In a world where your toaster can probably write a sonnet better than your teenage nephew, humanity is having a bit of a mid-life crisis. The BBC reports that a frantic global race is underway to create the ultimate "AI-Free" logo—a sort of "Fair Trade" sticker for things that were actually squeezed out of a biological brain instead of a server farm. From "Proudly Human" to "No A.I.", we’re witnessing the birth of the "Cage-Free, Grass-Fed" movement for creativity.

The problem, as experts point out, is that "AI-free" is about as well-defined as "low-fat" was in the 90s. Is your book still "Human Written" if you used a spellchecker? Does a film count as "AI-free" if the director used a GPS to get to the set?

Companies like Not By AI and Books by People are currently duking it out to see who gets to be the official arbiter of human-ness. Some offer badges you can just download (honor system, guys!), while others like Proudly Human promise a rigorous auditing process that presumably involves checking your manuscript for carbon-based sweat stains and existential dread.

Even Hollywood is getting in on the act. The thriller Heretic proudly declared in its credits that "No generative AI was used in the making of this film," which is the cinematic equivalent of a restaurant bragging that their soup doesn't contain any ground-up plastic.

As AI becomes more ubiquitous than microplastics, the "AI-Free" logo might soon be the only way to tell if that heartfelt LinkedIn post was written by a person or a very polite algorithm having a hallucination. Grab your "Certified 100% Human" stickers now, before the robots figure out how to forge those too.

Source: BBC News