AI is everywhere in Bayreuth. When I go to the coffee shop on Sophienstraße, there are AI portraits of Richard Wagner wearing bad emo eyeliner on the walls. On my way to the Festspielhaus, there are AI posters for what can only be described as a “dinosaur rodeo.” AI-generated signs litter the streets—for breakfast, for ice cream, for falafel. Even before I make it to the “AI Ring” itself, I am already convinced that I live in a world in which most people have offloaded their creativity to the computer, a world in which everyone and their brother has lined up to become expressively enfeebled. 

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… is the architecture critic at The Nation and the creator of the blog McMansion Hell. Before joining The Nation, Wagner had previously been a critic at The Baffler and The New Republic. She lives in...