A filmmaker removes a mic boom out of frame with one swipe. The shot repairs itself. No one sees the change, and no one credits the tool.
That same style of work now plays out across the creative stack. A podcaster’s pause is shaved by Descript’s AI editor. A copywriter’s tagline is tuned for sentiment by ChatGPT. A colorist’s grade is pre-balanced before they touch a wheel. Every frame, sentence, and sound moves through invisible intermediaries designed to smooth, predict, and complete.
These aren’t “AI projects.” They’re becoming the everyday defaults of production and together, they’re redrawing what it means to make something.
Across platforms, disclosure has become a form of negotiation. Netflix issued new GenAI rules that separate assistive use from creative substitution. Adobe quietly retreats from its Firefly deal after artists revolt. Reddit sues data brokers for laundering scraped posts. The invisible layer is where control now lives and it’s buried inside interfaces, contracts, and compute.
This Deep Cut follows that layer from the tool palette to the platform backend. It maps the convergence of systems that no longer just help us make things, but decide what gets made at all.
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