AI is creating a 'human premium' for art made by people. But will it hold?

The music platform Deezer says 44% of tracks uploaded to it are AI-generated. Its research also found that 97% of listeners couldn't tell what was AI-generated and what wasn't. But here's a third statistic: more than half of those surveyed said they did care if it was made by AI. They want humans to be involved.

Daniel Susskind, an economics professor at King's College London, says many of us place huge value on the human role in making art. It's what makes the creative process different from more functional, practical tasks, he thinks.

"I was once in a room of accountants, and one of them stood up and said, 'My clients come to me for the personal touch, the human process'," he remembers. "And I said, 'That isn't why they come to you, they come because they want their taxes done properly'."

But it's different with art, he says. "If I walk into the Sistine Chapel and look at the ceiling, I think not only is that extraordinarily beautiful, but isn't it amazing that a human hand, flesh and blood like my own, came up with that. A mind like mine dreamt that up," he says.

As Susskind describes it, what we value isn't just the destination, it's the knowledge that a human - one of us - got us there. We can wonder at that achievement.