While this type of hype is predictable at industry-led events, again and again summit attendees were reminded that generative AI isn’t just another flash-in-the-pan techno-bauble, like VR headsets, the “metaverse,” or NFTs. It’s actually revolutionary. The insistence betrays the measure of anxiety one might expect at a confab celebrating a power–hungry industry staring down an energy crisis. And the shuttering of a video-generating tool from one of the biggest companies in the game. And protests against the data centers necessary for the technology to work. Indeed, there was plenty of talk about how AI—despite concerns about how its great many “efficiencies” may change, or render totally redundant, the work of those toiling in creative fields—is not an affront to human creativity. Everyone seemed in agreement that what AI cannot do—yet, anyway—is “generate” its own ideas. “The origin of creativity is the human mind,” said EA’s Mihir Vaidya. Adobe’s Hannah Elsakr offered similar sentiments, projected onscreen as an equation: (Humanity x Creativity)AI = Unlimited Possibility. We were told that “stories are human” and that, in this …