The Cat in the Tree: Why AI Content Leaves Us Cold

Welcome to the first installment of the Convivial Society for the year 2025. Most of you know the drill: this is a newsletter exploring the intersection of technology, culture, and human flourishing. I’m glad to have kept up a decent pace of writing over the last couple of months, and hopefully that will continue. This post comes just a few days after the last, which is a bit unusual, but I’ve also learned that I need to write the thought quickly or else it will take leave of me. So here, briefly, my reflections on a contrast that I hope illuminates the difference between a creative human act and AI generated content. I hope you find it both helpful and hopeful, even if it is not all that needs to be said about the matter.

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On New Year’s Eve, I had the good fortune of having a question raised by one experience in the morning and the answer presented by a second in the afternoon.

First, the question.

In the morning, while aimlessly scrolling through my feeds (not recommended), I stumbled on a post about a music video, which had been created and edited with generative AI tools. The author of the post noted that, although clearly the product of AI, the video nonetheless displayed a certain aesthetic integrity. He was then subsequently surprised to discover that not only was the video created using AI, so too were the music and lyrics. I would share the video with you, but I haven’t been able to track it down again. I’m not even certain about the platform I was using at the time, although I suspect it was Notes. Perhaps you saw it too. The video had a slight Tim Burton-esque feel to it, and one of its recurring aesthetic features was an eye-like sphere that prominently adorned the motley array of whimsical creatures as well as the ...