Good day . A new survey says more than half of creatives who use AI have used it on key client work without telling the client, and most of them don’t think they needed to. Also today: Claude and Codex users getting blocked for hacking their own TVs, AI voices in hoax 911 calls, Paramount’s pitch for cheaper movies and “handcrafted” ones, and an AI that DJs your video games. If today’s lead has you wondering where the line sits, I talked through mine with Roxy Cottontail on her podcast, Roxy’s Tales: 20 Years, 1.5 Million Photos, One Script is how I used AI to sort my NickyDigital nightlife archive, and why the script could find every PBR can but still couldn’t pick the twelve photos for the show that opens Friday, November 13.
Your Creative Used AI. They Didn’t Think You Needed to Know. GlobeNewswire
What happened: Envato, the stock-asset company owned by Shutterstock, surveyed 1,033 creative professionals in 103 countries in September and released the results on Tuesday. Among those who use AI, 53% have used it on key client work without telling the client: 46% did so and don’t think it needs disclosing, and only 7% felt uncomfortable about it. Daily use is now 58%, up nine points from last year.
Why it matters: When you hire a designer, video editor or copywriter, you may think you’re paying for a person’s hands. They may think you’re paying for the result. Yesterday we covered bosses trusting employees less when they use AI; this is the same trust problem from the client’s side of the desk. And the rules are thin: even at organizations of 250 or more people, 40% have no written AI policy.
What everyone’s saying: Envato’s own framing is that creatives are staying in charge. CEO Hichame Assi says very few let AI “run unchecked,” and only 4% to 11% let it handle any stage of their work with little input. &Walsh founder Jessica Walsh says that “being able to recognize great work when you see it is not something you can prompt.” Respondents ranked prompt skill last of eight drivers of quality, at 19%.
My read between the lines: The money numbers explain the silence. 49% say AI makes them faster, only 7% say it raised their earnings, and 18% say clients expect AI work to cost less. If disclosure invites a discount, of course people keep quiet. Two caveats: every respondent is an Envato subscriber, a company that sells AI tools, and the most transparent group was creatives over 50, 53% of whom always tell clients.
📖 Further reading: AI Is a Trust Problem, Not a Tech Problem — my notes from the US Chamber of Commerce AI + Work Summit, where every panel ended up circling the same word this survey is really about: trust.
The creatives in that survey say AI buys them time, not money. The fix is to spend the time on the work clients actually pay you for. Viktor is an AI agent that lives in your Slack, connects to more than 3,000 tools, and does the chores: the weekly report, the client dashboard, the campaign recap, the bit of code nobody wants to write. Not a chatbot you prompt, a coworker you assign. New readers get $50 off their first month. Hire Viktor →
Claude and Codex Are Blocking People Who Hack Their Own TVs 404 Media
What happened: People using Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s Codex for AI-assisted reverse engineering, taking apart the software on gadgets they own, are hitting refusals and account limits, 404 Media’s Jason Koebler reports. One security researcher, log4j, says OpenAI banned his account for “cyber abuse” after he took apart a Samsung TV. A highly upvoted r/ClaudeCode post put it plainly: “The Dream is dead.”
Why it matters: The use cases were genuinely handy: removing ads from smart TVs, reviving abandoned smart-home devices, putting new software on old cameras. We broke down REA, the open-source add-on behind a lot of this, in October. If the two biggest AI coding tools say no, ordinary people lose the easy version of fixing their own stuff.
What everyone’s saying: OpenAI says this was a mistake. Engineer Tarun Gogineni wrote that the blocks are “mostly accidental” and “there is no prohibition against reverse engineering with codex,” and 36Kr reports OpenAI restored log4j’s account with an apology 11 days later. Security consultant Matt Brown told 404 that “the frontier labs guardrails will randomly change without warning on the same model,” so he’s moving to open-weight models he runs himself.
My read between the lines: Koebler’s sharpest point is that the labs protect other big companies’ locks. Bruce Sterling put it best: hacking is “only called ‘reverse’ when somebody who lacks a trillion dollars is doing it.” The practical outcome is the part to watch. An overcautious filter doesn’t stop the work, it moves it to local models with no filter at all, and only the hobbyists without a fancy graphics card get left behind.
📖 Further reading: Neo-Napster: The Compute Revolution Nobody Saw Coming — my April piece on why cheap local hardware keeps turning into AI infrastructure, which is exactly where 404 says the reverse-engineering crowd is heading next.
Unlike half the creatives in today’s lead, I’ll disclose everything: this Brief is free and always will be. Members get the paywalled deep-dives that show you what to do about stories like these, plus the full archive. Become a member →
AI Voices Are Making Hoax 911 Calls Harder to Spot NPR
What happened: NPR’s Jaclyn Diaz reports that AI-generated voices and background sounds are making swatting calls, hoaxes meant to send police to a home or school, sound more real. In August a bomb threat to Wheatland Union High School in California used an AI-generated voice, a local station reported; classes were canceled and there was no bomb. In a June survey by APCO International and the Public Safety Threat Alliance, about 14% of dispatchers said they had been targeted using AI tools.
Why it matters: A dispatcher has about a minute to decide how to respond, and the old giveaway, a stiff robotic voice, is gone. APCO CEO Mel Maier says the voices “can use words like, uh, or maybe, um,” and he notes that people have been killed and injured in swatting attacks. Dispatchers will still send help to every call, so the cost of a good fake is real police, real panic and real risk.
What everyone’s saying: Florida Institute of Technology professor Brandon May told NPR, “I’m able to clone my voice on ElevenLabs for less than $20.” He says even he struggles to spot fakes, and in a 60- to 90-second call “it is going to be nearly impossible to detect.” APCO is training dispatchers to ask questions so specific that an AI “cannot scoop that information from a public database or simply make guesses.” The full transcript is here.
My read between the lines: Disclosure: the voice on our own podcast is made with ElevenLabs, so I know how good this has gotten. The defense APCO describes is very human: a better interview, not a better detector. That’s the right instinct, because a detector is a race you lose every few months, while questions about the street, the door and the room are hard to fake from a script.
📖 Further reading: I Make AI Versions of Myself for a Living. This One I Didn't Agree To. — my piece on what happens when a working copy of your face or voice ends up in someone else’s hands. The fear was never the copy, it’s who holds the leash.
Paramount Wants AI’s Savings and the “Handcrafted” Premium The Verge
What happened: On Paramount Skydance’s earnings call, CEO David Ellison said AI “really has the potential to be the biggest creative unlock in modern history,” bigger than the arrival of CGI in the early ’90s. He said the original Terminator cost $4 million, and making it shot for shot today would cost “$60 to 70 million,” and that AI tools could make budgets “more digestible” so studios take more risks, The Verge reports.
Why it matters: Ellison says the company is building its own AI tools and that they will “significantly” reshape the business: content easier to produce, projects faster, work transformed. When a major studio says that to investors, it’s a plan for how films get made and who gets paid to make them.
What everyone’s saying: The line that got passed around was the hedge: “in a world of AI slop, we think there will always be a premium for truly hand-crafted storytelling.” Ellison also said AI “will never be a replacement” for artists. These are predictions from a CEO talking to shareholders, not demonstrated savings or a promise about jobs.
My read between the lines: Look at how the pitch is built. Automate production to cut costs, then sell “hand-crafted” as the luxury tier. Both can be true, but only one of them is a cost line on the spreadsheet, and it’s not the handmade one. Today’s lead suggests audiences may not even be told which version they’re watching.
📖 Further reading: Every New Tool Was Going to Kill Art, with John Hardin — historian and musician John Hardin on why the tape machine, the 808 and the player piano didn’t kill art, and why he still won’t pretend the job losses aren’t real.
An AI That Watches You Play and Picks the Next Song MyPart (press release)
What happened: MyPart, an AI music company, announced on Tuesday that developers can now use its music-matching models through Replicate and MCP, the standard way AI agents plug into outside tools. One model suggests songs to fit an image or video, the other finds songs from a written description. Its showcase is Songhunt, an app on the Overwolf gaming platform that watches your screen and picks music to match the action.
Why it matters: This is AI as a music supervisor, not a composer. MyPart says its recommendations come from partner catalogs of “real, human-made music, never AI generated tracks.” Epidemic Sound, which supplies Songhunt’s licensed catalog, said in its October announcement that the app works across more than 1,500 PC games and that streamers can publish without takedowns.
What everyone’s saying: Freshness check: Songhunt itself isn’t new. Epidemic Sound announced the streaming version on October 1. Tuesday’s news is the developer access. MyPart CEO Matan Kollenscher wants music to be “a context-aware part of the user journey,” not a background afterthought.
My read between the lines: Two flags. The announcement is a paid press release, so the claims about matching quality are untested until someone plays with it. And the interesting business here is licensing, not AI: Epidemic Sound says it “owns 100% of its music.” In a week full of AI-made film and art fights, the AI that picks the human song may be the one nobody protests.
📖 Further reading: 12 Playlists. 12 Months. 0 Emails. Until Now. — a year of playlists I made by hand for myself, which is the job MyPart is now asking a model to do in real time.
That’s your AI Brief for Wednesday.
—Nicholas from Artificially Intimidating
