Why AI Will Make Live Events and Documentaries More Valuable Than Ever
Do you trust that what you watch, read, or hear today is created by humans, not robots?
As AI floods our feeds and fills our timelines with music, films, essays, influencers, and even virtual relationships there’s a massive opportunity for creators: the more artificial the world becomes, the more audiences will want what’s real.
Nearly ten years ago a Forbes article described the importance of content creation, including “building trust with your customers.” In this new era, the premium isn't just on content creation; it’s on presence. On what’s live. Unscripted. Unpredictable.
In my last role as VP of Marketing for a top music and comedy live entertainment company, I proposed a branding campaign titled: “BE THERE WHEN.”
Be fully alive.
In the room (stadium, arena, club).
When anything can happen.
That’s the power of live entertainment: what happens on that stage, field, or court will only happen once.
Here’s my thesis: AI won’t kill creativity. But I do think it will change the kind of creativity we trust, crave, and pay for …. and that’s where live events, sports, and documentaries rise to the top.
So, here are five reasons why the future belongs to the BE THERE WHEN moments:
1. Proof of Presence
AI can fake a voice, generate a song, or script a sermon. But it can’t replicate you in the room. Surrounded by deepfakes and algorithmic content, being physically present becomes proof of truth. When you see a band add an unexpected song to their set, or a football player reverse leapfrog over an opposing player, or a speaker stumble and recover, well, that’s not just content, it’s evidence. The audience becomes the validator.
2. Unscripted = Undeniable
The appeal of sports isn’t just the competition and drama …. it’s the fact that nobody knows what’s going to happen. That tension, that uncertainty, is what keeps you watching. Same goes for live comedy, raw talks, and honest documentaries. AI thrives on patterns. Humans thrive on the unpredictable. What’s real will be what can’t be planned.
3. Community Is the New Luxury
Streaming is mostly solo. Live is collective. As digital life atomizes us, the hunger for communal experiences will skyrocket. A concert isn’t just about the music … it’s about singing with strangers. A documentary screening isn’t just about facts … it’s about feeling something together. The rarest currency in an AI-saturated world will be shared human experience.
4. Live Events Have Stakes
When it’s live, anything can go wrong and that’s why we care. There’s risk. There’s real-time emotion. Whether it’s a broken guitar string or a last-second buzzer-beater, we lean in because we might miss something. AI content, no matter how perfect, can be paused. Replayed. Skipped. Even corrected. But live events? You either show up, or you miss out.
5. Documentaries Will Be the New Novels
I believe documentaries will be the closest thing to truth we can trust. People will gravitate to stories based in fact but told with heart. The best documentaries will be today’s most important storytelling form because they bridge information with emotion … and they capture a moment in time that AI didn’t invent.
I am not a Chicken Little warning others that AI is evidence that “the sky is falling.” We’re not leaving creativity behind. We’re just changing the filters … the filter for what’s valuable won’t be polish or perfection. We will distrust the perfect, the glossy, the manufactured. The filter now will be proximity, presence, and proof.
So if you’re a creator, lean into what can’t be replicated: your voice, your audience, your story, your moment.
As the band The Human League sang in the 1980’s, “I’m human, born to make mistakes.”
