Authenticity After AI: Why Provenance Misses the Point
Provenance tracks the tool. It tells you nothing about the mind behind it.
Most conversations about AI and creativity today circle around watermarking, detection, and whether something is "AI-made." It sounds serious and responsible, but it quietly misses the core issue.
AI-generated content is already everywhere and will only become more present. Trying to control it purely at the output level is like trying to stop a waterfall with a cup. So the important question is no longer "Was this made by AI?"
The questions that matter now are:
Where is the human in this work?
What part of you made it into the final piece?
How do we use these tools to amplify human creativity without erasing it?
That's where authenticity lives in the AI era.
The camera example
If we apply today's AI debate to photography, it starts to sound almost funny.
Imagine asking: who really created this photo, the camera or the photographer? How much of the image comes from the lens versus the human eye? What percentage belongs to the camera's "algorithm" versus the person behind it?
We know this is the wrong frame. The camera is a tool. The photographer is the origin. Creativity sits in the choices, timing, framing, and intention. Not in the glass and sensors.
With AI, we suddenly act as if the tool is the author. We talk about "AI-made" as if that tells us anything about meaning, quality, or originality. It doesn't.
The break that changes everything
If we zoom out, humans have always adapted to tools.
We spent years learning to chisel stone. Decades mastering the violin. We shaped our bodies, attention, and patience around what tools could and could not do. For 2.6 million years, from the first shaped stone to this morning when you struggled with your coffee machine, the rule was absolute: Learn the tool's language, or fail.
The tool never learned you. You learned it. Always.
Until now.
AI is a different kind of tool. It can learn your style, your taste, your rhythm. It doesn't just sit in your hand like a chisel or brush. It sits inside your process. It participates in how you think, explore, and decide.
We are entering the era of cognitive tools. Cognitive brushes. Cognitive editors. Cognitive CAD. Cognitive Excel, Word, Slides. Cognitive cameras. They don't simply execute commands; they help you think.
Once tools become cognitive, the old line between "with AI" and "without AI" loses meaning. The process itself becomes shared. And at that point, "Is this AI-made?" becomes a shallow question.
Why provenance is not enough
Most watermarking and detection efforts focus on provenance: who or what produced this file, and whether a model was involved. This can help in some contexts, but it doesn't touch the deeper creative issue. Provenance tracks the tool. It tells you about the pipeline, not the mind behind the work.
Meanwhile, the volume of synthetic media is exploding. Soon there will be more AI-generated content than any person could ever consume. No watermark or law will meaningfully contain that.
So we need to move beyond "Who made this file?" and start asking "Whose thinking is present in this work?"
From provenance to human creative fingerprint
Authenticity in the age of AI is not about proving something was made by a human without assistance. It's about whether the human mind is still present in the outcome.
What matters now is human origin: your intent, your judgment, your sensibility, your way of seeing, your imperfections. These are the things that make a piece feel like it could only have come from you.
If we ignore this and treat all AI involvement as a problem, we miss the actual opportunity: using AI to strengthen the human signal rather than dilute it.
The real risk: sameness
The biggest risk is not that AI replaces human creativity. The deeper risk is that it flattens creativity into sameness.
If everyone uses the same tools, prompts, presets, and models trained on similar data, we drift toward a global average. A polished, familiar aesthetic that starts to repeat. What quietly disappears is not just "art" as a category. It's your specific signature.
This is why it matters to think about preserving and amplifying human origin. Ideas like creative fingerprint, perfect flaw, cognitive distance, creative bitrate, pre-linguistic capture, and copyself are all attempts to keep that human thread intact.
They are not about fighting AI. They are about making sure you don't disappear inside it.
The new question
The future of authenticity is not about banning AI or catching AI output. That world is already gone. The future is about designing ways for humans to stay fully present in AI-powered workflows. Ensuring that powerful cognitive tools still leave room for your fingerprint, your voice, and your way of seeing.
The thread between your mind and the final artifact is what matters now. That thread is the only thing AI cannot generate. So the question is no longer "Is this AI-made?"
The question is: Are you still in it?
If this felt like signal, help it travel. brankolukic.com : copyself_xyz
#AI #GenerativeAI #Creativity #HumanCenteredDesign #DesignLeadership #FutureOfWork
