AI will replace the content. What’s left for us?

Published October 11, 2026. Last updated October 11, 2026. By Andrew M. Tan.

The time has come now, I think. AI, the large language models, can string words together and spare us the wrestling. The turmoil and the passionate struggle to form a thought on a page.

Words, their meanings, the way one thought follows another. A string of beads. We can ask the machine to string them for us.

Now AI can replace all of this in its infinite probabilities made manifest.

AI will replace nearly every digital piece of content. First with the written word, then with the image, the photographs, and then soon thereafter the video.

It is already happening, if it has not already.

This is happening now, and even here, I cannot prove to you that this isn’t an AI generated article in part or in whole other than hope, my dear reader, that you’ll trust me through these thoughts on a page.

An awkward request, given the subject.

AI is going to replace this medium—the written medium as a pure form of expression, tainted by the machine spirit, and now what’s left—I ponder.

The more ink that flowed

I used to write for fun, for mere expression, often in a journal and more often with fountain pen and paper; for the purity of the art of putting words on a page.

The more ink that flowed off my pen the better I felt.

It was a cathartic experience for me especially when I was younger and there were more hours in the day for free expression—you see, work and adult life at that time did not overwhelm me as they do now.

I could spend time finding out what I thought. There was a page to fill and nobody waiting for it. Nobody had commissioned an argument. I could wander around in there.

And, there lies the problem now.

As I reflect on the past in all of its truth and nostalgia—tainted by my own present perception of the past—I was free to believe that what others wrote came from them, especially if published in their name.

I could trust that implication that what was out in public to see and read was real, even when it wasn’t truthful, if that makes sense.

A person could lie. Of course. But I assumed a person had done the work of telling me the lie. Someone had sat there and found the words.

Photos were easy, but really stunning images were truly outstanding and the work behind them was unclear, buried by the artist who created them with skill we could not understand or replicate ourselves.

The expertise of the writer, the prose, the poetry, the images we loved and that inspired us to maybe pause to ponder something was hard won.

You could look at a photograph and wonder how someone managed it. The light, the timing. Whatever they saw that you would have walked past. There was pleasure in knowing you couldn’t quite do that yourself.

The power of today’s AI, already not so long in the common nomenclature, has robbed us of this.

Now I look and wonder whether anyone was there.

I know words

As mentioned, even now I think my work has been replaced or diluted by the creation of others’ use of this powerful tool.

AI has rendered what I do immagical, mundane, tedious, and somewhat cliché in how it has been used and absorbed and recast back into the world.

I find myself somewhat depressed by it, not angered, as I’m actually in truth more fascinated by the technology, and yet at the same time I realize that in the hopelessness of this “change”—as this is what it is, a major, sudden change—there’s opportunity and a sense of freedom.

A strange place to find it, I know.

I can again write freely when I realize that what I write isn’t judged by the same measuring stick. I can assume that nobody cares anymore and the paradox is that this is liberating.

I no longer have to prove my skill. I know words.

It is a talent I have to spin up ideas, form arguments, and over the years I have been paid handsomely for it—relatively speaking.

Money talks as they say. You see ads on this page don’t you? Go on read on.

I’m in this, too. I care whether you read the page. There is money involved, and probably some vanity. I would like to think I have something worth saying.

But if a machine can produce a respectable page of prose whenever someone asks, then perhaps I can stop being so concerned about producing a respectable page of prose. I can let a thought arrive with its odd little shape intact. See where it goes.

The fountain pen never asked whether the paragraph would perform well.

I will offend you and insult you and you can second guess where it comes from.

I write this article knowing that one day, maybe seconds after you’ve read this, that some machine … perhaps that data center coming soon to a neighborhood near you … will absorb this and integrate these ideas, like the Star Trek Borg, resistance is futile, and it won’t matter.

All roads lead to Rome.

Even this complaint gets to become material. A machine can make use of my objection to the machine. I find that funny, in a somewhat miserable way.

The artist who shares nothing

And all this leads me to think, what next? What will be most cherished? What will bring the creative, the artist, satisfaction?

Well, first, one would need to know what brings anyone satisfaction, fulfillment.

An artist who does not share their work is still a creative. An artist creates because it is who they are. Certainly, even an artist who creates things that no one else wants is still an artist.

I think about that in relation to our hobbies. A miniature sitting on a shelf that nobody has photographed. A sketchbook in a drawer. There was someone there making decisions, changing their mind, getting annoyed with a small thing and trying again.

They spent time with it. Something happened during that time, even if the finished thing never found an audience.

The more ink that flowed off my pen the better I felt. I keep coming back to that. The feeling happened while I was writing.

I guess, the satisfaction though, is what has been the goal of social sharing, social media before it was called that? I had always thought it was to use the digital world to “connect” people?

The old days of blogging brought communities together.

Before everything became a way to monetize, engage and garner clicks; the click farms were just flower pots sitting on a person’s virtual doorstep.

Simple gifts to say hello, to push out a lasting thought into the world.

You visited. Someone had left something out. Perhaps you liked it enough to say so, and they said something back.

Small things. A familiar name showing up again.

That was what I thought social media was for.

Not this consumer take all, or consumption, push, the provocations and amplification of a broken world that always existed.

Now it’s all breaking through the noise with more noise until people break into their own camps.

And I’m writing another article. I’m aware of how this looks. Another person telling you what has gone wrong with the internet, on the internet. Please enjoy the ads.

In the flesh

AI is just I think the natural evolution of this thrust to find patterns and recreate them.

It is a way for us to stay disconnected and to sow mistrust in the digital world.

And to the original question, the only thing now in the overwhelming culture of an AI generated world online is to get offline, to connect in real life, in the flesh.

For a miniature painter, this is at least something we know how to begin. Bring a model. Sit down at a table. There is usually something to talk about, even if it’s only the part you couldn’t get right.

Someone turns the miniature toward the light. You point out the bit you were pleased with. They show you theirs. Perhaps a game starts, perhaps you spend the afternoon talking and accomplish very little painting.

I wonder whether that will become more cherished. The chance to be there while someone makes something. To see the hesitation, or the mistake, or the small satisfaction when it finally works.

There is so much of a hobby that never makes it into the photograph.

What I might do next

Perhaps I’ll pick up the fountain pen again. Write something that stays in the notebook. Paint something and bring it to a table where someone can turn it toward the light.

I’ll probably write about it afterwards. Here, even. There’s still someone tending these flower pots.

For now, I think I’d like to see who sits down. I’m not sure, honestly, what’s next. Let me consult the machine.

Tangible Day on YouTube (miniatures and more!)

Disclosure: We are a participant in affiliate programs for Amazon Services LLC Associates, Etsy, Noble Knight Games, and KEH Camera. Some of the links on this page may refer you to these or other affiliate sites where we earn fees for qualifying purchases.

---