-the-art-of-protest-at-last-some-real-data-on-orchestras.html","url_meta":{"origin":3583,"position":3},"title":"This Week&#8217;s AJ Highlights: &#8220;Hamilton&#8221; Teaches The Art Of Protest, At Last Some Real Data On Orchestras","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"November 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This Week: That Mike Pence goes to \"Hamilton\" story? A textbook protest... Finally - some real data on the health of orchestras... Arts criticism is either being reborn or it's in dire shape... Pop culture is getting to be only for the rich... The myth of the outsider is a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Weekly AJ Top Stories&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Weekly AJ Top Stories","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/weekly-aj-top-stories"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/%E2%80%98Hamilton%E2%80%99-Had-Some-Unscripted-Lines-for-Pence.-Trump-Wasn%E2%80%99t-Happy.-The-New-York-Times.jpg?fit=1200%2C607&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/%E2%80%98Hamilton%E2%80%99-Had-Some-Unscripted-Lines-for-Pence.-Trump-Wasn%E2%80%99t-Happy.-The-New-York-Times.jpg?fit=1200%2C607&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/%E2%80%98Hamilton%E2%80%99-Had-Some-Unscripted-Lines-for-Pence.-Trump-Wasn%E2%80%99t-Happy.-The-New-York-Times.jpg?fit=1200%2C607&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/%E2%80%98Hamilton%E2%80%99-Had-Some-Unscripted-Lines-for-Pence.-Trump-Wasn%E2%80%99t-Happy.-The-New-York-Times.jpg?fit=1200%2C607&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/%E2%80%98Hamilton%E2%80%99-Had-Some-Unscripted-Lines-for-Pence.-Trump-Wasn%E2%80%99t-Happy.-The-New-York-Times.jpg?fit=1200%2C607&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2816,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2024\/04\/the-essential-ai-translating-what-we-see-hear-and-experience.html","url_meta":{"origin":3583,"position":4},"title":"The Essential AI: Translating the Art of What We See, Hear and Experience","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"April 29, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"To an AI model, a picture is data, sound and music are data, as is traditional spoken or written language. That data is translatable, interchangeable, and, most importantly, linkable and actionable. 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