Toward a Media Ecology of GenAI: Creative Work in the Era of Automation

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is a complex and compelling machine learning technology that has sparked widespread social debate about its limits and possibilities. An analytical view from media ecology offers a remarkable framework to identify interrelationships between this emerging technology's problems and challenges. This article delimits the features of GenAI as a medium attached to media ecology and resorts to the conceptual tools of the laws of media (Four Effects) put together by Marshall and Eric McLuhan to reflect on creative work in the era of automation: amplification (or enhancement), obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal. Among the issues addressed are the implications of Gen AI as a technology for encoding representations, the loss of referentiality and traceability of works, the future of intellectual property and its impact on creative industries, and the return and revaluation stand out of shared experiences or performance.