"Why is that? Why will a generative agent never be a real friend? Why do I want to stand before Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks (1942) myself, instead of seeing an infinite number of aesthetically equally pleasing products of generative AI systems? I have some initial thoughts; but as AI systems become ever better at simulating everything that we care about, a fully worked-out theory of the value of the real, the authentic, will become morally and practically essential."