The World is Changing: AI For Creativity

Overview

Terms, not technology

The essay's throughline: every creative-technology panic in history was settled not by stopping the technology, but by setting the terms — credit, consent, compensation.

In the X post, Jeffrey Katzenberg (@jeffreykWNDR) makes a plain claim: no creative-technology panic was ever settled by stopping the technology. Each was settled by setting the terms — credit, consent, compensation.

The pattern is old. In 1906 John Philip Sousa warned the phonograph would replace human skill; his campaign helped produce the Copyright Act of 1909. Synchronized sound ended the era of the orchestra pits musicians — and grew the art form larger than before. Kodak and Blockbuster resisted new tools and fell; Apple and Netflix embraced them and grew.

He has stood on both sides of it. At Disney he watched films of 125,000 hand-drawn cels give way to CAPS, built with Pixar, and then to Toy Story. At DreamWorks he ended hand-drawn animation himself. His summary, borrowed from George Lucas: it is not the how, it is the why.

The line he draws now is between reasoning and creating — the first evaluative, the second generative, with taste filling the gap where deduction runs out. Silicon Valley perfected the first; Hollywood practiced the second for a century. His proposal joins the two: the north builds with the south's storytellers — WndrCo has backed 50+ founders on that bet — on agreed terms. The 2023 strikes fought for the same terms Sousa fought for in 1906.

The essay's historical and quantitative statements are modelled below as claims with explicit evidence status — post-reported, not independently verified. The six-step HowTo (six path-forward steps) and the terms checklist distill what the essay asks its two cities to do.

A century of “the terms, not the technology”

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1906

The Menace of Mechanical Music

Sousa warns the phonograph is “a substitute for human skill, intelligence and soul” — a fight really about money.

1909

The Copyright Act

He doesn’t stop the technology; he changes the terms. Credit and compensation get written into law.

1986

Luxo Jr.

A lamp hops across a screen and proves a computer can make an audience believe a character.

1995

Toy Story

The first fully computer-animated feature carries real emotional weight. The canvas expands again.

2016

The hand-drawn sunset

DreamWorks is sold; WndrCo is founded. Sunset the old tools, back the next 50+ founders.

2023

The strikes

Writers and actors fight for credit, consent, and compensation — the same things Sousa fought for.

2026

“AI For Creativity”

North has the tools, the south has the soul. Set the terms; don’t fight the technology.

Section index

Section	Focus	Steps
1 · An animated scene, a Luxo Jr. memory	The demo, the text, “Certainly not”	—
2 · Hollywood's fear is really love	Resistance as love of craft	—
3 · Sousa and the phonograph	1906; the Copyright Act of 1909	—
4 · The menace of "canned music"	Pit musicians and synchronized sound	—
5 · Kodak, Blockbuster, Apple, Netflix	Resist vs embrace	—
6 · What I learned from Walt Disney	125,000 cels; principles timeless, tools not	1
7 · CAPS: technology expands the canvas	Disney × Pixar	—
8 · Toy Story and the hand-drawn sunset	DreamWorks goes fully computer-animated	—
9 · "It's not the how, it's the why"	Lucas; taste and imagination endure	—
10 · Reasoning is not creating	The AI model’s distinction	1
11 · A path forward: the north and the south	WndrCo; credit, consent, compensation	2
12 · The terms, not the technology	Settled by terms; the tools trap	1
13 · What I learned from Steve Jobs	Apple’s DNA	—
14 · What I see coming soon	More films, more seats, new forms	1

HowTo

A path forward for AI and creativity

The essay's six path-forward moves as a schema:HowTo with absolute step IRIs — each step carries its What, Why-it-matters, and How.

A path forward for AI and creativity

The essay’s six path-forward moves as executable steps: agree on the terms before the tools, build with storytellers, spend the energy on the terms, learn to wield the new instruments, judge the work by whether the audience believes it, and work from the reasoning/creating gap.

Agree on the terms before the tools

What: Before debating what fairness requires, get everyone to agree that there should be terms at all. Why it matters: The tools-versus-no-tools argument is a trap: the essay's history — Sousa and the phonograph, the pit musicians and sound, the 2023 strikes — was never settled by the technology but by the terms. How: Table the binary argument. Start every AI-and-creativity conversation by writing down the starting frame the essay names: credit, consent, compensation — then argue about what fairness requires within it.

Build with storytellers, not on top of them

What: Include the creative community in AI products by design — with credit, with consent, and with compensation. Why it matters: The knowledge of what makes a story matter lives with the people whose life's work informed the very models being built — and taste, the essay argues, is not something that can be synthesized; it is uniquely human. How: Commission, license, and credit creative input into AI products: name the artists, get their consent, pay them. Treat storytellers as builders of the system, not as raw material under it.

Spend the energy on the terms, not on making AI disappear

What: Accept that AI is not going away, and redirect the energy spent trying to make it disappear into deciding the terms on which it will exist. Why it matters: Hollywood's resistance is love of craft — but fighting the technology itself repeats the pattern the essay says ends in irrelevance, while the north needs something it cannot build and cannot buy: genuine creativity. The terms are everything. How: Ask of each AI initiative: what are the terms for the artists whose work trained it? Negotiate those terms the way Sousa did — as the price of using the work, not as a veto on the technology.

Learn to wield the new instruments

What: Artists: pick up the new tools and use them, rather than waiting for the engineers to define what they're for. Why it matters: The essay's pattern: Edison invented the motion picture but made terrible movies; it took Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, and others to make movies emotional. The artists who learn to wield these instruments will do things the engineers never dreamed of — they always have. How: Treat the model as an instrument, not an author: bring the taste, intuition, and vision the essay says deduction can't supply, and aim for what only you could say.

Judge the work by whether the audience believes it

What: Evaluate creative work — human or AI-assisted — by whether the audience believes the character and feels what was intended, not by which tools made it. Why it matters: This is Walt's principle from the Disney archives: he talked about character, emotion, and bold choices until a scene genuinely moved people, never about pencils or paintbrushes. Principles are timeless; tools are not. How: For each piece, ask: does the audience believe the character? Does the scene move people? If yes, the tools did their job — whatever they were.

Work from the reasoning/creating gap

What: Treat the line between reasoning and creating as real: use AI where it is strong — deducing, evaluating, optimizing, pattern-matching — and keep the creating with people. Why it matters: The essay's distinction: reasoning operates on what already exists toward a conclusion already implied; creating produces something that didn't exist, with no single right answer. Even leading technologists acknowledge we are not across that line yet, and no one in the field can articulate a scientific path to crossing it. Understanding the gap is where common ground lives. How: Route analytical work to the model and generative authorship to people: let the statistics do the statistics, and let the soul do the soul.

Checklist

The AI-for-creativity terms checklist

Two groups drawn from the essay: the terms, and the craft. Tick each item off as you go.

§1 The terms

Everyone agrees first that there should be terms

Storytellers are included by design — with credit, consent, compensation

Human creative work is recognized as having a price that must be paid

Energy goes into deciding the terms AI exists on, not making AI disappear

§2 The craft

Work is judged by whether the audience believes it, not by the tools

Artists are learning to wield the new instruments

The reasoning/creating line is treated as real — common ground in the gap

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Reader questions answered strictly from the post — 11 named answers.

Who wrote "The World is Changing: AI For Creativity," and when was it posted?▼

Jeffrey Katzenberg — display name "JK," handle @jeffreykWNDR, a verified account — posted it on X at 11:00 AM on Sep 23, 2026. No timezone is shown on the page. It is a text-only post; no photos, video, or other media are attached.

What 2023 prediction does Katzenberg stand behind?▼

In 2023, he said the new AI tools would cut the time and cost of producing world-class animation by as much as ninety percent within three years. He writes that some colleagues were alarmed and many were furious. The prediction is his reported claim, not an independently verified fact.

Why does he say Hollywood's resistance to AI is really love?▼

Because he has watched gifted animators rebuild a single second of film for the tenth time, and sat in screening rooms where four years of people's labor played out in minutes — knowing the name of every person who brought those images to life. The creative process is a calling, he writes: from the outside the pushback looks like obstruction, but from the inside it is love. People do not fight this hard for things they don't care about.

What happened with Sousa and the phonograph in 1906?▼

John Philip Sousa — described in the post as the most famous composer in America — published an essay titled "The Menace of Mechanical Music," warning the phonograph would become "a substitute for human skill, intelligence and soul." Katzenberg argues Sousa's fight was really about money: the machines were playing his compositions and their builders weren't paying him. His campaign helped create the Copyright Act of 1909. He did not stop the technology; he changed the terms under which it could use his work.

What happened to the orchestra-pit musicians when sound came to the movies?▼

Tens of thousands of musicians had made their living in the orchestra pits of movie houses, scoring every film live, every night. When the soundtrack arrived, one composer's work went into thousands of theaters, and the union fought back with newspaper ads against "canned music." They were right — those pit jobs did not come back. But sound also gave the world the movie musical, the modern score, sound effects, sound design, and audio engineering: an art form vastly larger than the one it disrupted, which helped keep Hollywood at the forefront of world entertainment.

What is the point of the Kodak/Blockbuster versus Apple/Netflix comparison?▼

It is the essay's refrain: to resist technology is to risk irrelevance — "Just look at Kodak or Blockbuster" — while to embrace technology is to open doors of new possibility — "Just consider Apple and Netflix."

What did Disney's CAPS change, and what came of it?▼

Disney co-developed the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) with a young Northern California company called Pixar, replacing hand-painted cels with CGI. Katzenberg's examples: The Little Mermaid's shimmering final scene, Beauty and the Beast's sweeping ballroom, Aladdin's vast Cave of Wonders and the Magic Carpet as an intricate character, and The Lion King's stampede. His verdict: technology didn't diminish the craft, it expanded the canvas and gave artists more room to create.

What is the difference between reasoning and creating, in the essay's terms?▼

Reasoning is evaluative and analytical: it operates on what already exists — facts, premises, evidence — and moves toward a conclusion already implied by the input. Creating is generative: it produces something that didn't exist before, with no single right answer waiting to be found; taste, intuition, and vision fill the gap where deduction runs out. Silicon Valley has been perfecting reasoning; Hollywood has been practicing creating for more than a century. AI today operates almost entirely on the reasoning side — brilliant at deducing, evaluating, optimizing, and pattern-matching — but without the human things: empathy, devotion, serendipity, the creativity of a person trying to say something only they could say. "It is statistics, not soul."

What do "the north" and "the south" mean in the essay?▼

"The north" is Northern California — Silicon Valley, where the AI technology is being built and where Katzenberg co-founded WndrCo. "The south" is Southern California — Hollywood, 350 miles away, where the creative soul lives. He notes the last great animation revolution also came from the north: Pixar was forged in Silicon Valley's technological breakthroughs, not Hollywood's studio conventions.

What terms does Katzenberg demand for AI and creative work?▼

Credit, consent, and compensation — "Build this with the storytellers. Not on top of them." He ties this to the 2023 strikes, when writers and actors walked out fighting for the very things Sousa fought for in 1906: consent, compensation, the basic recognition that human creative work has a price that must be paid. The terms of that fight are still being negotiated, he writes, but the principle is older than any of us.

What does he see coming soon?▼

As barriers and costs come down: more films made, not fewer; studios taking more risks; more seats at the table; and entirely new forms of storytelling. He points to Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Peter Jackson, who embraced new visual tools as instruments rather than shortcuts and expanded cinema — and to the pattern of synchronized sound, color, and computer animation each redefining the medium's boundaries and growing it larger. His close: "The north has the new tools. The south has the creative soul. The best future will draw on the best of both worlds."

Glossary

Core technical glossary

Fourteen terms as a schema:DefinedTermSet.

Mechanical music

John Philip Sousa's 1906 term for music reproduced by machines such as the phonograph, which he called "a substitute for human skill, intelligence and soul."

"The Menace of Mechanical Music"

Sousa's 1906 essay warning against the phonograph. Katzenberg's reading: the essay was really about money — the machines played Sousa's compositions without paying him — and the campaign around it helped create the Copyright Act of 1909.

The law Sousa's campaign helped create. In the essay's telling, it is the model outcome: the technology was not stopped, but the terms under which it could use creators' work were changed.

"Canned music"

The musicians' union's term for recorded film soundtracks. The union took out newspaper ads across the country warning against it — one showing a mechanical man tearing the strings out of a harp while an angel wept.

Orchestra pits

Where tens of thousands of musicians made their living before synchronized sound, scoring every film live, every night, in movie houses in towns all over the world. When the soundtrack arrived, those jobs did not come back.

CAPS (Computer Animation Production System)

The system Disney co-developed with a young Northern California company called Pixar, replacing hand-painted cels with CGI — the essay's case study for technology expanding the creative canvas rather than diminishing the craft.

Luxo Jr.

Pixar's 1986 short. Katzenberg invokes it as his benchmark for a computer-animated 3D character taking a breath and seeming, against all reason, to have life — the feeling the AI-generated animated scene in the essay's opening gave him.

WndrCo

The investment firm Katzenberg co-founded in Northern California in 2016 after selling DreamWorks. The essay says it has backed more than 50 founders building the next generation of technology.

Taste

In the essay's terms, the human capacity that fills the gap where deduction runs out — alongside intuition and vision. "Taste is not something that can be synthesized, it is uniquely human."

Reasoning

The essay's definition, relayed from a leading AI model: a fundamentally evaluative and analytical cognitive mode that operates on what already exists — facts, premises, evidence — and moves toward a conclusion already implied by the input. What Silicon Valley has been perfecting, and where AI today operates almost entirely.

Creating

The essay's definition: a fundamentally generative cognitive mode that produces something that didn't exist before, with no single right answer waiting to be found. What Hollywood has been practicing for more than a century, and what AI — "statistics, not soul" — has not yet reached.

"Statistics, not soul"

The essay's line about bot-generated art: when the bot generates a piece of art, it is not trying to communicate anything — it emulates things that have been done. By contrast, human creativity is about doing something new, driven by empathy, devotion, and serendipity.

The north and the south

The essay's shorthand: "the north" is Northern California / Silicon Valley, where the AI tools are being built; "the south" is Southern California / Hollywood, 350 miles away, where the creative soul lives. The best future, he argues, draws on the best of both worlds.

Quibi

Katzenberg's self-deprecating aside when admitting he doesn't have all the answers: "(take Quibi, for one!)"

The laboratory

Knowledge graph & query workbench

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AI-for-creativity post

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About This Page

How It Was Created

This page was generated from the public X post The World is Changing: AI For Creativity by Jeffrey Katzenberg (@jeffreykWNDR), posted at 11:00 AM on Sep 23, 2026 (no timezone is shown on the page). The RDF Turtle file is the source of truth; every FAQ, glossary term, HowTo step, checklist item, query card, and graph node on this page is derived from the parsed graph. The post is text-only — no media is attached. Engagement counts observed at read time (602 replies · 1K reposts · 5.9K likes · 8.2K bookmarks · 6.5M views) are recorded as a platform-observed snapshot, not asserted as current state.

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The World is Changing:AI For Creativity

Terms, not technology

A century of “the terms, not the technology”

Section index

A path forward for AI and creativity

A path forward for AI and creativity

The AI-for-creativity terms checklist

§1 The terms

§2 The craft

Frequently asked questions

Core technical glossary

Knowledge graph & query workbench

KG Explorer

⚙ Advanced Settings

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About This Page

How It Was Created

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The World is Changing:
AI For Creativity