For the past month, over 11 thousand members of the Writers Guild of America have been on strike. While it’s not their main focus, the writers are calling for industry-wide regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), which many fear could decrease or eliminate their role in the creative process. The AI chatbot ChatGPT already has a writing credit for an episode of South Park, and while its use in that episode was for satirical purposes, it’s easy to imagine how auto-generated scripts could gain a foothold in the future of entertainment.

With the seemingly insatiable demand for streaming content, companies have to figure out how to produce more while keeping costs under control. Enter AI and the promise of inexhaustible free labor. If you’re a Hollywood executive whose job is to make as much money as possible, that’s an alluring prospect. Algorithms are already used to determine what content should be produced, so why not use algorithms to create the content as well? But the real costs to consider here aren’t just financial.

The text that ChatGPT generates is based on trends it finds in existing sources, which means that the formulas and clichés that show up most often are likely to be repeated. The concern is that this recycling of what’s been done before will propel Hollywood down the path of mediocrity. A lot of the arguments I’ve seen against AI screenwriting have been related to the quality of the final product, but maybe we’re thinking about this too much from our role as consumers. Curiously, I haven’t seen as much about the implications for writers themselves (aside from economic matters like unemployment and compensation). I believe the heart of the matter is something more central to our humanity: why we create in the first place.

There are a number of reasons why writers and other artists are driven to create. Some use art as a form of self-expression. Some have a story to tell and ideas to share. Some want to make the world a more beautiful place. Some want to inspire others and touch their lives in a meaningful way. Some simply love their craft and enjoy the process of creating. Whatever the reason, art at its core is an expression of our humanity. When artists create art that is good, we all get to share in that joy of creation, and the whole culture is enriched as a result.

The problem with relying on AI to create art for us is that it undermines the very things that give art its life. A key part of being human is the ability to dream and imagine new things, and the more we try to hand that responsibility over to computers, the more machine-like we become. By focusing so much on speed, efficiency, and cranking out product, we forget that the process of creating—while agonizing, tedious, frustrating, and fruitless at times—is where the real magic happens. The act of creation is where the Spirit moves, and working alongside the Creator helps us more clearly see the truth of our existence. Trying to take shortcuts and “skip to the end” throws all of that out the window and puts a utilitarian spin on the whole exercise.

No matter how advanced AI becomes, it will never be able to replace the role of a thinking, feeling human in the arts—unless we let it. If all we’re seeking from our media is the next diversion, an AI-generated script that’s “good enough” may fit the bill. It won’t matter to us where our media comes from as long as it entertains us. The farther we as a society drift away from our understanding of what it means to be human, the less it will matter to us whether our media speaks to the truth of the human experience. The best thing we can do for the arts is to not settle for mediocrity and to support the artists (not robots) who help make us all more human.