Progress is meaningless if it silences the human hand.
A triumph built by machines is a theft of human voice. Shock and unease hit me when I learned that Portrait No. 72, a Filipino-made Artificial Intelligence (AI) film, reached the finals of the first AI Film Awards in Dubai. Headlines cheered innovation, applause followed, but I could not celebrate. Human imagination, the blood of every story is quietly pushed aside by code. We marvel at progress, but forget the people who sweat, dream, and breathe life into art.
Pride should have been easy and celebration should have come naturally. But a heavier question lingered in my mind, one that refuses to be silenced: why does an AI film competition even exist in the first place?
AI has crept into almost every creative space. Stories are written, edited, and shared faster than ever. Efficiency is praised as progress, speed as achievement, yet authorship quietly disappears. Experts from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) warn that weak AI governance can harm the public. Misinformation spreads, bias hides in algorithms, and trust erodes. When machines shape stories, memory and identity are at stake.
Culture is consumed without understanding. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reports that AI systems often train on massive datasets from books, films, music, artworks, and scripts, frequently without permission from original creators. Human creativity becomes raw material as innovation turns into extraction. Generative AI can even recreate visuals, styles, or stories that resemble existing works. Ownership blurs as a rtists vanish behind code.
Even the institutions that award art see danger. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the group behind the Oscars, clarified that AI-assisted films may still qualify for awards, but human authorship must remain central. Machines can assist, but cannot replace credited creative roles. Celebrating AI without protecting humans is like applauding shadows for someone’s life work.
Hidden costs linger behind every digital triumph. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), large AI data centers can use up to five million gallons of water per day—enough for a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. Cooling servers evaporates nine liters of water per kilowatt-hour of energy. We cheer efficiency but often ignore the exhaustion of resources, environment, and human effort.
Portrait No. 72 proves we can compete globally, but it exposes a painful truth: machines are celebrated faster than humans who make art live and breathe. Silence fills spaces where voices should roar. Victory is not measured in trophies or applause. True progress comes from defending human imagination, asking hard questions, and standing for creators before machines. Ignoring these boundaries invites a world where stories are told by lines of code, not by lives lived.
One day, applause will echo for stories no one truly lived, films no one truly felt, and art that no longer remembers its maker. That is not progress, that is absence. Machines may create, but only humans give life. The future we applaud is the future we choose.
Written by Maxine Elle Garcia (Gunita), Insight PH
Maxine Elle Garcia (Gunita), Insight PH is a dedicated campus journalist and contributor. Their insightful writing sparks meaningful conversations and keeps the community informed.
