Strange Bedfellows or Peas in a Pod?: Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Act of Creation
It was the best of times it was the blurst of times
Some years ago, a colleague at the University of Guelph and I got into a lengthy discussion as to what is the most consistently relevant and quotable television series. She felt that it was indisputably Parks and Recreation, while my elder millennial self knew that the truth was, remains, and will forever be The Simpsons.
The clip from the beginning of this post is one of the many classic moments from “Last Exit to Springfield”, which was named the second best episode of television of all time by Rolling Stone and - like much of the series - has aged well in ways that are entirely unexpected. In an attempt to strong-arm union negotiator Homer, Mr. Burns has him kidnapped and brought to his mansion, where he shows him around to both impress and intimidate him. In one room, there are “a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they'll have written the greatest novel known to man!” Of course, the best that the “stupid monkeys” were able to come up with is a misspelling of the beginning of one of the actual greatest novels known to man, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities - “it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.”
While this clip is not directly about generative artificial intelligence, it is one that I constantly think of when considering how Gen AI and creativity intersect. Indeed, it is in many ways a broadly parodic way to conceptualize what Gen AI is doing along with the possibilities of a close - yet not quite there - facsimile of a creative output.
The discussions around the intersection of generative artificial intelligence and creativity are impassioned and difficult. The nature of Gen AI is such that the putative threat to creators is two-fold in that there are concerns about (1) what is being ingested to train the models and (2) the outputs of these models. Flowing from this are further concerns around attribution, monetary losses, and the erosion of the very nature of creativity. In a now-famous remark, Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli fame, creator of such film masterpieces as Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro, said of AI that “it is an insult to life itself”. The irony of Miyazaki’s comments is that Ghibli-style AI art has become a major trend (to his chagrin, no doubt).
While there have been many, many copyright lawsuits against AI companies (a list of American ones can be found here), there has not yet been any conclusive victories on either side. In Canada, the joint case brought forward by an unlikely assemblage of major Canadian news outlets and publishers against OpenAI is probably the most high-profile example in this country. But as Canadian copyright expert Howard Knopf points out in his post on the lawsuit, in Canada copyright is statutory in nature - meaning that any limitations need to be implemented by the government via legislation.
Governments are in an awkward position, especially as the technology sector driving artificial intelligence growth is an incredibly powerful and influential lobbying force. In the United States, it is speculated that Elon Musk was behind the firing of Copyright Office head Shira Perlmutter on May 10, 2025 - the day after her office released a report that advocated for regulation of generative AI (Olivares, 2025). Canada similarly released a report on the same subject at the end of the last parliament, and it will be interesting to see how the Mark Carney-led government approaches the subject. Meanwhile, in the UK the plans are to loosen regulations, even if it makes the government seem like “absolute losers” in the eyes of some.
So what is “creativity”, exactly? Or perhaps more accurately, what is “originality”? When we talk about creation in the context of Generative AI, what we’re usually actually concerned with is originality - especially as it pertains to authorship or creator’s rights. While Gen AI is relatively new, it is really the latest chapter in the ongoing debate on the nature of originality in the Act of Creation.
When it comes to being able to summarize an idea in a way that is plainly comprehensible to the average person, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is usually a pretty good place to start, and according to the OED’s entry on originality, it is:
- The fact or quality of being primary, or produced at first hand; authenticity, genuineness.
- As an attribute of persons: original thought or action; independent exercise of one's creative faculties; the power of originating new or fresh ideas or methods; inventiveness.
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- The quality of being independent of and different from anything that has gone before; novelty or freshness of style or character, esp. in a work of art or literature
- An original trait, action, idea, etc. Usually in plural.
However, given the litigiousness of this topic, the opinion of either the government (which is thus far reluctant to go “there”) or the courts is helpful to set parameters. Fortunately, in Canada we have the landmark copyright case of CCH v. the Law Society of Upper Canada, which provided an excellent definition that has yet to be bettered:
For a work to be "original" within the meaning of the Copyright Act, it must be more than a mere copy of another work. At the same time, it need not be creative, in the sense of being novel or unique. What is required to attract copyright protection in the expression of an idea is an exercise of skill and judgment. By skill, I mean the use of one's knowledge, developed aptitude or practised ability in producing the work. By judgment, I mean the use of one's capacity for discernment or ability to form an opinion or evaluation by comparing different possible options in producing the work. This exercise of skill and judgment will necessarily involve intellectual effort. The exercise of skill and judgment required to produce the work must not be so trivial that it could be characterized as a purely mechanical exercise. For example, any skill and judgment that might be involved in simply changing the font of a work to produce "another" work would be too trivial to merit copyright protection as an "original" work.
(CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2004)
For me, the use of the “skill and judgment” yardstick to ascertain originality is both elegant and broadly comprehensible, particularly when paired with the inclusion of “intellectual effort”. In other words, there has to be a bit of the creator in the work in order to legally be considered original and - more importantly - be entitled to copyright protection. While this may seem to be relatively self-evident, there is a risk that the lack of an explicit statutory inclusion of the human element associated with creator’s rights could leave the door open to claims of protection for works created by artificial intelligence. This is a risk factor frequently cited in submissions to the Canadian government as part of the consultation for the Generative AI and copyright report cited earlier. If this seems far-fetched or paranoid, then consider the issue of “patent trolls” - entities that purchase and hoard patents with no intention of actualizing them, but who then sue businesses using patents for legitimate purposes. Usually, the respondent to the claim will settle for a small sum to avoid drawn-out litigation. It does not take a massive leap in logic to see a future without adequate regulation in which a similar business model emerges using AI to create “works” that a “rights holder” uses to pursue vexatious litigation.
It is pretty clear that ChatGPT agrees, as when given the prompt of “Give me a 100 word or less explainer on what is generative artificial intelligence”, it offered the following 91 word summary:
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) refers to systems that can create new content—such as text, images, music, or code—based on patterns learned from existing data. Instead of just analyzing or recognizing information, generative AI produces original outputs, often mimicking human creativity. Models like ChatGPT, for example, generate text responses, while others can create artwork, videos, or 3D models. These systems use deep learning, especially neural networks like transformers, to understand context and generate coherent, relevant results. Generative AI is widely used in writing, design, customer service, and more, reshaping how content is created and tasks are automated. [emphases added]
While the ability to mimic human creativity may seem to some an exciting prospect, to my mind this is where Generative AI runs against the Supreme Court’s axiom around “skill and judgment” needing to be present lest the output be a purely “mechanical” exercise. One of the many, many areas where AI-generated or AI-assisted art is growing is a booming business is in music. Platforms such as Spotify and YouTube are awash in AI music, much of which is (in my opinion) schlocky, but there are a handful that have broken though. Among these have been a number of songs by the artist Obscurest Vinyl, whose popularity took off due to being included in a number of viral TikTok videos (note that this video includes graphic lyrics).
When I first heard it, my first thought was “does AI actually have a sense of humour”? While the content is scatological, it is undeniably clever in a way that seems unlikely to be able to be conjured by AI. In a Reddit AMA in April 2024, the creator behind Obscurest Vinyl confirmed that AI provided a helping hand rather than being the primary driver behind the song.:
So, yes, the music is ai, but I write the lyrics and piece together the best "takes" to make it sound like a complete song. Sometimes i will add a layer of keys or strings to smooth out the transitions
Since 2017, I've been desiging all of these covers myself (no ai in the art), but the music was always the missing piece to the joke. As a musician/songwriter myself, I've tried numeruous times to make it happen, but it's just not feasible. These ai programs allow me to finish this whole idea of unearthing these insanely stupid, and forgotten records haha. [typos in original]
Clearly, then, even relatively straightforward uses for Gen AI in creative outputs need a significant amount of human input to ensure that there is something that is coherent with a recognizable song structure. This is even easier when the ambit is to simply reconfigure existing material, such as making “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails into a yacht rock tune worthy of the Doobie Brothers.
In a recent essay in The Guardian, the psychoanalyst and political anthropologist Eric Reinhart writes that the outputs of Generative AI are about more than merely debased notions of originality, but a sort of spiritual decay associated with its use in creative outputs:
This is, of course, a concern that has occupied minds long before the advent of Generative AI as the current face of mechanized production. While I could probably go back to the Gutenberg Bible, the rhetoric of the current political moment feels more in keeping with the concerns of Walter Benjamin in the 1930s. As a Jew who fled Hitler’s Germany, Benjamin was acutely aware of the creeping tide of fascism and the ways in which creativity could help or harm fascist rhetoric. In 1935, he wrote the influential essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, which is technically focused on photography and film, but philosophically extends far beyond it.
While Benjamin does not wholly reject modernity and technological change in his assessment, he is clear in his position that: “the situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated” (1999, p. 223) and that there is a distinct loss of the “aura” of originality. Later, Benjamin writes of his present moment - but could just as easily be writing of the current moment - that “fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves… Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property.” (ibid., p. 243). Ninety years later, Reinhart echoes this sentiment in his Guardian essay:
“Just as fascism turns the masses into spectators of their own subjugation, AI art transforms us from creative participants into passive consumers of algorithmic spectacle –all while falsely persuading us we’ve been empowered.”
The concerns about the intentions of the companies that are providing GenAI - some of whom may actually be Nazis - is a very real, very present danger. Seemingly every day there are new stories about the ways in which tech companies are rigging algorithms to advance particular viewpoints. This is before you even start to consider that we are a culture based on dominant, hegemonic white supremacist ideas and outputs - and this is the cultural corpus models are learning on. What impact does this have on outputs? Is it perpetuating these dominant ideas even without active manipulation? Cultural critic Chuck Klosterman recently discussed this phenomenon, saying that:
“[it is] the slow cancellation of the future… it does seem to me that the likelihood of new ideas being put into the cultural bloodstream is just going to disappear. The content we have now is just pretty much going to be the content in perpetuity, just sort of repackaged.”
In a recent Pitchfork feature on AI music, Kieran Press-Reynolds bemoans the quality of the music, worrying that:
AI will likely only lead us further down this path of tastelessness. Just like how the ChatGPT invasion has led to wide-scale cheating and a future of illiterates who can’t bear to read or write, some listeners will no longer require even a modicum of humanity as long as the music hits their amygdala in the right spot—making them laugh, cry, feel emotions.
Generative artificial intelligence is here to stay, so it is up to each of us to make a conscious decision as to how we engage with and respond to it. It is natural to have existential anxiety when it comes to a technology that challenges what it means to think and create, given that these feel like cornerstones of the very basis of what it is to be human. On the other hand, to quote Rosalind Krauss: “are we not involved here in clinging to a culture of originals which has no place among the reproductive mediums?” (1985, p. 156). Reproductive mediums, creativity, and originality have coexisted and often flourished long before the days of somebody tracing somebody else’s papyrus. We may now be part of a new future that we’re uncomfortable with, but humanity has definitely been here before.
You might even say that it’s the best of times and the blurst of times.
@-B L U R S T - O F - T I M E S -
The Challenge
Challenge Option 1: Compare the Monkeys
“It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.”
— A monkey with a typewriter, The Simpsons
- Use a generative AI tool (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.) to prompt a recreation or rewriting of a classic work (e.g., the opening of A Tale of Two Cities, a well-known poem, or the lyrics of a song) in a different style or genre.
- Then, write your own human-generated version of the same idea—parody, homage, remix, or reinterpretation.
- Finally, compare the results.
- ○ Which version do you prefer—and why?
- ○ Where is “skill and judgment” most evident?
- ○ Which, if either, feels like it has an aura? (see below for more info on an aura)
You can share both pieces and your reflection in a post, short video, or even a meme. Share your responses here.
Challenge Option 2: Find the Aura
“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space… the aura.”
— Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
- Choose a piece of AI-generated content (art, writing, video, music, etc.) that you think does or does not have the elusive quality Benjamin called aura.
- Briefly describe the work: where you found it, what it is, and why it stood out.
- Then, argue your position:
- ○ Does the piece carry the marks of intellectual effort, judgment, or soul?
- ○ What’s missing (if anything)?
- ○ Would it qualify as “original” by legal or cultural standards?
You can approach this creatively (as a blog post, podcast clip, zine, or TikTok) or analytically—your voice is what matters. Share your responses here.
References
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Benjamin, W. (1999) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Benjamin, W., Illuminations. Pimlico.
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CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1 S.C.R. 339 (SCC). Retrieved from https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2125/index.do
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Krauss, R. (1985). The Originality of the Avant Garde. In The Originality of the Avant Garde and other Modernist Myths. MIT Press.
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Olivares, J. (2025, May 12). Trump reportedly fires head of US Copyright Office after release of Ai report. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/12/trump-fires-copyright-office-shira-perlmutter
Disclosure
The post was (almost) wholly written by me, with the exception of a paragraph (noted within) created by ChatGPT for illustrative purposes. The challenges were created with input from ChatGPT, with further edits and elaboration mine alone.
Your Challenger
Stephen Spong is Western's Copyright Officer as well as a member of Western Libraries' Teaching and Learning team. Prior to this he was the Director of the John and Dotsa Bitove Law Library at Western Law. Over the course of his career, he has worked in a number of libraries in Canada and the United States. He holds a J.D. (Juris Doctor) from Osgoode Hall Law School and a M.I. from the University of Toronto's iSchool.
