I’m generally quite optimistic about what AI is proving to be capable of, but in the wake of all this progress, there is A LOT of collateral damage. And I’m not even talking about the catastrophic environmental impact (!!). It feels like watching a tornado go through the creative industries this week. Eeeeesh.

Where to start… hmmm? *Picks through the pile of rubble*.

The vibe-coding activity has been fascinating to watch. ArtCraft (a guy and Claude) have made; now I need to be careful here: a recreation of Adobe applications and Pro Tools in what they say is original code. And they’re offering these tools for free, allowing users to escape the subscription models operated by these avarice-soaked companies.

When the fees multiply, try to leave and you cry, that’s Adobeeee. 🎶

In the gaming industry, Sony’s plan to end physical production for new PlayStation releases in January 2028 has been interpreted as a massive middle finger to their customer base. Sony has vowed that all games will be digital, and users will have licensed access to their purchases. If you’ve ever used Netflix before, you’ll understand this is a TEMPORARY arrangement for as long as the platform allows you to access the content you paid for. One day it’s there, the next it’s gone. Customers were rightly appalled by this sentiment, but there wasn’t a lot they could do about it. That is until now! AI has been able to reverse-engineer the instructions that games use to talk to the PS5 console, allowing users to do things with their PS5 previously thought not possible - like backwards game compatibility and maybe porting PS5 games to PC. If you follow this story, you’ll see the phrase “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” everywhere, almost like their transgressive mantra. As Sony rolls out firmware updates to try and stem this thing, hackers keep finding ways around; it’s a game of cat and mouse, being played at machine-speed. Call me boring, but jailbreaking and potentially bricking your PS5 right before the game - no, the cultural moment of the decade, GTA VI - is released is bonkers. FAFO, I guess?

Then you look at what this upheaval means for people working inside the creative industries. UMG’s recent tsunami of redundancies came with a press release about bringing in “new skills and technology” and achieving “greater efficiency”. In completely unrelated news, UMG appointed a senior AI and machine-learning executive in September to work across its operations. AHEM. Anyway, we will never know how far AI has influenced these cuts, but it is alarming to see the sheer amount of talent leaving and the brain drain about to impact these businesses. This is happening beyond music, too. Barclays Bank yesterday described AI as “the icing on the cake” of its technology overhaul, alongside plans to cut thousands of jobs. I’m sure that’s a great comfort to the people losing theirs.

Let’s talk about the PHP vulnerability which exploded across half the internet! AI managed to spot a weakness in the underlying PHP language used across thousands of websites, which had been going unnoticed for years. Following this announcement, a race between cyber security professionals and hackers started while patches had to be installed, resulting in a lot of websites being taken down. And not insignificant ones; we’re talking Wikipedia, several government websites, Nintendo, Sega, Asana, and Orange Telecom, just to name a few. But consider the thousands of sites that don’t have a web dev on hand to fix this, just left to fend off the wolves by themselves. Finding those holes is good news, obviously, and LLMs are perfect for this task. But this is all happening at warp 9. So much for a quiet week if you work in IT.

Obviously, other seismic stuff in the AI/music/creative industry space happened this week (Suno getting sued again, AI slop polluting DSPs), but I feel like my point is made. I can’t decide what I think about one of these stories before the next one arrives. There are things here I want to explore, things I’m incensed about and things I don’t yet know how to make sense of. I get a strong sense of polarisation, as if you’re supposed to be either for or against, with nothing in between. Someone might be looking at an opportunity like it’s virgin snow or a fresh green pasture, while someone else is trying to understand what it means for their job, and their world and life is collapsing around them through no fault of their own.

Ergh… I need to unplug for a bit, take a breath and spend some time outside. Touch actual grass and enjoy this lovely, grey, autumnal weather.

Let’s go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over. ✌️

Enjoy ADE to all who are there. I’m not jealous at all. Actually. So. Yeah.