Ross Douthat:

A great unanswered question for the age of AI, should the technology eventually prove capable of generating entire books and movies, is how audiences will respond to the true absence of thought or intentionality behind a story or performance. My guess and hope is that the idea that you’re communing with another self — whether the actor performing the part or the writer putting words on the page — is powerful enough to let real art survive the artificially generated competition.

But the millions of people buying tickets for movies like Superman are already being sold something that feels like a proof of a different concept, in which stories are simply programmed instead of being told.