A Creator in a World of Machines

Sometimes I stop. Just like that. I look at what I have made. And it occurs to me that there are those who would say about it, “This is not even real.” Because a machine helped in it. Because I do not speak in my own voice. Because it is artificial.

But then I always ask back: What does it mean to be real? Where does the human begin? Where does creation begin?

Imagine yourself in a medieval room. You are a writer. On your table there is only a candle. A pen. A piece of parchment. You write a line, and you feel that it is important. Something has been born in you. A thought that you do not want to let go. But if you want others to read it, then you have to write it again. Then again. And again. Because there is no printing. There is no copying. There is no internet.

There is only you and the time that the silence steals from you. Today a single push of a button is enough. A single movement. A single moment. And what you create can reach the whole world.

You know, I cannot sing. And not because I did not want to learn it. Not because I was lazy or I was not interested. But because physically I am not able to do it. My voice does not bend that way. My throat cannot bear it. And I am not alone in this. Many are like this. But even so they feel, they think, they dream, and they would like to say what is inside them.

This is why we turn to tools. The synthesizer, the music editor, and AI are not cheating. Not a substitute. These are my hands when I do not have the strength to write. My voice when I do not have my own voice. The possibility that I may finally speak, if not otherwise then like this.

And you know what? This is not only about me. Today even a phone is enough to record what you feel. A sound. An image. A thought. You may keep it for yourself, but you may also share it. And in that moment, others also see, others also hear what you do.

The machines make all this possible. But they are not the ones who dream. You were the one who took out the camera. You were the one who pressed the record button. If there is no microphone, there is no sound. If there is no software, there is no music, there is no film. If there is no camera, there is no record, no memory. The machines carry forward the sound, the image, the feeling. But these were not born from nothing. We built them. We wrote them. We dreamed them into the world.

The films that you watch, the scenes at which you cry or laugh, would be nowhere if there had not been a camera, a microphone, an editing program. And yes, the dinosaurs in the cinema are not real either. But they still live in us, because someone dreamed them, and there was a tool with which to call them to life.

The machine is not independent. It does not create by itself. It does not speak instead of you. It only begins to live if you touch it. If you do not press a button, if you do not ask anything from it, nothing happens. Even this sentence would not exist if I had not pressed the first key.

The machine only answers and executes, but the real creator is me, the real creators are us.