The Infrastructure Lie: While the Big 3 Hike Your Bills, AI is Mining the Real Assets
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
Opinion: Telecom giants claim network upgrades justify rising costs, but the true shift in connectivity is the rise of AI-driven content built on uncredited human labor.
For years, the Big 3 telecom giants have played the same tired script. Every time your monthly bill creeps upward, we are told it is the necessary cost of "network upgrades." But while the carriers focus on the pipes, the real infrastructure shift is happening inside the content flowing through them—and it is far more predatory than a simple service fee.
We are witnessing the rise of AI-driven content platforms that leverage the data and likenesses of real people. As first reported by The Verge, the AI platform Higgsfield is aggressively pushing its technology into the mainstream via high-profile creators. Prominent filmmakers Matti Haapoja and Sam “Kold” Kolder recently posted videos demonstrating Higgsfield’s Seedance 2.5 functionality, with Haapoja showcasing *Cully Hill Boys*—a feature-length film produced via prompts starring AI-generated duplicates of YouTubers Matt Kiatipis and Mikyle “N3on” Rafiq.
The Verge reports that these promotions appear to be undisclosed partnerships, noting that fans shared screenshots of partnership offers from PR firms working for Higgsfield. Kolder’s video even included an affiliate link for a 30 percent discount on subscriptions, yet neither creator labeled the videos as ads.
This is where the "infrastructure" argument falls apart. The Big 3 want us to believe the most important asset is hardware, but the real asset being monetized is human creativity. Marques Brownlee hit the nail on the head when responding to Haapoja on Threads; while Haapoja compared generative AI to the democratizing effect of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Brownlee pointed out that the camera was a tool requiring human skill, whereas generative AI is "trained on real human-made material without any credit."
Whether it is the "upgrades" billed by telecoms or the "innovation" touted by Higgsfield, the pattern is the same: corporate entities reap the fees while human creativity is harvested as raw data. We aren't just paying for a connection—we are paying for our own obsolescence.