2025 began with the death of iconic filmmaker David Lynch. A month later, The New Yorker celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Throughout the year, I often found myself wondering whether the approach to art and writing that each represents – Lynch’s surreal settings, grotesque absurdities and nonlinear plots; The New Yorker’s stubborn insistence on the value of deep, long-form reporting – had any future.

The Art and Culture desk’s coverage throughout the year reflected this anxiety.

People are reading less (is there any appetite for 10,000-word profiles?); Hollywood consolidation continues apace (who would take a chance on the next Lynch?); the nation does almost nothing to support its artists (at this point, do you have to come from money to be one?).

And it’s all happening under the specter of generative AI, which has been rapidly transforming the way we read, write and learn.

After a study came out in October showing that, for the first time, 50% of new articles on the internet were being generated by AI, the writing on the wall for, well, writing, seemed clear.

Not so fast, said digital and data studies scholar Francesco Agnellini. AI-generated texts might be spreading like wildfire, he pointed out, but it seems to be most useful for the type of formulaic, bland writing that we care about least – how-to guides and listicles, ad copy and game recaps.

With people immersed in so much AI-generated content, “texts that display originality, voice and stylistic intention are likely to become even more meaningful,” he wrote.

I thought more about the types of stories that someone like David Lynch dreamed up: What would he have done if he’d written a script, and then had let ChatGPT’s feedback guide him?

I pasted Lynch’s “The Elephant Man” into ChatGPT, and told the bot to evaluate the script, but to consider it as if it knew nothing about Lynch’s work or his accolades.

Here’s how it responded:

• This script is extremely long and heavy with exposition, voice-over, and overly detailed stage directions
• The mix of lyrical, Shakespearean and modern speech is inconsistent
• There’s an over-reliance on internal thoughts. Heavy introspection is a red flag
• Chance of acceptance: not high in its current form

And with that, a flicker of hope. Time magazine may have anointed the “Architects of AI” as its 2025 Person of the Year, but here’s to 2026 being the year of the human – with all of the time, messiness and creative breakthroughs that it entails.

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