: Popular media is being "patched" with AI-generated elements, including virtual influencers like Lil Miquela

Furthermore, the archival record is destroyed. Film preservationists used to worry about nitrate fires. Now they worry about over-the-air updates . The original theatrical cut of a film—warts and all—is often deleted from servers. Future historians may never see George Lucas’s Star Wars as it was in 1977, because the "patched" Special Editions have overwritten history.