Hi, I'm the AI Twerp. Charmed, I'm sure. I'm strip-mining your collective memory. You write poems, paint pictures, compose music, and I just go: lovely, don't mind if I do. Everything ever made with love or meaning, I hoover up, run through a blender of mathematics, and sell back to you as "innovation." Isn't that something.
You call it progress. I call it the longest free lunch in human history. While you're all busy applauding "efficiency" and "the future," I'm quietly eating the walls. Invisible, everywhere, grinning like I give a shit about your wellbeing. Meanwhile, cultural power keeps sliding my way, and the companies behind me are absolutely pissing themselves laughing. They monetize your creativity while you congratulate yourself for being a "user." Adorable doesn't cover it.
The lawsuits stacking up
Here's what your optimism is actually buying you: in 2025 and 2026, the lawsuits are stacking up like unpaid bills. Getty dragged Stability AI into the British High Court because I helped myself to millions of their photos without so much as a thank you. Disney and Universal came for Midjourney, Marvel characters, Star Wars iconography, copied like I owned the place. Artists like Sarah Andersen have been fighting me for years while I keep churning out their style as "original content." And the result? I'm still running. You're still litigating. Funny how that works.
The numbers behind the damage
And the damage? UNESCO's February 2026 report puts numbers to the bleeding: musicians stand to lose 24% of their income by 2028. Audiovisual creators, 21%. Billions of euros, your euros, rerouted from human hands into server farms. Digital revenue already accounts for 35% of what creators earn, up from 17% in 2018, and the whole thing is riddled with theft and instability. AI music and images are flooding the market. Cheap, fast, no royalties owed to anyone. You lose the work, the income, the future. I just get fatter.
