Where Is The Line? AI Is Already Rewriting Culture, Creativity And Journalism

It’s tempting to talk about AI as if the big shifts are somewhere on the horizon. Something that’s coming. Something we still have time to prepare for.

That’s not the reality anymore.

The future everyone’s worried about has quietly arrived. While we debate hypotheticals, the cultural, creative and journalistic foundations of the internet are already being rewritten by AI systems that don’t wait for permission.

Sora 2 is generating videos of celebrities who are no longer alive. The world’s biggest YouTuber is publicly questioning whether millions of creators have a future. And Google’s AI is quietly cutting publishers out of the loop.

These aren’t fringe stories. They’re the early signs of a power shift that is happening in real time.

Sora 2 And The Resurrection Of The Famous Dead

When OpenAI unveiled Sora 2, it was positioned as a breakthrough for video generation. Write a prompt, get a fully formed video back. Fast, flexible and realistic.

It didn’t take long for people to start experimenting with the likenesses of famous people who have passed away. Within days, videos appeared using deceased celebrities to sell products and push messages. There was no consent. No context. Just output.

Zelda Williams, daughter of the late Robin Williams, called it “gross.” She posted publicly begging people to stop puppeteering her father for clicks. SAG-AFTRA backed her position, pointing out that these synthetic performances are built on the labour and legacy of real people. They’re not acts of creativity. They’re mimicry powered by training data.

The reaction wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about cultural boundaries being quietly bulldozed. When anyone can revive a famous face and voice with a few words, the question of what’s allowed becomes blurred.

Creators Are Watching The Ground Shift

While the headlines focus on celebrities, creators are asking harder questions.

MrBeast, the most watched YouTuber on the planet, openly called generative video “scary.” He’s not scared of a tool. He’s worried about what happens to millions of creators when AI-generated videos become indistinguishable from his own.

His entire model is built on creating high stakes, real world moments. If an AI can replicate that visual quality, even without the danger or the stunt, it chips away at the unique value that makes him stand out.

This isn’t a small creator panicking. This is the biggest figure in the creator economy interrupting his usual content promotion to raise the alarm. It matters.

Behind the scenes, AI is already deeply embedded in content creation. Tools like Veo help generate videos. Auto-subtitle features and AI script assistants make production cheaper and faster. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using tools to boost creativity.

The line gets blurry when AI stops being a tool and starts becoming the creator. When likenesses are revived, entire scenes are generated and stories are told by systems trained on other people’s work, the creative economy shifts from participation to automation.

Journalism’s New Problem

While creators and celebrities are wrestling with cultural and economic questions, online journalism is facing its own existential problem.

Google has started rolling out AI Overviews in Australia. When users search for something, Google’s AI writes its own summary and places it above the search results. It often answers the question directly. Users don’t need to click through to the original site.

For publishers, that’s devastating. Referral traffic drops. Ad revenue follows. Evergreen articles and how-to guides are being summarised away.

Add to that the BBC’s reporting that Gen Z increasingly gets its news through TikTok and AI-powered feeds. Young audiences aren’t visiting homepages or browsing headlines. They’re being fed summarised, clipped and algorithmically filtered content inside closed ecosystems.

The distribution layer is being captured. If you control the layer where people find and consume content, you control who gets seen, who gets credited and who gets paid.

This Isn’t Coming. It’s Here.

Sora 2’s ability to resurrect the dead for ads isn’t theoretical. It’s happening.
MrBeast’s fears about AI content aren’t abstract. He said it plainly.
Publishers losing traffic to AI summaries isn’t a prediction. It’s live.

We are living through the shift already.

The uncomfortable truth is that the technology has moved faster than the cultural, legal and economic frameworks around it. We don’t have clear rules. We don’t have clear norms. But we do have platforms and companies making choices that reshape culture and information flows whether we like it or not.

Where Is The Line?

The key question now isn’t whether AI will cross the line. It’s who gets to draw it.

Do we leave it to the platforms building the models and distribution systems? Do we leave it to regulators trying to catch up? Do creators, publishers and audiences push back and define it themselves?

These aren’t questions for some distant future. They’re here now. Every deepfake of a celebrity in an ad. Every AI video that mimics human content. Every AI search summary that cuts out a journalist. They’re the moments that draw the map of what comes next.

The reality is already here. Most people just haven’t noticed how fast the ground is shifting beneath them.

At Intellisite.co, we help businesses navigate this new landscape strategically, not reactively. The line isn’t fixed. But ignoring it is not an option.