AI is about to change media forever, but not in the way people are talking about. It's about to get much weirder. We're entering the age of on command media, not on demand, on command, meaning the content didn't exist before you asked for it. You command it into existence.
Soon, each of us will have an AI agent whose sole job is to entertain us, like a digital genie. And that means most content won't be made for a mass audience anymore. It'll be made for an audience of one. Total. People have been talking about audiences shrinking for years. Mass audiences, niche audiences, personal feeds. But this is something different. This is the first time audiences disappear entirely.
Imagine this. One night, you want to watch a rom-com like When Harry Met Sally, set in 1970s Paris, make it animated. Put it under water. Your AI spins it up while you're making popcorn. No studio, no release, no audience. Just you.
That sounds like progress, right? But there's a trade-off and it's been building for a long time. It used to be we all watched the same things, the same shows, same movies. You'd come back on Monday and the conversation was already set. You didn't have to look for common ground because it had been given to you.
Then the number of options exploded. Cable, internet, forums. People started finding their own corners, their own interests, their own people. Then the algorithm showed up. And now, it's not just what you choose. It's what you're shown. Your feeds start shaping your view of the world. The version of reality you see is not the one I see.
But even now, we still have overlap. Big moments still break through. Barbie, Squid Game. We still have things we all share, things we talk about. But once content becomes generated, that thread disappears fast. We're entering the generated era where nothing exists until you ask for it. And the thing you're watching doesn't exist for anyone else.
Your friends won't care about what you're watching because it wasn't made for them. Telling someone about your favorite AI-generated show will feel like telling them about your dreams. Vivid to you but meaningless to everyone else.
We used to all see the same world. Then the algorithm showed us different ones. Now, we're generating our own. And if we're all watching different worlds, are we even living in the same one?
