AI as Entertainment

2026-01-13

AI Summary

This study addresses a critical gap in current AI evaluation frameworks, which disproportionately emphasize cultural harms while overlooking the positive role of entertaining AI-generated content in meaning-making, identity formation, and social connection. To redress this imbalance, the work proposes a novel “thick entertainment” framework that integrates humanities-based theory into AI assessment, thereby transcending the prevailing binary paradigm that focuses narrowly on either instrumental intelligence or cultural risk. Through qualitative analysis grounded in humanistic theory and empirical observation of user engagement patterns with AI-generated entertainment, the research demonstrates that entertainment has emerged as a significant and widespread application of AI—particularly among youth populations—offering fresh insights for both technological development and innovative business models in the AI ecosystem.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence
• Humans and AI: Emotional Intelligence
• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic ramifications for generative AI infrastructure and applications
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Generative AI systems are predominantly designed, evaluated, and marketed as intelligent systems which will benefit society by augmenting or automating human cognitive labor, promising to increase personal, corporate, and macroeconomic productivity. But this mainstream narrative about what AI is and what it can do is in tension with another emerging use case: entertainment. We argue that the field of AI is unprepared to measure or respond to how the proliferation of entertaining AI-generated content will impact society. Emerging data suggest AI is already widely adopted for entertainment purposes -- especially by young people -- and represents a large potential source of revenue. We contend that entertainment will become a primary business model for major AI corporations seeking returns on massive infrastructure investments; this will exert a powerful influence on the technology these companies produce in the coming years. Examining current evaluation practices, we identify a critical asymmetry: while AI assessments rigorously measure both benefits and harms of intelligence, they focus almost exclusively on cultural harms. We lack frameworks for articulating how cultural outputs might be actively beneficial. Drawing on insights from the humanities, we propose"thick entertainment"as a framework for evaluating AI-generated cultural content -- one that considers entertainment's role in meaning-making, identity formation, and social connection rather than simply minimizing harm. While AI is often touted for its potential to revolutionize productivity, in the long run we may find that AI turns out to be as much about"intelligence"as social media is about social connection.

Problem

• generative AI
• entertainment
• cultural impact
• evaluation framework
• AI ethics

Innovation

• thick entertainment
• AI-generated content
• cultural evaluation
• entertainment AI
• meaning-making