Generative AI promised limitless creation—instead, it’s all about summarization

In the early days of generative AI—aka less than two years ago—we flocked to ChatGPT to marvel at all that we could create: silly haikus, Shakespearean sonnets, and Seinfeld scenes. Generative AI promised limitless production, and we used it to make more media, mindlessly. To blink things into existence. But the fun quickly wore off, and a new killer function has taken over: using generative AI to compress existing stuff and restate it in simplified form. We don’t live in a new...