The Creator Isn’t Real—But the Conversation Is

What Happens When Creativity Isn’t Human?

She looks confident. Composed. Iconic, even.

Her curls are flawless, her stare intentional. The gold hoops say power; the blazer says business. You see her and think, “I know her.” But here’s the twist—you don’t. She’s not real.

This month’s Coffea cover was created entirely by artificial intelligence. No model call. No photoshoot. No makeup artist. Just a prompt, a vision, and a few lines of code. But the moment we saw her, we knew: this cover wasn’t just about testing technology. It was a portal into a deeper conversation.

One that creatives, entrepreneurs, and storytellers everywhere are grappling with:

When the creator isn’t real, what happens to the meaning behind the creation?

Welcome to the Age of Generative Media

In the last two years, AI platforms like OpenAI’s DALL·E, ChatGPT, and Midjourney have redefined how we approach content creation. Images, videos, scripts, logos, voiceovers—you name it—can now be created in minutes. In 2024 alone, Adobe reported that over 43% of designers surveyed used AI tools in their workflow [¹]. What once required entire teams can now happen with a well-crafted prompt.

For independent creators and small businesses, this sounds like a dream. Imagine cutting costs, increasing output, and matching the scale of larger media giants.

But for others? It’s complicated.

Efficiency vs. Essence

“AI can generate the ‘what,’ but it doesn’t always understand the ‘why,’” says Marsha Carter, a creative director and founder of her own boutique agency. “There’s a soul in storytelling. It comes from lived experience, cultural nuance, emotion. You can’t replicate that with code. Not yet, anyway.”

And she’s right. Human creativity is messy. It's rooted in heartbreak, in childhood dreams, in losses, wins, and everything in between. Can a machine truly mimic that depth—or are we just teaching it how to approximate feeling?

For the Coffea audience—emerging entrepreneurs, digital storytellers, and community-driven brand builders—efficiency is vital. Many are running businesses from home, balancing kids, day jobs, and hustle culture. But the essence is what sets them apart. A clothing brand rooted in a grandmother’s legacy. A podcast that started because no one else was telling “our” stories. A magazine (like this one) built from the desire to amplify underrepresented voices.

AI can help push those dreams forward—but it can’t be the dream itself. Efficiency may build the structure, but essence fills it with meaning. That’s the real magic of Coffea’s community: it’s not just about making more content, it’s about making honest content.

The Ethical Crossroads

Of course, there are real risks:

• Bias baked into algorithms [2]

• Job displacement in media, design, and journalism

• Plagiarism and mimicry without consent

• Creative dilution in a flood of lookalike content

These aren’t small concerns. As more brands lean into AI-generated content, the line between what’s made by hand and what’s made by code becomes harder to trace. That’s why industry standards and creator protections are essential.

Let’s take Coffea’s platform as an example. Our goal is to elevate real voices. Imagine an AI starts mimicking those voices, pulling language from the very entrepreneurs we feature. A wellness coach's voice could be copied into hundreds of AI-generated blogs. A Black-owned candle company’s signature phrasing replicated in ad copy by someone who’s never poured wax in their life.

This isn’t a hypothetical—it’s happening. And the creative credit is being blurred. That’s where ethics must lead innovation. If the next generation of creators is to thrive, we need to ask: Who gets to profit from Black brilliance, cultural nuance, and lived experience when anyone can replicate the style without living the story?

It’s not just about compensation. It’s about truth.

That’s why Coffea exists—not just to keep pace with trends, but to hold space for the real ones.

What Now?

Let’s be honest—this cover could easily be a portrait from a real shoot. The subject looks like someone you might follow on Instagram. But she isn’t. She was imagined by AI.

And that begs a question creatives can no longer avoid: What happens to culture when code starts to create it?

In this article, which was written 99.9% using AI, we explore the rising tension between authentic artistry and artificial efficiency. We give you a few questions to ask yourself and some thoughts to explore. Some believe AI democratizes creativity. Others fear it flattens it.

We even turned the experiment on ourselves: our visuals and headline were born from prompts, not people. The result? A conversation that feels more urgent than ever.

So now, we ask you: Is this innovation or imitation? Freedom or fiction?

Maybe it’s both. Maybe it depends on how we show up.

Because whether AI is the future of creation or just a moment in its timeline, what matters most is how real we stay in the process.

Sources: [1] Adobe Creative Trends Report 2024: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/trends.html[2] MIT Technology Review on AI Bias: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/07/ai-bias-ethics-creative-industries[3] Wired, "Can AI Replace Creatives?": https://www.wired.com/story/can-ai-replace-creatives/[4] Christie’s, "Osinachi NFT Artist Profile": https://www.christies.com/features/Osinachi-NFT-artist-profile-11729-1.aspx