Artificial intelligence isn't just imitating us. It's rewriting us.
Hi, I'm Laura, a master's degree holder in Communication and Information and an undergraduate student in Internet Systems. And I want to talk to you today about Artificial Intelligence and the way it's transforming how we produce, consume, and give meaning to culture.
Well, it's no surprise that automated bots already account for almost half of internet traffic today. These are automated profiles producing videos, texts, or music with the help of AI, and even interacting with each other to gain engagement. On YouTube, X, Spotify… it's increasingly common to see content made by machines and consumed by other machines — often for monetization purposes.
What we're seeing is a culture increasingly less driven by human experiences.
In the article Synthetic Media and Computational Capitalism, published now in 2025, researcher David M. Berry proposes that we are living in an algorithmic condition. This is when computer systems stop simply organizing content created by humans and start producing content on their own — based on data, patterns, and statistical calculations.
It's no longer about copying something real, because there is no longer a referent, nor an author. It's actually about generating culture with mathematics and statistics. They are culturally plausible contents, but essentially simulated.
When this content occupies all digital spaces, what Berry calls Inversion happens: synthetic media becomes so present that it begins to seem more real than the real. We begin to recognize as ‘authentic’ that which has been shaped to perform well in algorithms — and not necessarily that which is the result of experience, or of a human creative process.
Human subjectivity does not disappear, but it begins to be co-produced with machines. A hybrid form of consciousness.
And why does this matter? In addition to a verification crisis, there is also social stratification: those who have access to verification tools will be able to filter and recognize AI-generated content. Those who don't have it can be immersed in a sea of simulations.
The algorithm IS NOT NEUTRAL. AI also mediates the formation of social memory. This affects how society remembers, forgets, interprets, and writes its history.
Finally, we can always seek practices of subversion of the technology industry. Movements like Fediverse and perma-computing are some examples. And you… can you still identify when content is synthetic?