How AI is disrupting Africa’s creative industries and what creators can do about it

"I'M SORRY, but I think you're aware your voice talent job is going to disappear."

- ANDILE MASUKU

I don't lie, when African creative industries expert Lora-Munaí gave delivered this blunt assessment during our recent African Tech Roundup podcast conversation, I felt gut-punched.

Our exchange came in the wake of a LinkedIn post Lora-Munaí put out a week ago issuing a stark message to African filmmakers about AI disruption, one that struck uncomfortably close to home.

"While you're spending hours in the edit suite attending Al applications, or attending festivals, Al has already rewritten the script for the entire industry," she warned.

Like the viral, precisely because it articulated what many creatives fear but few appear willing to confront.

Senegalese filmmaker Hussein Dembel Sow's response crystallised the paradox African creatives face: "Across the continent, we're still building the frameworks for modern content industries - film, advertising, media, design.

"Yet at the same time, those frame-disciplines increasingly belongs to a paradigm that's rapidly dissolving. What we're witnessing isn't simply the automation of existing practices, but the emergence of entirely new creative possibilities."

New notes, "Are being upended in real time by AI." It's not just a disruption. It's a system dump, upending while we're still paving the ground work.