South Africa, Nov. 26 -- But in these advertising campaigns on TV, billboards on New York streets and on social media, the companies are signalling something larger. Even Apple's new series release, Pluribus, includes the phrase "Made by Humans" in the closing credits. Other brands including H&M and Guess have faced a backlash for using AI brand ambassadors instead of humans.

These gestures suggest we have reached a cultural moment in the evolution of this technology, where people are unsure what creativity means when machines can now produce much of what we see, hear and perhaps even be moved by.

This feels like efficiency - for executives

At a surface level, AI offers efficiencies such as faster production, cheaper visuals, instant p...